This week in Dormice, our little learners have been bursting with creativity and curiosity!
Outdoors, the children eagerly took to the playground with colourful chalks in hand. They filled the pavement with imaginative drawings, including a spectacular rocket that sparked conversations about space and travel. Their creativity didn’t stop there - they also experimented with rolling tyres along a crate track, ingeniously constructed by one of the children. This hands-on play encouraged teamwork, problem-solving and lots of laughter.
Indoors, our Dormice explored the fascinating world of magnets using magnetic blocks. The children collaborated to build all sorts of vehicles, with a special focus on trains. Their excitement was contagious as they tested how the pieces connected and moved.
Our transport theme continued into snack time, where the children crafted edible creations! They made cracker bread traffic light biscuits, carefully layering colourful spreads to represent red, amber and green. They also assembled Brioche racing cars, which were as fun to make as they were to eat!
We proudly completed a vibrant transport display, showcasing the children’s artwork and creativity. Each child also made a 'name train,' helping them recognise letters and build confidence in writing their names.
To commemorate VE Day, the children created a beautiful field of fingerprint poppies. This thoughtful activity sparked gentle conversations about remembrance and peace, helping the children connect with history in a meaningful and age-appropriate way.
The Badger and Hedgehog room has also been proudly decked out in red, white and blue. We watched clips from the military parade as all the brave servicemen and women marched down the Mall to Buckingham Palace to see King Charles and Queen Camilla and the rest of the Royal family. We listened to the military band play our National Anthem, which is quite different to most of the music that we hear and we practised standing up when the drum roll began, as a sign of respect.
We made bunting and streamers to get into the festive spirit, as well as our own cascade of remembrance poppies, to match those being displayed at the Tower of London.
The children learned a short song to recall the three colours of our beautiful Union Jack flag and then used the song as an aide-memoire to help them create repeated patterns during maths activities. We spotted triangles and rectangles in the flag and some children even attempted to paint the Union Jack, which impressed us all!
We looked carefully at some of the different helmets and hats of the military regiments, chose our favourites and recorded which we would like to wear, on a big maths bar chart.
It’s exciting for the children to feel part of something ‘big’ which is being widely covered on the news this week.