Caterpillars
Over the course of May, the Caterpillar room have embarked on a learning journey all about plants and the way in which seedlings grow. They took on the responsibility
of planting their own seedlings and have been helping the seedlings to grow by ensuring they are watered and in the sunlight. Each of the children were given the opportunity to plant their seed and
have been taking turns to explore how much water and sun the seedlings need to grow. As well as planting their own seeds the children have been investigating and exploring plants, leaves and coloured
petals within the gardens, community and through various tuff tray experiences This allows for not only present experiences of growing flowers, but it also allows for the children to explore fully
grown plants and flowers to further begin understanding the plant cycle.
Within the Caterpillar room’s learning in May there was a heavy focus around the children’s fine motor skills as the children became interested within threading. The staff made various threading
cards linking to the children’s interest and learning for the week which allowed the children to further their hand eye coordination, fine motor development and problem-solving skills. The children
showed great progression within their understanding of how to thread both beads on to string and through the use of threading lace cards.
The sun began to shine throughout the month of May which allowed for the Caterpillar room to get to work adding new improvements to their garden and veranda space to create rich learning environments
for the children to play within. They began by taking their old water wall attached the fence down and created a new water wall features upon a pallet which allows for better reach and accessibly
throughout. Using a further two pallets the staff chalk board painted one in order to make a mark making area and the second they added various instruments and loose parts to create a music station
for the children to begin exploring.
The children have been eager to spend their time outdoors in order to explore the new features and play within their new environment. We have seen various schematic play such as transporting,
trajectory and rotational play behaviours which support further learning of literacy, mathematics and furthers the children’s curiosity.
Indoors the children have been exploring making and creating playdough. The children have been listening well to the instructions given and are now being able to engage in the making of dough. Once
the dough has been created and cooled the children have been using loose parts to explore creation and printing of pattern and shapes within their dough. Adding in various loose parts has further
supported the children’s progressing fine motor skills as the place the items in and pick them back out supporting the use of their fore finger and thumb. As well as using loose parts they have been
looking at using rollers to flatten the dough and cutters to begin splitting the dough. This has encouraged staff’s language of descriptive words and basic numeracy and fractions to support the
children’s understand of vocabulary further as they explore the dough.
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