Before the half term break the children in pre-school read the story ‘Oliver’s Vegetables’ by Alison Bartlett and Vivian French.  After reading the story, the children realised that they didn’t know what rhubarb looked, so they visited our own Eco garden and picked some. 

Afterwards Saplings Class researched how to make rhubarb crumble, using the stalk, and thought about the language they could use to describe the giant leaves.  Whilst they ate their delicious crumble at snack time, Saplings Class listened to the story again, before trying to recall the order in which the vegetables are mentioned in the story, in their Communication and Language lesson. Saplings Class also used the mathematical language of ‘more’ and ‘fewer’ to help them understand how to compare amounts. 

The younger children, in the Seedlings room, planted their own pretend garden, making arrays to help with one-to-one counting.  Towards the end of the week, they went into the outdoor classroom and practised again, using real onions!  They can’t wait to watch them grow. Seedlings Class also used pictures of vegetables and items from the Creation Station, to create their own vegetable characters, showing great imagination!

In both rooms, the children developed both their expressive arts and their maths skills, by making pictures of shapes, using potato printing, and had lots of fun into the bargain!

In the story there were lots of other vegetables the children had never heard of and wanted to know more able.  One day they tried radishes for snack time and then pretended to plant the left overs.  They used spoons and dug them up, to help develop fine motor skills.

Hopscotch are very lucky to have a lovely outdoor area where the children can enjoy learning to use their bodies and develop their gross motor skills.  This week saw them getting the large parachute out, where they made up their own games; especially focussing on learning how to take turns with each other.