Upper Nursery - current activies

Gloop,Handa's Surprise,Growing and Cooking	Oh what fun!
Gloop Gloop is one of the children’s favourite activities. Basic gloop is made by gradually adding cold water to a bowl of corn flour, mixing well then plunging your hands into it. Is it solid or is it liquid? Pour it on to a table top. Can you pile it up to make a castle? Can you write your name in it before the writing disappears? Divide the gloop in half and add different food colouring to each half. Watch what happens when the two mixtures meet! This is a cheap and fun way to entertain children on a cold wet Sunday afternoon and the adult will have fun too! Although it appears to make a mess any splashes will sweep up if left to dry. CAUTION do not dispose of this mixture down the sink unless you are prepared to unblock the ‘u’bend, just throw it in the dustbin.
	Handa’s Surprise As it was such a huge success we booked a return visit of Handa’s Surprise for a performance for the Foundation Stage children. The story and performance opened up many areas of the Foundation Stage curriculum. Personal, social and emotional development- discussions on what friendship means to us. Communication, language and literacy – as well as reading the story and other books by Eileen Browne we looked at the way the illustrations conveyed part of the story. Maths – counting fruit and animals. Physical development – as well as improving their fine motor control by peeling the fruit and using a knife to chop, the children exercised their bodies during gym by pretending to move like various animals from the story. Knowledge and understanding of the world – the children looked at the globe to find Kenya and at some books to find out about life in that country and how it differed from life in England. We looked at the animals in the story and had a great discussion about their amazing abilities. Creative development – the children drew or painted pictures of the fruit and animals as well as parts of the story. Some of the children were observed to use the play dough to make pretend fruit from the story. The children enjoyed acting out the story using the toy animals and various real fruit. The children also used the story as a basis for role play even though their version often had a lion in it!
acting out the story	planting a hyacinth bulb in a special glass vase
Growing We started our year long topic on growing by talking about how we all grow when we are babies and children. We discussed height and age and concluded that being the oldest in the group does not always mean you are the tallest nor does being the youngest mean that you are the shortest. We began our plant growing by planting individual hyacinth bulbs in compost and planting one bulb in a special shaped glass vase so we can see the roots growing down into the water. Cooking As we try to cook each week we decided to use the fruit from the Handa’s Surprise story to make individual fruit salad. We left out the avocado as it was felt that this fruit was not really suitable! Handa’s and Akeyo’s Fruit Salad 1 orange 1 banana 1 mango 1 guava 1 pineapple 1 passion fruit 1 tangerine Method Cut the orange in half and squeeze the juice from one half and put in a bowl Peel and chop the rest of the fruit and toss in the orange juice. Serve with cream, ice cream or on its own.

	making Handa and Akeyo’s fruit salad.