Investigation Hub and Discovery Hub at Deckham

 This week we have been learning about Diwali, the ‘festival of lights’. 

We have shared stories about Diwali, and enjoyed first hand experiences to develop our understanding. 

The children have learned that people celebrate Diwali in different ways, including wearing special clothes (which some of the children enjoyed trying on), watching fireworks, saying prayers, eating delicious food and lighting diyas. 

This week we explored moulding clay in different ways including rolling, pinching, squashing and shaping. Some of the children wanted to mould their clay into their own diya, while others wished to just explore the clay. One child made some worms and another made a shark! The children who had made diyas then chose colours and materials to decorate their diya. 

Another way in which Diwali is celebrated is through the creation of rangoli patterns, which are colourful patterns often made using coloured sand. We explored creating rangoli patterns in different ways including using paint and stencils, and painting on foil. We also experimented with coloured sand by drawing shapes with glue and then sprinkling coloured sand on to it. We tried to use a pincer grip to pick up and sprinkle the sand, thereby developing our fine motor skills. 

Our Investigation Hub children have been playing with bangles this week, and thinking about making patterns with them and counting them, saying one number name for each bangle. The children also really enjoyed wearing them! 

Characteristics of effective learning – playing and exploring 

Continuing our interest in water play with the pumpkins last week, this week we have been using coloured water with different sized pipettes to create potions. Adults added some bicarbonate of soda and vinegar to some of our potions to make them have a fizzy reaction, which was exciting! 

On Thursday afternoon the Investigation Hub children met with Vicki from the Deckham Family Hub who helped us to bag up your generous donations for harvest. The children asked about what Vicki’s job is and learned about how their food donations would help people via the local charity ‘Peace of Mind’. Thank you very much again for your kind support with this. 

Story of the week: Busy Diwali 

Song of the week: Hickory Dickory Dock 

Signs of the week: Happy and sad 

Parents as partners 

Thank you very much to the parents of children who attend all day, for your support with waiting to collect your child until the end of their session at 3pm. This has been very successful and allowed children to have a lovely end of session group time together with their peers. 

Nursery will be closed after today for the half term holiday and will reopen on Monday  3rd November. We would love to see any photos of the time you spend together over the holiday. You can add these to your child’s learning journey on Famly. 

We hope you all have a wonderful week. We know that lots of the children are looking forward to Halloween and we hope everyone has a fun time if they are celebrating. We look forward to seeing you back at nursery on Monday 3rd November.