This week, we concluded our It’s Not a Stick focus with a creative and highly engaging playdough activity. The children worked collaboratively to follow a simple recipe, carefully measuring, pouring, and mixing ingredients to make black playdough. They were fascinated by how the texture changed as the mixture came together and demonstrated excellent concentration and teamwork throughout the process. Once the dough was ready, the children used their fine motor skills to roll, pinch, and shape it, adding matchsticks and googly eyes to bring their creations to life. Inspired by the story, many chose to make spiders, talking about their legs and features, which supported both imaginative play and language development. In phonological awareness, we focused on the sound ‘d’. The children enjoyed playing a “pass the bag” game, taking turns to feel and name objects while listening carefully to their initial sounds. They were able to identify words beginning with d and had great fun spotting the “odd one out” when an object didn’t match the target sound. This activity supported careful listening, turn-taking, and early sound discrimination. Using the story Leaf Man as our inspiration, the children created individual leaf collages. These were later brought together to make a beautiful Leaf Man display in our classroom, celebrating their creativity and collaborative work. During our maths session, the children explored comparing quantities through one-to-one correspondence. They matched objects carefully and compared groups to decide whether they were the same or different, recognising when one set had more or fewer items. This learning links closely to early mathematical development, as children move from freely exploring objects to recognising equality and difference, and begin to use simple comparative language such as “more,” “less,” and “the same.” In the maths area, children also used matchsticks to create and copy patterns from visual cards, strengthening their understanding of shape, pattern, and sequencing. Our investigation station sparked curiosity and rich discussion as the children explored leaves collected during last weeks Friday outdoor session. Using an identification booklet, magnifying glasses, and Look What I Found in the Woods book, they examined textures, shapes, and colours, and began to learn about different trees and woodland environments. On Outdoor Friday, we made the most of the summer weather by playing parachute games on the top field.
Rights Respecting Article 2: Every child has rights. Nobody should be treated unfairly because of who they are or what they look like.
Rights Respecting Article 3: Adults must always do what is best for you
Rights Respecting Article 28: You have the right to go to school and learn in a safe and caring environment.
