Kits News - 10th February 2023

The Kits had a terrific week this week with they loved our topic book Ten Tiny Trains. The trains are one of the children’s favourite toys and we have been spending the week engaging in lots of train-based activities! We have explored driving the trains along the track in small world play, made marks with their wheels in the playdough and painted pictures with them, leaving tracks behind!

Our role play area this week has been set up as a ‘Train Station’ and the children have been busy getting dressed up and going on wonderful journeys. They have been up to London for food and to the seaside for a swim. All these activities help the children’s communication and language skills as they engage in conversation with each other and their teachers and also supports the development of their social skills as they make friends and develop their imaginative play with each other.

In Art we embraced the children’s love of DT in an activity where we painted boxes to make our own ‘345 Express’. The children painted cardboard boxes to be carriages and then added bottle tops and circles of paper as wheels. They also added photos of themselves and their friends to the windows, working collaboratively to make the train. 

This week the Kits have also been spending time refining their fine motor skills through practising pouring and scooping water using scoops and learning how to transfer it using pipettes. These activities help develop the children’s pincer grip which is needed to support their increasing pen control. 

On Thursday during our Science Focus Time we expanded this by using pipettes and scoops to transfer vinegar, before pouring it on top of bicarbonate of soda. The children watched in amazement as they observed the reaction between the two substances and we developed their vocabulary as we talked about what we could see, describing it as ‘bubbly’ and ‘like a river’.