The Wild Wild Woods!
Out and about in the woods with Lilac Group
Energetic, risky and adventurous play
Play full of collaboration and leadership
Play full of well-being and relationships
Play full of curiosity about the natural world, about horizons and long distances
Play full of light and sound
Play full of listening to bird sound, or wind through branches, or discovering uprooted trees!
Play full of the weird and wonderful, novel and new
Have you been to Stoke Park estate?
Have you seen the sculptures?
We found a mushroom house!
We found a dragon!
We found a tiny village on a dragon’s tail and wings!
Come along to Stoke Park estate the next time your group goes to the Wild Wild Woods!
Eid Mubarak
We have been celebrating Eid.
Fatima has been sharing her celebration with us.
Eid follows Ramadan and is full of prayer, feast, festival and family.
Eid Mubarak means “blessed feast” and Fatima and the children talked about Ramadan and Eid, showing us how to pray on the prayer mat, words from the Quran, and talked about how they celebrated Eid.
“Eid Mubarak” everyone!
Our St. Paul’s Promise, “I know my own uniqueness and embrace diversity,” means we explore different experiences, communities, and cultures.
Corridor Concerts
Would you like to put on a “Corridor Concert”?
Come in and play!
You don’t need to be an accomplished musician to play musically with children.
We love to sing and dance, play and move, listen and respond with voice and instrument.
We listen to, recognise and value children’s own ways of being musical.
Since our Research Project with Roger and Eliza from Soundwaves we have loved building a repertoire of songs, tuning into children’s musicality, responding with instruments, voice and movement.
From spontaneous voice play to vocal doodling to vocalising movement to identifying a pulse we have been developing our Creative Curriculum and our Musicality.
Look out for our St. Paul’s Songbook coming soon!
Learning in the Garden
“The Curriculum is inside-the-child and outside-the-window!” is one of our favourite sayings!
And the children have been so so absorbed, engaged, motivated and involved in learning outside.
Grouptime is a great time to be outside.
This means that after Grouptime children can capitalise on their grouptime learning – they can continue and consolidate, extend and explore that learning at Explore Time.
At Grouptimes we have been…
- Big Mark Making
- Bug Hunting
- Playing
- Basketball
At Grouptimes we have been
- Scientists
- Writers, illustrators, mark makers
- Basketball players
- Big Bold Movers!
Learning outdoors gives children the chance to experiment with larger scales of space, larger scales of measurement, larger movements, larger play.
Brilliant Block Play Patterns
“If children’s hands are their best research tool… then what do we put within their reach?”
We love Blocks!
We love Block Play!
We think Blocks are an essential resource for children to research all sorts of learning… social, emotional, cognitive, physical development is all supported.
You might know already but Michael ( a PHD student from Bristol University ) is helping us think about Block Play through a Mathematical lens.
We are particularly interested in ideas of pattern and symmetry.
Our Research Questions include
What learning are we seeing when children play with the Blocks?
What is the Adult Role when supporting Block Play?
What Mathematical Subject Knowledge do we need to support learning in the Blocks?
What is the best way to document children’s learning and reflect it back to them?
Children have demonstrated such complexity in their Block Play – such incredible intricacy and detail in their designs – bridges and towers, stacks and shapes, shapes within shapes, repeating and symmetrical patterns.
And children have been full of absorption and concentration, perseverance and problem-solving, resilience and reciprocity when playing and learning with the Blocks.
The Power of Pattern
In Nursery 1 Faith is researching children researching the world!
The Research Question in Nursery 1 is all about Early Maths –how children learn about pattern and how this supports their mathematical development.
Have you seen the documentation? The words and photographs that show children’s pattern play and mathematical learning?
Pattern is everywhere isn’t it?
There’s even a pattern to our day, our week, our year!
Faith and Nursery 1 have been thinking about all sorts of patterns…
Repeating
Growing
Border
Linear
Concentric
Symmetical
And used all sorts of materials to support patterning
Pattern Blocks, painting, printing…
Pegs, beads, laces, buttons, mosaic tiles, magnetic tiles…
Blocks, shapes, numicon, unifix, Mobilo…
Cutters, straws, lollipop sticks, conkers, cones, corks…
And much much more!
Pattern really is everywhere!
We wonder what patterns you can see or hear?
