Well it was a rainy week – and despite children still putting on their wellies and raincoats to play outside sometimes, we definitely had more time inside the building than usual.
Of course with 30 children in one building on these rainy days excitement levels can rise, so this week we have been getting ideas from the children about things they like to do to feel more calm. Some of the ideas were; having some quiet time alone, resting on the sofa, climbing a tree, singing, eating, swinging, talking to a friend, reading a story and looking at a snow globe! We will be looking to make the most of these ideas to keep us feeling calm at Folha Verde. We also talked about the idea of making our own snow globe.
Oak and Chestnut have both been doing some maths this week – with Chestnut collecting stones to paint to explore number bonds and basic maths and some of the younger ones in the Oak group learning about addition with wooden cubes.
Chestnut children are continuing with their calendar-making and are now learning about how many days there are in each month.
Play-doh is proving a firm favourite in Jardim, where children have also been carrying on with their paper mache bowl making and decorating.
This week we also created a ‘Nosso Ambiente’ montage. We talked about the things we see around us in our environment here – such as trees, houses, animals, flowers, vehicles, roads and rivers – and then drawing, cutting out and gluing these things onto our montage while learning the vocabulary in Portuguese.
Folha Verde Jardim came to join Oak and Chestnut downstairs one rainy day to create some beautiful sponge paintings in an offering led by Zephyr.
On Wednesday it was Lucy’s birthday and Folha Verde Jardim made pizzas to celebrate. Many of the children made birthday cards for Lucy and we all enjoyed pizza together at the end of the day.
Finally, at the end of the week we met up with Zoe, Roshnii, Kristina and Tamsin to talk about plans to link up with other families from a long-standing home ed group in this area, with the idea being that they join in and share activities twice a month on a Wednesday afternoon at Folha Verde. Many of the families at Folha Verde have had links with the home ed group and it will be good to continue to do things together.
