Woo-hoo! First cycle down, new plans!

So, all done with my first 3-week-cycle! Let's see if I met the goals of my 4 learning areas...

My Home

Unfortunately, I only got started on the project this week. Which means that I'll be following this little activity on through the next 2 weeks. But that's okay! The thing with the My Home project is that I needed photographs from each kid, so that took a little while to gather. But fair enough! It's a busy time for parents, September, and I understood that and didn't get all pushy and "OH MY GOD, I'm TRYING to educate your children here, just print off a load of photgraphs, will you?!" as I have seen in other places...
I'll post some pictures and a whole lesson plan for the project next time.

Physical Activities

I covered this in my last post, so as you know, this was a complete success! I mentioned that this activity was carried on into circle time, so let's cover that bit now!

Circle Time

After P.E. in the Hall, we came back to our room and sat in a circle. As I said before, the kids thought of their favourite things during meditation time. In our circle, we got out crayons, paint and paper and made pictures of our favourite things. Here are a few!

"Painting with her friends"

"Playing a Thomas the Tank Engine Game"

"Peppa Pig"

They really dug this, and had fun sharing with the group what their favourite things were. Aside from the 'favourite things' activity, we also did a little bit of 'hibernation', autumn songs, counting as a group at roll time, and our Name Song, which goes like this:

Look at ________, sitting in her chair,

Doesn't she look happy there?

Everybody give a cheer ("Yahoo!")

Just for _______, sitting in her chair.

It's sung to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle. At first the kids were really shy about this song, especially when it came to their turn to put in their name, but now they all ask to sing it in the mornings. 

The My Home project is also completed with a circle time activity, but I'll go into that in detail in the lesson plan.

Autumn

We did our Autumn handprint trees (which are now hanging outside the door of our room, so parents have been admiring them!), which I posted pictures of. One of the other teachers did free-painting using Autumn colours, which turned out really nice.
My boss is also covering hibernation with the kids, which we've been doing at circle time/roll call at the start of the day. Here's a picture of our hedgehog who comes out to visit from the nature table, and tell us what he eats and where he goes at winter.

We also went on a little nature walk this week! We just went out to a nearby chestnut tree, to gather conkers and leaves and have a look at all the Autumn colours. The kids loved it. I wish I could post pictures, but obviously, due to privacy and child protection issues, I won't be posting pictures of (or naming) any of the great kids I work with. Here's our collection anyway, which we sorted out when we got back.

And now I'm all ready for my next 3-week-cycle!
I'm going to continue work on the My Home project, and I'm starting our Bird project! I'm really excited about this one! I have activities planned in arts & crafts, circle time and P.E. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them! It would be great to have a poem or song about birds, or maybe another little nature walk... Any ideas, I'd love to hear them!
Bye for now!