Planning in pre-school last week followed the interests of the children, when they became interested in pirates after their recent water-themed topics.
They started the week by reading a book about ‘Pirate Pete’ and quickly learned how to become amazing pirates after spending some time thinking about what pirates might be like. The younger children made pirate faces to show different emotions out of felt, and tried making their own faces look the same!
Over the rest of the week the children mixed their own salt dough, before cutting out different shapes, ready to paint as special treasure to use in their play next week. They also used pom-poms as jewels and counted them into the special numbered treasure pots. This helped them to practice their counting skills as well as recognise numbers.
A key them in pre-school is listening to the initial sounds in words and last week was no exception. The children are beginning to discriminate differences in the initial sounds that they hear. The children dug for treasure in a sparkly sand box and decided which items began with the sound ‘sss’. Later in the week they asked for some ‘ppp’ porridge at snack time. The children and staff decided that Pre-school Pirates Prefer Perfect Porridge!’ With full tummies the children put on pirate puppet shows for each other, before calming down with some Cosmic Yoga.
In another popular learning activity, the children used teabags to paint maps to make them look old, alongside creating telescopes and split pin pirates. PE saw the children learning how to balance as they ‘walked the plank’, before doing a gymnastic jump off the end.
Another busy week in Hopscotch was had by some wonderful junior pirates!