Elmer the elephant is our favourite patchwork elephant and we have been talking about all the differences between him and his elephant friends. As it is Mental Health Week at school, we have been talking with the children about how we are all different and we have been using our emotions stones to share with each other how we are feeling. Discussing how we are feeling allows each child to build up their resilience and confidence to talk about how they are feeling and that it is OK to feel sad, cross or worried. Using these stones allows the children to look at each expression and to think about what they mean and to share their ideas or experiences with each other. There were lots of conversations about scary monsters and feeling sad if we had an ouchie, but that rainbows make us really happy!

The children have loved combining orange and pink food colouring into the cornflour this week to make colourful gloop. The enjoyment, fun and engagement they have had exploring the colours and texture of the gloop has been amazing to observe. Their involvement using the spoons to scoop and scrape the gloopy mixture into pots has been delightful to watch, with their patience and concentration shining through! 

For their Special Books this week, the children created colourful patterns by rolling marbles in paint! The children loved covering the marbles in paint and adding them to the paper in the tray. There was a lot of concentration and coordination to tip the tray from side to side, so the marbles rolled from end to end and side to side to make lines and splodges of different colours. There was more paint involved when the children used the brushes and different colours to make colourful marks onto the foil. New colours were discovered by mixing the paint by using large brush strokes and so many different marks were made. Everyone was very creative to make circles and squiggles and blobs and lines with the brushes. 

There was more concentration and excellent focus when the children threaded the laces through the holes to make their very own Elmer elephant! They all looked hard at the elephants to find their name and then pushed and pulled the laces through the holes around the edge of the Elmers - we are sure you agree they make a wonderful display!

There was a lot of blowing to create huge bubble mountains when the children mixed paint, water and Fairy liquid and blew into the straws - incredible huge bubbles and lots of giggling too. We only had one or two sucks instead of blowing which resulted in red and purple mouths! It was fabulous to see the children so engaged in this activity, seeing who could create the biggest bubbles! Another fun activity was carefully placing the colourful Skittles sweets around the edge of the plate and watching the colours make a rainbow pattern by adding water and this is a great science activity to observe changes in materials. Of course, everyone enjoyed a little taste of the leftover Skittles too! 

The children continued to amaze us by finding the initial letter of their name and listening to the sound which each one makes, before carefully adding coloured and patterned squares  to create beautiful mosaic patterns just like Elmer and his friends in our story.

Child-initiated play this week has been a wonderful hairdressing salon where the children could have their hair styled and their faces painted! There was also some amazing building going on with the bricks and blocks to create models and tall towers. The children took their learning forward by adding cars, trains and people to create a small-world town.

We had lots of fun visiting the pirate ship and paraded around the court with our amazing Chinese Dragon - photos on next week's bulletin so as not to spoil the surprise for our Coffee Morning! In the garden, the leaves have been swept up and there have been some amazing footie skills as well as making dumbbells with the magnets, picnics and looking after the baby dolls.

Our Special Leaf for our Learning and Growing Tree this week was for developing confidence to climb on the large gym equipment. We are always so delighted to see the children’s confidence grow by taking on challenges to develop their physical strength and agility.

Next week, we are looking forward to seeing you all at our Pre-Prep Coffee Morning on Friday and we can’t believe that spring's first half-term is nearly over!