Blog - 4th Feb

So apples.... do you think our little friend enjoyed being with us this week? Did we make Blue Penguin's stay enjoyable, fun and happy? As you have already guessed, we had a little penguin come and join in with our learning this week. At the beginning of the week we read the story Blue Penguin and this lead to great discussions about where our penguin came from, how he got to Apple Class, if blue penguin came alone etc. The questions and excitement were endless! 
 
We had a full week of fun packed imagination and exploration - mainly using our penguin as a guide and stimuli. We made houses from bricks and 3d shapes which was fantastic for our imaginative play, language development and mathematical development. 
 
We painted snowy / wintery backgrounds from different parts of the story, which involved a lot of  colour mixing. The story had many different colourful images in it, so we used our knowledge to build upon what was happening in the story and create backgrounds to show this. The children enjoyed exploring the colours and experimenting with mixing. The children took great care and did a fantastic job. The mixed blue with white to make a lovely icy light blue colour, they mixed paint to make a deep purple colour and lastly to make green they mixed blue and yellow together. We talked about how to get a colour darker by added darker colours (black and blue) and discussed how to get lighter colours by added white. Well done everyone! 
 
To add to these backgrounds we had a go at line drawing of our blue penguin. The children had to carefully look at the penguin to see all its features and then had a go at copying in on to paper. 
 
 
These will be displayed in the classroom - but I'll add them onto next week's blog before they come home to you in the coming weeks. 
 
In the children's free and independent play, we've built upon our scissor work and skills this week too, by following different patterns when cutting. Using scissors is very tricky for little fingers so please practice using scissors with your child at home (small child friendly scissors of course). 
 
In our outdoor learning we again helped Blue Penguin find somewhere nice to stay! the children used many resources from our outdoor area to make a hideout. This then turned into an obstacle course! This was great fun watching the children develop their balancing skills. 
 
Musical apples, in the hall, was also great fun this week - from sliding along the benches like a penguin to waddling across the snowy/icey terrain just to name a few things that we got up to!
 
Have a great weekend everyone - see you all on Monday 
 
Miss W and Mrs G