Baked beans and giant monkeys

Welcome back Little Learners, welcome back team, welcome back faithful readers and welcome to any new readers to Sunnysiders 2012.

Today is the first day of the Spring Term and just the mere mention of Spring sends the team rushing for the compost and daffodil bulbs to set the little learners off on planting activities.

However, before all that can happen there is the important business of transforming what was the nativity stable into a hide/camp/den type of thing, complete with cameras, binoculars, magnifying glasses, clipboards, cooking equipment, bedding, in fact everything a little learner might need to set up camp and do a spot of animal watching and recording. 

 Yes, the topic for this half term is "Animals" and over the coming weeks the team have some wonderful animal inspired activities planned for the little learners.

The Role Play area is one of the most important and most popular areas in the setting, so the team always ensure that the little learners play a big part in setting it all up.

This afternoon Mrs Caring and a group of little learners set to work to paint some large jungle animals to go in and around the den. By the end of the day they'd produced an enormous monkey, a giraffe with the longest neck in the history of long necked giraffes, a tiger so orange that he can't be viewed without first putting on a pair of sunglasses and a Zebra, which only a couple of weeks ago was the all important donkey in the the stable, but now with a multitude of thick black stripes painted all over him, makes a splendid, if not slightly scary Zebra!

Earlier today during some whole group numeracy input, Mrs Very Jolly wanted to convey to the little learners the importance of being able to count accurately. So, to start the activity off, she asked the very simple question, "Why do we need to count?"
Immediately a little hand shot into the air and unable to wait to be asked, the little learner confidently blurted out...

..."Because it's good for you!"

The team couldn't agree more, and would like to suggest that perhaps along with fruit and baked beans, counting should be included as one of our five a day!!!