In the Toddler Room at Daisykins Nursery in Rugby the children have been taking part in a wide variety of activities based around particular books. Some of the themed weeks have included Three Little Pigs, The Cave Baby and The Snail and the Whale.
During the week of the Three Little Pigs, the children took part in many learning opportunities under the seven areas of learning and development. One of the cooking activities was making little pig biscuits where they helped to make some pink icing to cover a plain biscuit, then used marshmallows as a pig nose, chocolate chips for eyes and strawberries for ears. The children were developing their hand-eye co-ordination and enhancing their knowledge of combining ingredients to make something different. The children were learning about textures and consistency, and weight and measure, as well as colours and some names of foods. The discussions between the practitioners at Daisykins Nursery in Rugby and children were used to model language and consolidate new ideas and processes.
During the activity one of the children was identifying the colours of the icing and some of the ingredients, he said, “Pink, red, strawberry”. While doing this he was putting the icing on the biscuit using a small spoon, then spreading it over the biscuit using the same spoon. Some of the areas of the EYFS that this relates to are; Communication and Language - Speaking, Physical Development - Moving and Handling, Mathematics - Shape, Space and Measure.As part of the theme the children’s small world activity was exploring a tray of straw with farmyard animals in. The children were encouraged to re-enact the story of the Three Little Pigs which they seemed to really enjoy. A practitioner asked the children if they could recall the basic plot of the story i.e the beginning, middle and end. Some of the children were able to successfully retell the main parts of the story, one child said, “The pigs had to make a house and the wolf blowed it down”.Another successful activity was a child-led one where they were making their own houses out of bricks using duplo. Most of the children voluntarily took part in this activity and made some complex buildings using their own creativity and imagination.The children and practitioners have all enjoyed the themed weeks and will be continuing the next one with Tyrannosaurus Drip.
