This week in Nursery the children have continued to learn all about dinosaurs!
The children enjoyed being dinosaur explorers, digging in the sand looking for dinosaur fossils and bones. They carefully used brushes to dust away the sand looking for the hidden treasures!
In Maths the children enjoyed counting dinosaurs and learned a counting rhyme, demonstrating subtraction. Using their imagination the children explored ‘Dinosaur Island’ using a map and using a similar song to ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ to go through the ‘long swishy, swashy grass’ and the ‘slimy muddy swamp’. This activity helped to reinforce the language of position, such as ‘over’ and ‘under’.
Using the Little Wandle phonics scheme the children learned the sound ’r’ and ‘h’ and played lots of games to develop their phonemic awareness and oral blending. They also practised alliteration when we played a phonics dinosaur game. The rule was that the dinosaur’s name and what they liked had to begin with the same sound; for example ‘Alex the Apatosaurus likes apples’.
The children have studied the story ‘Dear Dinosaur’ by Chae Strathie in depth, using actions, focusing on key vocabulary and joining in with refrains. We have also looked at the book ‘Dinosaur Roar’ by Henrietta Stickland and the children joined in with the actions used to describe the different dinosaurs as we retold the story. We also thought of opposites such as ‘fast’ and ‘slow’, ‘long’ and ‘short’.
The children used scarves and did a fantastic volcano dance, using the scarves to show volcanos erupting and then waving the scarves slowly to show the lava flowing down. These movements help with co-ordination and gross motor skills.
Other activities have included:
Continuing practising throwing, catching, dribbling and target skills in PE.
Learning the song ‘The Prehistoric Animal Brigade’ and the poem ‘Dinosaur, Dinosaur Turn Around’.
Dinosaur sorting and counting. Collecting the correct number of dinosaurs and reading numerals. Using tweezers to develop fine motor skills.
Dinosaur colouring and pencil control activities.
