Nursery and Reception have had a lot of fun this week learning about the world around them. Through fun, engaging activities they were able to consolidate many necessary skills, as they navigate on their journey towards becoming successful and independent learners.
Our focus in Literacy this week has been ‘Talk for Writing’. We continued focusing on the story of ‘The Gruffalo’ by Julia Donaldson. As a part of our talk for writing the children learned about story mapping.
Story mapping improves comprehension and in Nursery and Reception, providing a valuable crutch in assisting the children organise their thoughts through pictures.
It allows a child to visualize the story characters, events and settings. It is a way to increase a child’s ability to comprehend and to organise their thoughts and sequencing of main events. Furthermore, it develops a child’s knowledge of what a story is and the key elements that make up a story, which assist in storytelling, retelling and writing. It is also a medium from which children become aware that story characters and events are interrelated.
Engendering in our children an understanding and having a healthy respect world is very important. With this in mind we further explored our topic ‘Arctic Animals’. We looked at similarities and differences in climate. The children wanted to know more about the penguin. We looked at how the penguin has adapted to its particular habitat, food and rearing it’s young.
In expressive arts and design the children enjoyed creating their own penguins while using their observation, cutting and painting skills.
Next week we will continue to explore this wonderful world we live in!
