Brrr! We're off to the Arctic!

This week in the EYFS we delved into the world of the Arctic and Antarctic! The children thoroughly enjoy looking at these places on the globe and Google Earth and we spoke about their positioning on the globe being the cause of their extreme weather. The children were fascinated with the wildlife so we looked into this in more detail, learning about animals native to these regions. We had lots of exciting snow and ice themed enhancements out this week which you can see below. These included:

Writing - Labelling arctic animals using word mats

Maths - Placing an 'equal' (our maths focus of the week) number of marshmallows into the mug of hot chocolate

Playdough - Polar animal playdough 

Fine Motor Skills - mark making in the 'snow', cutting out paper snowflakes, making loose part snowflakes

Expressive Art & Design - Polar bear cotton wool collages

Small World - A snowy day small world tuff tray 

Construction - Building igloos and other homes (our RSHE focus from last week) out of blocks

The children were amazing at getting stuck into all of these enhancements, they have used their child initiated sessions really well to extend their learning in their own way!

EYFS - Arctic Classroom

In Topic this week the children completed 3 polar-themed activities which included: a penguin craft, igloo painting and a snowy owl craft.

In the igloo activity children used cubes and white paint to stamp the ice bricks into a semi-circle shape.

For the snowy owl activity, children pinched pieces of cotton wool and glued them into pinecones, finishing them off with eyes and a beak!

My personal favourite activity this week was the penguin craft; the children had to follow simple, yet very vague, instructions such as 'cut out a body from black card' and 'cut out a beak from orange paper' to make their own unique penguin. It was fascinating to see how different the penguins turned out and I think you will agree they are all absolutely wonderful!

All of our topic activities this week were designed to strengthen the children's physical development skills, specifically their fine motor skills. As well as this we wanted to immerse the children in the expressive arts and design curriculum whilst keeping their interest high with this exciting topic.

EYFS - Arctic Topic

 Lastly, I wanted to mention this week's 'Big Question' in Oracy... the children worked in 'talk partners' in this week's Oracy lesson for the first time and, using our book of the week 'Lost and Found' as the vehicle, the question they were asked to discuss was 'If you found a penguin at your front door, what would you do?' The responses were fabulous and the children are becoming increasingly capable of speaking in full sentences and thinking about their responses before making them, we are all so proud!