The Mini Olympics after school club is now running every Thursday this half term. The children certainly had lots of fun and not only does this help develop their gross motor skills but it enables them to develop turn taking, listening skills, communication and team work skills.

If you would like your child to take part, please follow the information on the letter that was sent out to sign up.

The objectives this week have been to talk articulately about:
MENTAL FITNESS
Begin to know what compassion is
Begin to know that self-compassion is important for our mental health.

This half term’s focus on compassion is so important because in life we ALL suffer – we all get disappointed, upset, angry, sad, stressed, uncomfortable, dissatisfied and it is normal. It is how we respond that really matters, and we want to you to respond with compassion, with kindness, with healing and hope!  

The session began by watching the video "Colour your world with kindness" on YouTube which demonstrated ways in which we can all be kind to each other. We then read the book "It's OK" by Wendy O'Leary which taught the Rainbows about self compassion and how we can be kind to ourselves.

In maths this week are objectives have been;
count things that cannot be seen – sounds
revisit rules for how to count
discuss and practise strategies for counting larger sets
count things that cannot be seen – actions
discuss and practise strategies for counting larger sets by moving objects
count things that cannot be seen – periods of time
discuss and practise strategies for counting larger sets by moving images
make or represent their own collections of larger amounts
practise counting on from a given number
discuss and practise strategies for counting larger amounts that cannot be moved

We have been practising counting and have enjoyed trying to balance on one leg while our friend helps us count how long we can do it for before we wobble and put our foot down! Some of us balanced for a long time and needed lots of counting! We have also been counting claps with our eyes closed which was really tricky but we succeeded!

We have used number blocks to help us this week, and this week number one has helped us. We have looked at large groups of number one number block, and groups of dots, and tried to count them. It was really tricky and we kept missing some out or counting them more than once!

We know that if objects can be moved we can place them in rows to count them better. If they can't be moved, we can draw circles around them, tick them, cross them out or draw lines under them to make sure we count correctly by not missing any out or repeating them.

We have worked hard to develop our counting skills this week.

This week we completed some Super Yoga activities in the hall. We know that these activities help us keep healthy and fit. Super Yoga is tricky because it is very fast paced and we have to work hard to keep up to form the different poses! 

​Here we are developing our gross motor skills.

There have been lots of different activities to support reading and writing in provision this week. We have had books about Chinese New Year to read, phoneme frames to help us Fred Talk to write words, pictures of animals from the zodiac to write lists, reading sentences to match to the correct pictures and we have also had writing opportunities in our vets role play area.

We know that lanterns are hung up to celebrate Lunar New Year and that red is a lucky colour. 

We worked hard to carefully follow instructions and cut slits to create our lantern. We decorated it with glitter and then stuck it together and added a handle.

We hope you like them!

Rainbows made an amazing Chinese dragon after we watched some videos of Lunar New Year parades. They carefully decorated it and attached different materials and textures to it and then we listened to a dragon dance song while wearing it!

​We hope you like it as much as we do!

This week we celebrated Lunar New Year. We tried some prawn crackers at snack time and they were delicious! We were so proud of our friends who sometimes find it hard to try new foods as well!

We learnt about the Chinese zodiac and know that each year, in a cycle of 12, is named after an animal. The Jade Emperor asked 12 animals to have a race and said whatever order they finish would be the order of the years of that animal. The rat cheated and came first, then the ox came second and last came the pig. Rainbows know this is the year of the horse.

We completed different activities in provision and made concertina dragons in the creative area to help develop our fine motor skills and creative skills, used chopsticks to pick up pom poms to count, painted Chinese symbols, completed dragon phonemes frames to write words and there were lots of other activities too. We started to learn about Pets too which you can see in some of the photos. Check out our photos below to see our hard work!

Our story this week was Stick and Stone. This story enabled Rainbows to learn that they can bounce back in friendships, that they can show up as a caring friend and they learnt how to forgive in our friendships .

In the story, Stick and Stone didn't know each other and were lonely. Stick saw Stone playing on the swings and saw Pinecone laugh at him when he fell off. Stick stuck up for Stone and their friendship was formed. They did lots of new things together until there was a terrible storm and stick was blown away. Stone searched everywhere and eventually found him and rescued him from a large puddle where he was stuck. The story enabled them to learn how to stick up for their friends and that caring friends make each other feel good! The Rainbows learnt how to say sorry and also how to say they forgive their friends if something unkind happens and they apologise.

We have also been singing our bounce back song!

This week we read the story Mabel and the Mountain for our One Life Session. This was about a little fly called Mabel with big dreams, but her friends and family told her they were too big and she would never achieve them.

Mabel really wanted to climb a mountain and even though everyone told her she couldn't do it, she gave it a go. Mabel tried her best but found it very hard and she almost gave up. That is when a voice inside her told she could do it! She continued to try even though it was tricky and she achieved her dream and reached this top. This spurred Mabel on to achieve her other dreams, and her friends and family were able to chase their aspirational dreams as well.

Rainbows learnt that things can be tricky and if they tell themselves they can do it, they too can achieve what they would like. They also learnt to support their friends to achieve things as well, just like they would like their support.