Kits News - 22nd September 2023

The Kits have had a great week and we have been busy spending time learning about feelings and emotions. Being able to recognise and label simple emotions such as happy, sad, cross and worried helps children to understand and self-regulate their own emotions. Once they can recognise their own emotions they can then convey this to others, helping them to develop friendships and supporting their ability to share toys and resolve conflict.

Our Topic Book was Mr Panda’s Feelings and we have enjoyed exploring a number of different emotion-based activities. In Art we painted our own black and white photographs as we discussed our facial expressions and how we were feeling and also made paper plate faces, which were either happy scared, cross or scared! 

We developed our hand strength as we made happy and sad features with the playdough and engaged in small world play with the wooden people who have different expressions on them. We talked about what makes us happy and sad and the children were all unanimous in agreeing that their Mummies and Daddies make them happy. We also sang some songs about feelings and developed our drama skills as we practised acting out facial expressions and sometimes included whole body actions too such as stamping our feet and crossing our arms. 

In our Cookery Focus Time, we made rice cake faces. The children developed their hand strength and dexterity as they used plastic knives to spread cream cheese on the rice cakes and then added sliced olives, peppers and tomatoes to add features. We discussed where the different ingredients came from, their colours and tastes and the fact that fruit and vegetables help to make us healthy. Everyone was very excited with their finished rice cakes and were very excited to show their teachers, showing them their ‘proud’ faces.