Everything in the World has Shape

We learn with our hands and our minds don’t we?

It’s so important for children to play and explore ideas through touch and light and sound and sight!

We have been immersed in all sorts of shape play.

Everything in the world has a shape!

We’ve been exploring how to rotate and change and combine shapes to make all sorts of patterns, designs, constructions.

Our St. Paul’s Curriculum supports children to see patterns and make connections, to understand shape and space and measure.

On your way home can you find some shapes? I wonder what you will discover?

Messy Material

We love messy material.

Natural materials to manipulate.

If children’s hands are their best research tool… what do we put within their reach?

Paint and playdough and water and sand have been helping children be scientists and explorers!

Our St. Paul’s Promise says we “use all our senses to engage in scientific enquiry”.

We explore and examine.

We wonder and research.

We ask questions and test ideas.

We explore with our hands and our fingers.

We explore with all our senses.

We

Squeeze

Pour

Push

Pat

Pinch

Mix

Manipulate!

We LOVE messy material.

Natural materials to manipulate.

Our Imaginarium

Imagination and creativity is so fundamental to learning isn’t it?

Creativity is one of our Fundamental 5 Values.

We have been using our imagination in art and design, music and dance, role play and stories.

Pretending and acting in role helps explore and understand experiences and express ideas and feelings in a safe way – full of ideas, full of joy.

“Doctor! Doctor! The baby is sick!”

We have been doctors and patients, making sure we help babies get better.

We have been encouraging the children to “get into role” and express themselves with dramatic play, new words and talk and “act our their own stories”.

Our St. Paul’s Curriculum says we are creative thinkers and supports us to express ideas in a 100 different ways – and 100 more!

Make Your Mark

Early writing needs a movement-rich place.

Early writing needs BIG BOLD MOVEMENT to learn how to control muscles, develop core strength and all sorts of balance.

Early writing needs small, intricate, fine motor movement too.

It means learning with hands and fingers.

Using all our sense to explore texture, shape, pattern.

Early writing means walling in mud and sand and paint.
It means squeezing, grasping, pinching, pushing, tearing, squishing.

Our St. Paul’s Promise supports children “use marks to communicate meaning”.

Early writing needs all sorts of interesting tools and challenging tasks.

We have been making all sorts of marks.

What marks can you see?

What marks can you make?

Researching Children Research the World

Children are so powerfully curious aren’t they?

Full of questions and curiosity!

So keen to make links in their learning, to capitalise on ideas and the tools around them to support thinking and reflections.

Lots of children in Nursery have been so curious, delighted and joyful about animal play.

The children have been

Pretending

Storying

Reading

Researching

… all about animals.

We have been finding facts!

We have been asking questions.

We have been researchers!