The children in pre-school have been very excited about their nursery rhyme-themed half-term, which began last week by learning all about Incy Wincy Spider.

The children thoroughly enjoyed exploring various aspects of spiders, such as how many legs and eyes they have, as well as how they create their webs. Using their fine motor skills, they created their own spiderwebs by weaving string in and out of the holes in paper plates. After that, they painted their hands to make spider pictures, remembering that spiders have eight legs, so only painting eight of their fingers. The children then used a dice to determine how many eyes their spider would have. Did you know that spiders can have anywhere between 0 and 12 eyes?

Pre-school also went on a spider hunt around the school to count how many we could find and see them in their natural habitats.

During the week the children practised their fine motor skills, by using tweezers to rescue bugs from a sticky masking-tape web, counting how many they could save before the timer ran out. The children’s counting skills came in handy as they had to place the right number of legs onto their spiders, to match the numerals on their bodies, as well as placing spiders onto spiderweb 5 frames.

During water play last week, pre-school used watering cans to scoop up water and pour it onto pretend flowers. In their science lesson, the children looked at waterproof materials, and determined which ones would make the best umbrellas, by pouring small amounts of water onto different materials and observing whether they absorbed or repelled the water. Some materials were waterproof but could not be bent or manipulated, so the children decided that these would not be suitable for making an umbrella, even though they were waterproof.

In RE, the class learned about how Mary cared for baby Jesus in the stable, similar to the ways their own mothers care for them. They drew pictures to show how their mothers are like Mary, highlighting the different ways they support them.

The children in pre-school enjoyed using their gross motor skills last week, learning how to throw underhand to develop control. They practiced throwing pompoms onto a sticky spiderweb and, later in the week, attempted to throw a spider pompom into a hoop. They were very good!

As part of their learning, the children worked together to make two webs. The first one was made using string, where the children rolled the ball to one another, remembering to hold onto the string as they did so. The second web was made with runny glue and glitter! 

What a fun-filled week of spider-themed learning! Well done children and staff.