Let's Celebrate Fireworks
A new half-term and a new topic - Let's Celebrate, and our first celebration experience fireworks. Our story of the week Hovis the Hedgehog by Lynda Leigh-Crawford and Lawrence David, a story about a poor hedgehog who lost his home on firework night. The Bears loved listening to the story of Hovis and following his emotions as he got scared, angry, excited and finally calm when he found a new home. We made Hovis some playdough friends in our fine motor activities and built a safe home for Hovis with our different construction equipment. On small world, our hedgehog friends safely enjoyed the firework celebrations with us.
In our role-play area, we acted out our own firework celebration experiences. We sat around a fire wrapped in hats, scarves and gloves toasting marshmallows, drinking hot chocolate and waving our sparkler fireworks.
On the creative table, we made our pretend sparklers with foil streamers and straws, and learnt how to use sticky tape to secure our streamers to the straw. We created chalk fireworks on chalkboards to practise, then had another go on black paper. We were encouraged to think about the colours and shapes we had seen in a firework display to use in our pictures.
On the practical table, we used sparkly collage materials, then coloured playdough and glitter to make firework scenes on the laminated black mats. We also visited the ICT suite for the first time. We learnt the different names for the hardware of a computer and drew a firework scene using a paint programme on the computers.
On the writing table, we made marks and patterns with fingers and paintbrushes in bright coloured glitters and sand, and used our phonics to write firework food words, and a recount of the fireworks we had seen.
Another first visit, this time the Bears ventured into the copse for our first outdoor learning experience. We explored the different areas of the copse and were shown how to play safely in the environment. A busy afternoon full of fun, making potions in the mud kitchen, building dens and looking out from the tree house. Miss Brown said the Bears were incredible!
At the end of the week, we attended a remembrance assembly where we held the poppies we had made to observe a one-minute silence. To help us understand Remembrance, we watched the CBeebies poppies animation and listened to the beautiful story Where the Poppies Now Grow. The children were quiet and respectful, and we were very proud of them. We have created a poppies display in our windows with the paintings that we printed with corks and card. We also made loose part poppies with buttons and coloured stones.
More fireworks next week as we celebrate Diwali.