Well this school year has finished making way for the heat of the Summer and all the fun and growing up that promises. It also means I have time to update the blog 😊 so here is the first of two instalments documenting all our activities for the year. Starting with our Winter Term (January - March) here are photos of our daily activities integrated with our learning topics for the term. Let's start with photos of some of our cooking creations:
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Making vegetable stuffed borek - this was a fun recipe as we got to scale up the cooking! After mixing the vegetables, herbs, cheese and spices we made a long 'snake', brushed melted butter all over and then the challenging but fun bit began as we all got hands on and rolled it up into a sausage shape and then into a coiled snake shape so we could fit in in the tin and into the oven.
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| Star Fish Cakes |
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| Another very hands on cooking activity - making starfish shapes, brushing with egg wash and then bread crumbing |
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| When making beetroot falafel this is bound to happen.... |
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| Beetroot falafel ready for cooking! |
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| Homemade strawberry ice-cream (made by the children) with fruit salad - an afternoon treat for the kids and teachers! |
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| Peanut & raisin granola bars made by the kids for their afternoon snack with fresh apple & strawberry juice |
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Ingredients ready to make a Moroccan Chicken Pastilla
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Preparing the pastry for the pastilla
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| Finished chicken pastilla decorated with icing sugar and cinnamon - a firm favourite! |
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Cooking is such a fantastic way to introduce children to mathematical concepts such as counting, weighing and addition. They also get a very practical introduction to chemistry as they learn about how yeast and other raising agents work. We talk about why we add eggs, flour or butter to a dish what role they play in the food and how different condiments and spices will affect the flavour. Developing their fine motor skills while breaking eggs, mixing and moulding food into patties etc is great fun too, and also builds confidence in their own abilities. Cooking is just one of our daily activities that supports this type of hands on experiential learning. We also create a Reggio inspired discovery table each morning displaying a range of materials where the children can freely interact and experiment with what's on offer - with a teacher carefully observing the children's efforts, deciphering their motivations and choices and then perhaps offering some ideas or questions to enhance the children's learning experiences.
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| Straws, paper clips, bottle caps and decorative badges |
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| The children experiment with their fine motor and engineering skills - threading badges and paper clips onto straws to create necklaces, bridges or just to see how much they can fit on to the straw. |
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| One of the children took the materials from the table and used them to decorate her drawing on the whiteboard incorporating them into her design using them to represent trees, flowers and fish |
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| Nature materials such as shells, rocks and flowers from the garden ready to make mandalas and other decorative designs |
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| One of the younger children gets creative with shells |
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| One of the older children creates a beautiful mandala - the children work with the circle shape demonstrating their understanding of symmetry and patterns |
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| Building blocks, plasticine, metal hoops and paper clips - one of the children built a structure and used the plasticine connected to a metal hoop and a paper clip chain to create a lifting door |
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| He lifted the door multiple times to check it worked and once he was satisfied that his creation worked in the way it was intended, he detached it and transformed it into something else: |
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| This time he create a snake using the paper clip chain as the body and the plasticine as the head. He positioned it around the school garden and asked that I take photos of the snake hanging from plants and trees |
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| Learning encounters with sound - we tied different types of pots and pans around the tree house and gave the children wooden spoons. They experimented with hitting the hanging pots and pans noting the different sounds and then practised different rhythms |
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| After experimenting with play dough and making cakes and cutting with moulds - one of the younger children wanted to find out if she could cut the play dough with scissors. She enjoyed seeing the marks she was making in the play dough and she took great pride in her ability to control the scissors. |
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| She then added flowers to see if she could cut them into the play dough. She spent a long time concentrating on what she wanted to achieve and enjoyed the mix of colours and textures in her bowl. |
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| Sticky tack, olive leaves, sticks, beads and pipe cleaners were arranged on the discovery table. One of the younger children began twisting a pipe cleaner on a stick, then she covered a leaf in sticky tack - seemingly just experimenting with the different objects in a very spontaneous way. Then she announced she was building a boat and soon the boat began to take shape as she carefully attached all her pieces together. |
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| The children decided to replicate the homes of the three little pigs - straws, sticks and bricks with the materials they found around the playground. |
Art projects are a big part of our day - the children love experimenting with colour, designs and different materials. We try to combine both process and product focused art projects - some projects are purely process experiences, others have a strong focus on the product (when we are using the art experience to enhance understanding of one of our school topics) but we always include process elements so the children can still benefit from self-expression, practice their fine motor skills and develop a deeper understanding of the different art materials and mediums.
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| For our topic on endangered animals the children decorated t-shirts using fabric pens and stencils of endangered animals |
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| Finished t-shirt front |
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| Finished t-shirt back |
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| The whole gang modelled their newly decorated t-shirts - we discussed at length each animal they chose and why they were endangered. The children were keen to know about any conservation efforts underway to protect the animals. |
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| Found nature materials woven into a bamboo reed loom - scouting the garden, raiding the feather box and then practicing weaving all required lots of focus! |
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| Celebrating Chinese New Year - we try to mark all the major world festivals and celebrations so the children appreciate the diversity of the world around them. While the children were given the outline of the rooster and the different cut out parts of the body they were free to paint with their fingers and glue on feathers where they chose. This is still very much a product-focused art project but the children loved the aesthetics involved in the project, matching the body parts and they continued to refer to it afterwards to enhance their understanding of the different animals used in the Chinese Calendar. |
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| Painting stones for the first part of our total process art experience |
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| Throwing painted stones at paper |
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| The children combined throwing stones with paint brush strokes to create the effects they wanted |
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| Continuing on with our endangered animal topic we made whales from yoghurt pots and toilet rolls |
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| Finished whales complete with pipe cleaner water spout |
The kids also really enjoy group process art projects here are some of our really fun ones:
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| The kids dipped the balls in paint and rolled them down the slide to create beautiful patterns. They were great at taking turns and changing over colours to create multicoloured streaks of paint |
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| Finished roll ball painting - at the end the kids cut the piece of the art work they wanted to take home |
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| Following the endangered animal theme the children made a large elephant collage using mixed materials including lentils, rice, pasta, beads and paper |
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| Pine cone printing |
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| A large paper surface was provided so the children could make multiple pine cone prints- they really enjoyed mixing the different paint colours with the pine cones to create multi-colour effects |
We combine a lot of our phonics and literacy work with art projects, typically these are product focused but the kids really love displaying these at home:
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| Learning about mammals: Dub - bear |
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| C for cat collage |
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| Then back to process art with cardboard, glue and beads - the children were free to create exactly as they wanted |
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| The children mixed plaster of paris and poured it into the animal play dough moulds which were placed in the sandpit - they then chose which endangered animal they wanted to decorate |
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| A truly hands on process art experience - one of the younger children asked to mix up the paints we had finished using. She went on to explore the feel of the paint carefully with her hands, watching how the colours changed. I offered her some paper and she soon got busy observing how the paint moved when she poured it and how it felt when she smoothed it across the paper with her hand. |
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| Freedom to create and experiment |
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| We always have a book of colouring pages available for the children whenever they get the urge - this time we focused on endangered animals |
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| We also have regular trips to see the animals on our farm - the children love feeding herbs to the cows and even got a chance to milk the cow this Spring since her calf was born in January |
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| Climbing trees is a popular activity at school |
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| Harvesting and weeding in the school gardens - nasturtiums, beetroot, lettuce and basil |
I hope you have enjoyed all our photos for the Winter Term. The next instalment documenting the Spring Term will be posted soon.
