Our Messy Monkey this week is Kenneth with his beautiful under the sea picture!! Congratulations Kenneth!

We have been experimenting with different ways of painting this week using everything except a paintbrush! Kenneth decided to have a try at painting with a straw and a sea lion! Great work!

Using straws to paint creates a strange new pattern on the paper and gives the children the choice of scraping the paint on the paper or blobbing it on and blowing it around. Kenneth chose to scratch and scrape his beautiful dark blue paint around his paper before adding some glitter to complete his awesome under the sea picture.

Painting unleashes a child’s imagination, allowing them to create incredible pieces of art that only they know the story to. They can mix colours to create just the perfect one and use different tools to ensure they get the finish they desire.

Using tools and brushes, hands and big body movements encourages the foundation building blocks of writing to form. These slowly develop into the pincer grip needed to hold a pencil and the muscle control required to form letters.

Every activity we do is a learning opportunity for our children, they really are like little sponges!

And the Monkey Mover Award goes to……Sophie in our Baby Room for her awesome dancing this week!!

The babies have all been enjoying music – both listening to and making it! Sophie has really be working on her dancing moves and loves to wiggle and shake in time to the music. She also loves to dance with her teachers and her friends!

Music and Movement form a key part of our learning here at Monkey Puzzle New Cross. The children love it and so do we! It allows us to express ourselves in different ways, adapting our movements to the music and making up our own rhythms!

Here we are at our Monkey Moment for this week with some more staff members to introduce to you… This week we have Katie, Sariya and Chloe.

Katie – Level 3 Nursery Assistant – Baby Room Katie is level 3 qualified and has been working in Early Years for four years now. Her kind, caring and gentle personality make her the perfect match for our baby room. With a little girl herself Katie brings a mothering touch to the room, providing the home away from home care our babies deserve. When asked why she wanted to work in childcare Katie said “Working with children is in my personality. It is heart warming to see them happy, smiling and most importantly develop. It’s a very rewarding job!”

Sariya – Level 2 Nursery Apprentice – Baby Room Sariya is working towards her level 2 qualification in childcare whilst working in our beautiful Baby Room. Sariya has working in 2 previous nurseries gathering experience which she now shares with our team. Her enthusiasm to learn and develop her own skills and techniques fills us with excitement as to the fantastic practitioner she will become. When asked why she wanted to work in childcare Sariya said “I enjoy working with children because I love to see them develop into the young people of the future!”

Chloe – Preschool Room Leader Chloe is level 3 qualified and has been working in childcare for four years now. She has worked in a variety of settings and brings with her a wealth of knowledge and understanding of the importance of Preschool. Chloe aims to ensure that our children head off to school feeling confident, independent, important and valued. If we can give them that, then everything else will follow. When asked why she wanted to work in childcare Chloe said “I find the preschool room incredibly fulfilling, seeing the children develop their school readiness. It is a privilege to be a part of their learning process.”

Monkey Mayhem idea this week is….. WE’RE GOING ON A SOUND HUNT!

In a word that moves so fast and is filled with so much noise sometimes it is good to just be still and listen for a little while! This weeks Monkey Mayhem is a sound hunt and there are a few ways you can do this. You can just lie in the garden with your child and listen – it’s amazing how still they can be when it is a game to see what they can hear. After a few minutes ask what they could hear and talk about some of the sounds and where they came from, sharing what you heard too!

Another sound hunt idea is to give them something to make sound with (like a wooden spoon suggested here… http://www.sunhatsandwellieboots.com/…/were-going-on-sound- ) and let me go out and about experimenting with different sounds they can make with their instrument. Hitting bricks will sound different to running a wooden spoon over a fence etc. Recognise with them how different the sounds become and talk about why this might happen, what other noises they can make using lots of describing words along the way!

While setting aside special time to have these conversations which promote your child’s language development and help make them more aware of the world around them is great, anytime is a good time for learning to happen! If you hear something exciting like and airplane, ambulance or dog – point it out, help them hear it and recognise it. Ask questions like “why is it making that sound? Where do you think the airplane is going? Why is the dog barking – what do you think he is trying to say?” Asking open ended questions (ones that can’t be answered by yes or no) is the key to building conversation skills with your child. It establishes the turn taking routine and grows their vocabulary at an astounding rate!

So this weekend why not have a listen so you can have a chat! We would love to hear about some of the things you heard or where you went to make your own sounds! Why not share them here or on your Learning Journal!

This week our Mini Monkey Chefs have been learning all about root vegetable. This week our Mini Monkey Chefs have been learning all about root vegetables, where they grow and how they come to be in our shops. Did you know that potatoes grow in the ground by the roots of the plants?!

The children helped to cut up potatoes and carrots discussing their colour, smell and texture along the way. Chloe took the vegetables and cooked them so the children could taste them. They were delicious! We also put some raw carrots and potato into the home corner so the children could turn them into something delicious themselves.

Investigating real food is incredibly important for our children as it is a great way to stimulate the senses of smell and touch as well as introducing lots of different colours. How the textures change during cooking provides and interesting topic of conversation not to mention how the food grows and how it gets to be in our kitchen!