2 Year Olds
Welcome to our 2 Year Olds Explorers Room!
Miss Ainsley and Mrs Baines are your Early Years Practitioners.
Please find attached below information on what the children will be learning this term.
We have lots of exciting themes, books and rhymes to explore and we promise to post/share lots of photographs of our amazing learning and development!
Autumn 2/Week 13: 9th - 13th December 2024
Autumn 2/Week 12: 2nd - 6th December 2024
This week’s focus nursery rhyme was ‘Jingle Bells’ and focus book was ‘The Gingerbread Man’ as well as the theme of ‘Winter/Christmas’. The children creatively worked together to decorate several different sized cardboard boxes ranging from small to large to make a Christmas tree to go in the Home Corner, they painted them green and once dry, they then decorated them using various collage materials and added tinsel and a star on the top!
The children started their Christmas crafts, making both a card and a tree decoration to soon take home to share with their families. During these activities the children enjoyed engaging in some painting, printing and stcikinh using paints, glitter, glue and star stickers!
The children enjoyed listening to the story of ‘The Gingerbread Man’, this book was then incorporated into several related activities - including; Gingerbread play dough, cookery - making real gingerbread men activities using the cutters for both activities. As well as having fun running fast and chasing each other outdoors as the children chanted the repetitive phrase from the story; “Run, run as fast as you…you can’t catch me…I’m the Gingerbread Man!” During this time the children developed their gross-motor skills, spatial awareness as they changed direction or avoid obstacles in their path and social skills, as they played together and took turns!
Additionally, the children actively participated in a selection of Winter/Christmas activities within the tuff-spot tray, including, ‘Melted Snowman - Gloop’ and fluffy ‘Snow Foam’, where they used sensory exploration to experiment with the different textures of these malleable/tactile materials!
Autumn 2/Week 11: 25 - 29th November 2024
This week’s focus nursery rhyme was ‘The Wheels on the Bus’, in which the children engaged in a range of related activities. The children actively participated in some cookery - making pizza pin wheels, they developed their listening and attention skills whilst following simple instructions in order by spreading Tomato Purée onto strips of Shortcrust Pastry before sprinkling Grated Cheese before using hand-eye coordination to roll it up. They later enjoyed their yummy bakes at snack time!
The children enjoyed using cardboard tubes and dipping them into black paint to print ‘wheels’ onto their bus outline template, then using glue they added pre-cut squares for the ‘windows’. The children had great fun, transporting printing on a larger scale on paper rolled across the floor, the children rolled the different range of vehicles in the paint trays before then pushing them back and forth, up, down and across the paper creating different patterns from the various treads of the wheels.
The children engaged in some imaginative play by lining up the chairs to represent a bus and they took turns to be the Bus Driver, Passengers and the Conductor/Inspector with support and encouragement from staff. During this time the children also shared with staff and their peers about bus journeys they had been on themselves and where they went to and this included; to Nursery, the shops, the beach, the park, on holiday, to the station and to the Houghton Feast!
Additionally, the children did some pouring, filling and emptying whilst playing in the sensory bin within the tuff-spot tray filled with various dry foods and a variety of different sized and shaped containers as well as utensils. This activity strengthens the children’s hand muscles and improves their fine-motor skills.
Autumn 2/Week 10: 18 - 22nd November 2024
This week’s focus nursery rhyme was ‘Wind the Bobbin Up’ and our focus theme was Heuristic play. The children really enjoyed this rhyme and were very familiar with it and anticipated phrases and the actions! Staff regularly stimulate the children’s early interest in making marks, by offering a wide range of different materials and encouraging them to make marks in different ways and this week this was done through Bobbin printing. During this activity the children also explored colour and colour mixing! The children in the shaving foam made marks using their fingers, staff encouraged them to make patterns such as, spirals and zigzags as they pretended to wind the bobbin!
The children also engaged in an age-appropriate threading activities, developing their hand-eye coordination by threading Cheerios onto pieces of dried spaghetti using play dough to hold the dry spaghetti strands into place upright or onto pipe cleaners, as well the inserting pipe cleaners into colanders. The children had great fun and also maintained focus for a period of time!
Additionally, the children explored the Heuristic Area, where they interacted with everyday, open-ended objects, rather than toys, such as; wooden rings, corks, acorns, baking trays, mug tree. This promoted the children’s natural sense of curiosity to handle things, to gather, fill, dump, stack, knock down, select and manipulate in other ways and as they made any enjoyable discoveries they often repeated the action several times to test the result, whilst strengthening both their cognitive development and fine-motor skills!
Autumn 2/Week 9: 11 - 15th November 2024
This week’s focus nursery rhyme was ‘5 Currant Buns’ and our focus theme was ‘Music & Movement’. Staff brought this song to life initially by incorporating some cut-out props, so the children could act out the song words. The children then had fun using their imaginations and pretending to make Currant Buns with play dough, using silicone cake cases, adding real raisins and red pom-poms to represent cherries! The children later in the week made their own Currant Buns, working in small groups, they individually had a plate containing some scone mix, they then added some currants and glacé cherries. Both activities let the children get really hands on, whilst also developing their communication and language, labelling objects and actions, as well as following simple instructions. Other learning opportunities were promoting their social skills, recognition of senses and fine-motor developing! The children later enjoyed eating their yummy currant buns once they were cooked and cooled down later for snack, having a little picnic in the garden during outdoor play!
The children actively participated in some music and movement and they engaged well, staff prepared a bucket filled with items such as various nursery rhyme finger puppets and different animals to use to stimulate a song. The children maintained focus as they all individually choose an item from the bucket and they had to guess the related rhyme and sing it altogether!
Additionally, the children enjoyed exploring the texture of sand foam, mixing together play sand and shaving foam to make a ‘cement’ to use to join and balance the different size and shape wooden blocks together making towers and creations both vertically and horizontally in the tuff-spot tray.
We also had many events this week, including on Tuesday we wear odd socks to for the launch of Anti-Bullying Week and the children also had fun pairing up socks and pegging them together, sometimes matching and sometimes odd! Then on Friday we engaged in some spotty /Pudsey-related activities, including; icing and decorating biscuits with Smarties and the pouring water from jugs down the drain pipe to flush different colour balls down into the water tray at the bottom and the children took turns well!
