Wow, how busy year R have been this week!
The children have settled into school wonderfully and have just started exploring the whole of the reception base. We have introduced this week our indoor and outdoor learning spaces. In each of these, we challenge the children to many different activities. For the children to develop their range of movement we always select activities that will challenge their fine and gross motor skills.
Gross motor skills are movements that develop movement from their core. We get the children thinking about big movements that have to come from the centre of their bodies and give them the opportunity to use all of their muscles. Fine motor skills are movements that are very small and use a lot of concentration. We get the children doing small pinching movements, threading and tweezer skills that get the children’s fingers working!
In indoor learning this week we have asked the children to do threading with pipe cleaners, as well as use tweezers to pick up very small beans and pom poms, before sorting them into pots. We also got the children doing some painting, showing us their grip with a paintbrush, they also enjoyed mark making on the large paper! The children were also interested in the technology the learning environment has to offer. They enjoyed playing a range of maths games on the iPads and practicing their track pad skills on the computer.
In outdoor learning, we gave the children many challenges. We got out our large obstacle course which the children have to put together to make a course for their friends to follow. It was a little tricky but with some super teamwork, we could balance along the narrow track! We put out some beanbags that the children loved throwing into our numbered buckets; we heard lots of great counting and saw some good co-ordination too. The children enjoyed exploring our water wall, using many different containers to fill up the pipes. We heard some fantastic language involving capacity when emptying and filling containers. We even saw some great writing happening outside where children used the sound sheets to help them write in the sand. Great job!
