Kits News - 2nd February 2024

The Kits had an empowering week, inspired by our topic book You Can! by Steve Antony. We have used this book to help the children develop their sense of identity and understanding of their ‘Individual Liberty’ which is one of the ‘British Values’ we teach at Nursery. 

In Art we started our week of self-discovery by painting self-portraits. The children looked in the mirrors at their own reflections and then painted their pictures. They made some wonderful paintings and we can see some of the older children developing their ability to draw different facial features. 

We have been setting ourselves challenges throughout the week as we counted our jumps and actions during a game of ‘Follow the Leader’ in our Maths Focus Time and worked as a team to complete the challenge of painting an entire box in Art. 

On Thursday we made pasta salad in our Cookery Focus Time and the intention of the activity was to develop the children’s independence and self-esteem as they accomplished tasks by themselves such as making their own meal. The children all independently cut the pre-cooked carrots and beans with knives and developed their hand strength as they mixed them together with sweetcorn, pasta and mayonnaise. We ate the salad together once finished and it was lovely to have some ‘dinner conversation’ with the children, discussing what they eat at home and which vegetables they like. 

During our Literacy Focus Time this week we focused on phonics and exploring words which start with the same phoneme. We teach phonics using the Anima Phonics programme and the children love exploring and discussing the colourful, animal cartoon pictures which accompany each phoneme. Some of the older children are starting to isolate the initial sounds of words and the activity was great fun for all, with the younger Kits developing their vocabulary as they learnt new words.