Castle Room News

Over the next two weeks we will be focusing on Mathematics as we look at Shapes, Spatial Reasoning and Pattern.

In the Small Construction Area, we have updated our resources as the children are all confident in simple construction and are ready to be pushed. We have added cogs and wheels to allow the children to extend their construction by creating moving pieces. We have also added Meccano type toys to allow the children to create 3D creations by attaching different pieces together with nuts and bolts. The children will look at the positional language of: above, below, into, through, between and more as we talk about how we will attach the pieces together.

In the Roleplay Area, we will be following the children's interest in picnics and tea parties. The children have loved role-playing tea parties following our outdoor snack opportunities in the hot weather. We will be hosting a strawberry tea as we extend the conversations to planning what we would need for our tea.

Our first book of the week is Handa's Surprise, the story of a girl who wants to surprise her friend with a gift of fruits, but as the animals steal the fruit one by one, Akeyo will not be the only one surprised by what is in the basket.
Our key vocabulary is the names of the animals in the story and the new fruit.

On the creative table, we will be exploring butterflies and their symmetrical patterns. We will use the mirrors to see the line of symmetry before going on to use paints to create our own butterflies. The children with select colours to make their patterns on one side of the butterfly before folding it to print the pattern they have made on the other side.

In the wet sand area, we will be adding 3D moulds to enhance the children’s vocabulary in shape. We will be transferring this skill to the play dough area too, where we will consolidate our knowledge of 2D shapes.

We have created a ‘snipping station’ where we have stuck strips of paper to the cupboard with various patterns on them.

In the snack room we will be exploring and trying the new fruits in our story. Most of them are exotic fruits. We will be trying to chop our fruit into halves and quarters. We will then use the cut-up fruit to make fruit kebabs in patterns, with the children choosing how many they need.