What we've been up to

Every morning we get creative with play dough. It's our favourite warm up activity, the kids gets so excited when they see the play dough pots out and dive right into making cakes, bird's nests, moustaches, snails and anything else they fancy. It's a great way to practice those developing fine motor skills and for the kids to get used to the group dynamic again and melt away any early morning shyness.

Beautiful 'cakes' ready to go in the play oven

Around 10am we usually do some 'real' cooking. The promise of making dough, stirring cake mixture or breaking eggs pulls them away from the play dough table as they become fascinated with measuring out our ingredients of the day. The children always make something everyday which is part of their school menu. 

Enjoying their pizza - they measured out the flour, water, salt and olive oil for the dough. They watched the dough rise and then rolled it out themselves and then spread on the homemade tomato sauce and cheese and then they watched the pizzas go in the oven.

Raspberry and pomegranate fool - the kids mixed the yoghurt and cream together with a beater and then layered the  cream, raspberry mixture and pomegranate seeds to create these beautiful deserts they had for their afternoon snack. Although my daughter preferred to mix hers altogether and was excited to see the vibrant pink colour that was the result.

After lunch we have story time followed by quiet time. The children can have a nap on one of the mattresses or play, read or colour quietly. I find this time really restorative for all of us as they become focused on having some individual time (as opposed to the high octane fun of playing in the playground or singing and dancing as a group) and getting some rest. After quiet time everyone is ready to focus on doing something creative and colourful.

Following on with our caterpillar to butterfly theme we made butterflies decorated with crepe paper that could be carried around on sticks. Earlier in the week we made cocoons from papier-mâché, decorated with sequins of course!

It was Eid in Morocco last week so the kids made cards celebrating this big national holiday to give to their families. Inside the Arabic teacher had written 'Eid Mubarak'.