This week we have not only continued learning about Autumn but we have had a very imaginative week with lots of role play, games and stories.
The activities we have participated in have included:

• investigating our nature table (thank you for contributions) and talking about not only the items but the different textures and shapes of them
• counting wooden ladybirds and matching them to numbers and looking at shape pebbles on our maths table
• learning about animals while playing with our animal models on our small world table and making up stories about them
• adding to our Autumn display board and talking about autumn and winter clothing
• phonics 1 games and activities
• rhyming games
• measuring dinosaur bones
• naming and recognising colours, sorting and matching them and focusing on our colour of the week - purple
• yoga, based on an autumn story
• painting autumn leaves and decorating autumn leaf templates
• playing musical instruments
• verbal storytelling - this is where we sit as a group and an adult begins telling a story and pauses at intervals for the children to fill in the gaps. As the children build up confidence the prompts by the adult will be less often and this helps to encourage the children in, not only developing their imagination, but building an understanding of how stories are structured, characters that can be in stories and the concept of setting a scene. This week the children began by listening to an adult telling a tale before they then tried contributing to a new one (the stories are usually short but suitably dramatic when the children are involved!). The children enjoyed this activity so much that some children acted out different characters in stories to the group and they also drew pictures ready to make their own group story book. We will be practicing verbal storytelling often in the future.
• after reading the story 'the smartest giant in town' quite a few children chose to make a crown in the art area
• maths activities included counting and matching compare bears, ordering objects according to size, recognising and naming numerals and introducing numicon to the children to help them count and understand the quantity of a number

As usual the weekly blog represents a snapshot of what most of the children participate in during the week. Please speak to your child's key person if you would like to have further information about your child's interests and progress. You are welcome to ask your key person for feedback at any time and book a time to have a meeting for feedback on how your child is progressing. We are looking forward to seeing you all next week. Hoping you all have a lovely weekend.
Best wishes, Julia, Grace, Sharon, Lisa, Hannah, Jackie and Amy