Castle Room News

The fortnight's focus of learning will be on Writing in Literacy. We will focus on developing and supporting a comfortable pencil grip, using the opportunity to re-examine the grips that the children use, alongside developing the skills to make marks that look like letters. We will teach these skills throughout the classroom as we consider the emergent opportunities such as ‘writing’ lists.

In the Mark Making Area we will be adding name labels that include the letter formation signs to support the children in knowing where to start on a letter. It is important that the use of these cards is modelled, though the formation will help support the visualisation for the children as you explain it.

We will provide Mark Making supplies in different areas around the classroom to encourage children to take the opportunity to mark make alongside their play. We will model using paper to ‘write’ down shopping lists, to-do lists, plans and more. We will also ensure that we ask supporting questions to allow the children to talk about the marks they are making.

In the Creative Area we will be 'Meeting the Artist' Kandinsky as we explore his work on Concentric Circles. We will begin with large paper circles on the floor for the children to sit within, allowing the children to explore the space all around them and consider how they want to fill their space. We will discuss the idea of creating a continuous circle around the children or creating individual marks. The children will then use different large templates to create their own circles, then cut out and use for their own artwork.

On the Watercolour Table, the children will be using small circular templates to create circles within circles, as they explore the use of different colours. We will closely observe Kandinsky's Concentric Circles within Squares as we consider how he used the different colours and placement to express different emotions. Later in the week, we will break the large paper into small squares to fill it with different-sized circles.

In the Outdoors Area, we will be exploring letter formation using sticks as we 'write' our names. We will use our wooden letter circles to model the letter formation and then use different sticks to create these letters. We will also be painting on the perspex, creating different artwork of flowers and more and then practising signing our names so we know whose artwork is whose.

We will be creating a large mark-making area with bubble wrap drapes across the fence to allow the children to develop their gross motor skills with large motions, reaching up and down, round and round and more!

On the Malleable Table we will be exploring different materials for our creations as we follow a recipe to create paper mache.

Our first book of the week will be The King's Pants, the story of the King who has pants for every occasion, inflatable space pants, organic pants that he can eat and very important Coronation pants. How will he ever get his crown when his Coronation pants, and all his other pants, go missing? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcEta61_E6w 

Our second book of the week will be Oliver's Fruit Salad. No matter what fruit Oliver's mum gives him, Oliver refuses. His Grandpa has much better fruit in his garden! What will Oliver do when his grandparents and Mother prepare a delicious fruit salad bought from the grocery store? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsS8Mmy2g24