Today we began our new Sparkle and Shine theme with a focus on Bonfire Night. Firstly, we watched a clip of some fireworks and we listened carefully to the different sounds. We talked about what we heard and saw using words: sparkly, bright, colourful, glittery. loud, bang, boom, woosh, and pop! The children curled up small and pretended to be fireworks blasting off into the night sky. 
Our provision is enhanced with lots of resources and activities to support this theme, including: glittery playdough with sequins to add and create fireworks, sparkly water with stars to catch and count, glittery paint with cotton buds and black paper, sparkly foam to make firework patterns using fingers, chalks and black paper to create fireworks, torches and different light and colour themed items to investigate. We finished the session by reading the story "Sparks in the Sky" and we talked about what we might do to celebrate on Bonfire Night. 

This half term our new theme for learning is "Sparkle and Shine!" and we will be learning all about colour and light through this theme. 
Our core book is "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?" This book  has a predictable, repetitive structure which is great for developing our early reading skills. We will be reading the book over and over and we have multiple copies in our reading area so we can enjoy reading it together with our friends. 

Today we culminated our learning from over the week with a Halloween celebration. First we went on a hunt around nursery with a challenge to find different hidden Halloween themed pictures. We described where they were using words such as "on top, underneath, behind, in front." Then we sorted and counted them which provided more Mathematical thinking. In our provision, we created potions in the water area, role played being witches in our spooky home corner and designed pumpkins in the mark making area. We sang lots of Halloween themed songs and enjoyed dancing to the music too. At snack time we had some spooky treats and watched "Room on the Broom" which has been our book of the week.
Have a lovely half term and stay safe!

At group time today, we began by exploring a pumpkin. We passed it around the circle and talked about it using words such as orange, big, huge and heavy. We encouraged the children to guess what might be inside and the ideas included "guts!", "sweets" and "seeds."
In the provision, we cut open the pumpkin to find out what was actually inside and lots of children learnt the word seeds. They then used their fingers and spoons to scoop out the inside. This was a great sensory experience and the children used lots of vocabulary including wet, sticky and slimy to describe it. 

Our final Diwali themed activity was making Diva lamps. There was so much learning in this activity. We used clay and manipulating it was brilliant for developing fine motor skills. The children had to use their hands and fingers to squeeze, roll, push and press the dough to make their shape. Then they used their index finger to carefully press sequins into the clay to decorate it. This took such a lot of concentration but the children tried so hard and the end results look amazing! 

Today we have begun learning about the Hindu festival of Diwali. We watched a clip about a little girl who was celebrating with her family and we learnt that is the festival of lights! We found out about rangoli, patterns, mendhi patterns, diva lamps, special food and sweets and decorating the house with lights. 
Here we are having a go at some of our provision enhancements linked to this festival as well as a spot of Diwali dancing to some traditional music.

We found out that at Diwali, Hindu's decorate their hands with Mendhi patterns so we had a go ourselves in our creative area. We used brown paint to represent the henna and used cotton buds so we could try to create small patterns. 

As part of our learning about Diwali, we decided to make paper lanterns. The children learnt to hold their scissors correctly to cut and snip across their paper. Then they sprinkled on glitter before fastening together,

Today we made our own masks to help us to tell the story. The focus of this activity was to develop our fine motor skills. Firstly, we practised holding our coloured pencils correctly in a tripod grip to decorate our mask. Then we learn to hold our scissors and try to cut around our mask. Some of our superstars managed to cut out their whole mask all by themselves! Once a lollypop stick was added to the back, the children used their mask to practise the Little Red Hen's speech from the story. 

Our book of the week is The Little Red Hen. Today we read the story and encouraged the children to join in with the repeated phrases such as "Who help help me plant the seed?" and "Not I." We talked about being kind and helpful towards our friends and the children agreed that the Little Red Hen's farmyard friends were not very helpful towards her! In our small world area, the children used different materials to create a farm for Little Red Hen and the other animals so they could tell the story in their play. We also used puppets and masks to pretend to be the different characters.