28th March to 1st April

This week we have set out the role play area as a Post Office/Shop, to encourage the children to develop their mark making and communication.  They've been filling out passports, writing letters and postcards, and doing some shopping.  This is to tie in with our parent/carer workshop on Communication, Language and Literacy, which takes place this Thursday 31st March.  We hope lots of parents and carers can join us at the workshop, where Lynne will explain more about how language development works, and encourage you to get hands on with some mark making activities.

Inside, we've had some target practice, with bean bags for the children to throw.  This is great for developing their aim and their hand to eye co-ordination (which in turn helps them develop their writing in due course).  We've also had the climbing frame out to develop strength, co-ordination and encourage turn taking.

The play dough has been out this week - staff feel strongly that this is an important activity to have on offer, because it feels familiar and 'safe' for the children.  At this age, children particularly like to have something they recognise within an environment.  Play dough is also great for sensory exploration, because the children can experiment with squishing it, and we regularly add scents such as strawberry flavour!  They can also develop their fine motor skills by using rolling pins and cutters.

The Art Zone has been very popular this week and we've decorated our new Art Zone Sign.  We've been doing painting both indoors and outdoors, depending on the weather.

Recently, we've also been encouraging the children to practice careful listening, by asking them to sit in complete silence for a full ten seconds.  We've been very impressed at how well they can do this!  By building up their listening skills in this way, we can help them get ready for phonics based approaches to reading, because they learn to listen really carefully.  This also helps prepare the older children to be ready for longer periods of listening as they move onto primary school.

We've also been working on alliteration with the children, talking about initial letter sounds and encouraging them to hear the first sounds of words.  We do this using a box of objects which start with the same letter.  To find out more make sure you come to our workshop tomorrow!