What's Happening in the Butterfly room

Butterfly Room

Throughout the month of October, the butterfly room had great fun celebrating and learning about all things Halloween related. We began by learning about the history of Halloween and why it has become a festival known in almost all cultures and counties across the world and why we celebrate it in the traditional ways in which we do. This was a great way to allow the children to learn some history and to begin to have an understanding that we celebrate Halloween because of events which took place many years ago. Looking into the background of Halloween and the traditions of centuries ago allowed the children to develop their technology skills as we used the computer, books and asking those we know and love about what Halloween was like for them as a child and what’s changed.

Halloween was a great way for us the encourage the children to develop their imaginative skills, expressive skills, social skills, and movement skills as we provided and took part in many different activities around the interest and learning of Halloween. This included various arts and crafts, messy plays, role play games and experiences and indoor/outdoor movement experiences.

On Friday the 29^th of October the children who attended nursery on Fridays got to take part in a Halloween party where they all made fantastic efforts to dress up, play various party games such as pin the hat on the cat, music bumps/ statues / chairs, Halloween bingo, decorated skeleton biscuits and enjoyed a party snack alongside there peers.

Although each of the games allowed the children to develop different aspects of their learning the Halloween fun filled day provided a great social experience for the children as they played and had fun alongside their peers.

Throughout the past few weeks, we have also been working on providing learning through each child’s own individual learning style. This has included ensuring the children can access all types of resources within each of the play areas within the room. For example, some of the children may not show an interest within the mark making area but will spent all of their free time playing within the construction area. We have now incorporated mark making resources into the construction areas so that those children can add flags or signposts to their structures allowing them to continue developing mark making, literacy and numeracy within play which allows them to feel they are not ‘having to write or draw’, they are simply learning as they play. As well as mark making, we have been ensuring each of the play areas are fully equip with relative story books, signs, dressing up and numeracy / literacy resources.

We have been adding hiding places into both the top and the bottom garden this month as well as making sure the resources within the gardens are appropriate for the colder days and winter / waterproof. The children helped to add tarpaulin covers into areas within the gardens to allow them to have a place ‘Den’ in which they can take their activities into or feel they can hide in. In the bottom garden we also created a tool bench where the children can learn how to hammer nails and screw screws into wooden blocks. Using a loose parts tool bench allows the children to risk assess thew safety of the tools and materials in which they are using and how they should use them safely and appropriately. The children have had great fun using the tools and dressing up in the garden in all of the correct safety gear such as safety goggle, high vis vests, hard hats, and safety gloves. Using the tools allows the children to continue developing their hand eye coordination, fine and gross motor skills, hand grasps / muscle movements and numeracy. measure skills as well as risk assessing and keeping themselves and their peer safe.