This week we have focused on understanding the world, our weekly theme has been based on learning all about North America and South America, different cultures, homes and languages. Activities we have enjoyed include, alongside other child initiated activities:

On Monday we found the Americas on our world map. We role played flying there and what we would see. The children continued to role play driving across America in the big wooden car. We focused then on the USA, looked at interesting landmarks and learnt about animals that live in America.
We decorated an American flag and made dreamcatchers.

On Tuesday we explored north America a little further. We looked at American sports, practiced cheerleading and made pom poms. We practiced cutting and sticking skills by cutting out pictures of food and making our own American burger. We played listening games and memory games and relaxed practising controlled breathing.

On Wednesday we learnt about South America, we looked at the country Mexico and made paper plate sombrero hats. We made fans for the hot weather and made a pinata that we broke in the afternoon full of streamers. We listened to Mexican music, ate tacos for snack and made a fun wanted poster.

On Thursday we looked at all of the Americas. We made space rockets, ate popcorn for snack. We decorated lots of stars and enjoyed lots of role play, action games and songs.

On Friday we reviewed our week and looked at giant maps of the Americas, we looked at objects that came from there. We learnt about the rainforests in South America and the animals that live there and made a paper plate sloth. We looked at cultures in south America and made Peruvian hats and pan pipes.

During we week we also enjoyed lots of other activities including:

• lots of mark making in various forms: water painting, wipe board marking, pencils, pens, tracing patterns
• guessing the objects games
• having fun in our role play car building with duplo
• creating stories with farm animals and cars
• lots of matching games
• learning about different 2d shapes and their properties
• lotto games and puzzles
• painting and creating some lovely artwork
• name writing practice and practice finding and recognising own nam
• lots of listening games, songs and rhymes
• developing our superhero skill of opening the items in our lunchboxes
• making models with play dough
• counting games, songs and rhymes
• playing games with balls outsid
• playing on bikes and scooters outside
• building models with stickle brick
• lots of fine motor activities to help develop hand strength
• listening to lots of stories

Please see the links below for home learning ideas related to our topic.
For further home learning ideas you can look back through the previous weeks to find more ideas of things you can do at home.

Best wishes, Julia, Claire, Hannah, Lisa and Adam

Home Learning Activities
Being Imaginative and Expressive
Creating with Materials