Penguins Penguins everywhere!

Penguins have taken over the Nursery! This week the children have loved learning all about penguins and other Arctic animals. We have set up a small world play area with an Arctic theme this includes wooden animals, Inuits, glittery stones, glass ice blocks, winter themed books and key words.

 The children made some sweet paper plate penguins- we have added some to our display board.

The children made some great penguin masks too. 

 

The penguins have even taken over our reading room!

Here we are making penguin fact books.

 We have begun our Christmas preparations; we have set up our Advent prayer table, made a Christmas tree and made a Christmassy woodland animal small world play area. 

If you would like to learn more about penguins visit National Geographic Kids

Next week the children will be learning about The Christmas Story and doing some Christmas themed crafts.  

Hibernating Hedgehogs!

This week the children learned all about hedgehogs and hibernation. We started the week by making some cute hedgehog pictures using leaves to make their prickles.

 First we coloured in the hedgehog template.

  Then we cut out the template (being very careful with the scissors).

Then we used glue to stick on autumn leaves to make our prickly hedgehogs.

Don't they look great?

The children have really enjoyed hearing how hedgehogs hibernate during the winter months; they also learned about some other animals that hibernate. Did you know that hedgehogs, frogs, bears, dormice, tortoises and even wasps all hibernate.

 We made a hibernation box with photos of animals that hibernate and their homes.

Everyone really enjoyed matching the animals to their hibernating homes.

The next day we made hibernation nests for our woodland creature toys. The children worked in pairs to make the nests using recycled boxes, straw and pine cones. 

We added the nests to our autumn investigation area.

We also transformed role play area into a hibernation den.

To continue the autumn them the children made some lovely leaf picture frames that we have displayed in the conservatory. We made them using sticky backed plastic, card and leaves.

To end our week we did some cooking. This week we made hibernating hedgehog cakes (chocolate cornflake cakes!). We were delicious. 

Some more of the week's activities included:

 Painting.

 Mathematics- Sorting animals by colour.

 Physical development- Playing with syringes and pouring with jugs in the water tray.

Physical development- pushing straws through colander holes.

We've started preparing for the winter part of our topic and Christmas.

Next week the children will be learning about winter and penguins!