This week we have been exploring Chinese New Year. We have been counting pennies into lucky wallets, creating pink blossom pictures and making dragon and snake puppets. We read a book called ‘The Great Race’. The book is about how the animals had a swimming race across the river to see who would win and name the New Year after them. We talked about the different animals.  2025 is the year of the snake! On Thursday morning, Jess visited the nursery to show the children her corn snake. The children had an opportunity to look and observe the snake when Jess was holding it. Jess talked to the children about how a snake moves and how to care for the snake. The children were so interested and asked some amazing questions. Jess also showed the children a skin that the snake had shed.

On Friday morning, we made stir-fry and noodles. We talked about the different vegetables and ingredients and used words to describe them (hard, bendy, soft, crunchy, sweet, red, orange, etc). All the children then helped to cut and chop the vegetables (fine motor skills). The children worked with a partner (turn taking) to cut and chop the vegetables into small pieces. We put all the chopped vegetables into a wok and Miss McKenzie cooked them on the hob. We also explored the texture changes of the noodles before and after they were cooked. The children had an opportunity to taste the stir-fry and they expressed their likes and dislikes.

As part of our ‘Let’s Explore’ topic we have been exploring moving.

On Wednesday we explored the PE equipment and thought about how some of the animals from the story (The Great Race) would move, e.g. slither like a snake, bounce like a rabbit, scurry like a rat.