Waldorf style playscapes

These amazing wool/felt playscapes have been made for my class by Cheryl from Soft n Woolly (http://www.etsy.com/shop/softnwoolly) - I received them this week and am so excited to find bits and pieces to go with them to create inspiring small worlds for my new class to explore in September. I asked her to create four different ones - river, beach, roads and woodlands and think they are all gorgeous. My absolute favourite is the last one - the detail is stunning and I can just imagine little fairies hiding in the caves! I cannot wait for little hands to play with them! Thank you Cheryl :-)

The jealous car....

The children had been engrossed in their play for some time when one child called me over and asked if he could tell me the story they had been working on. Here it is...

Once upon a time there was a car factory. It had lots of workers and all the cars lined up carefully when they needed fixing or upgrading.

One day, the queue of cars waiting to be seen was so long that some of them had to be turned away for the day and were asked to return the next day.

The large green truck was mad. He did not want to wait. He thought it was unfair so he did something bad.

He drove as fast as he could into the factory so nobody else could use the factory that day either. Everyone was very sad but luckily noone was hurt. The police came straight away and took him away.

He felt really bad and said sorry. Then he helped to rebuild the factory but a bigger one so more people could be seen at once. Then they were all friends and he was good from then on!!!

THE END

I loved all the dinosaurs standing watching in the second picture!!! All the children had a little part in remembering the story and they were very pleased that it had such a happy ending!!!! :-) 

 

Under the Sea block exploration!

What happens when you add wooden blocks and sea creatures?? An unlikely combination I hear you say! We did just that today, along with a blue fleece and some fabulous Playmobil Mer people and the children came up with some fabulous ideas as per usual.

We had a zoo aquarium with a sunken underwater castle....

 A shark collection tank....

 A coral reef area where the fish could hide...

And a keep fit centre!!!! :-D

Exploring Michael Rosen's We're going on a bear hunt!!

One of my favourite books is We’re going on a bear hunt by Michael Rosen.
We set up the sand to represent the scenes in the story and the children have had a ball exploring the small world setting and re-telling the story - admittedly it didn't look like this for very long but I am taking that as a sign that it was a good idea!! And on day 2, the children took the dinosaurs from an activity on the carpet and started telling the story - we’re going on a dinosaur hunt :-D

After listening to the story several times, the children were able to retell the story themselves. We laid out a selection of different materials and encouraged the children to think about the parts in the story. We then made a story map of the story We’re going on a bear hunt….all the ideas came from the children and they did all the work :-) 

I think it looks fab and we have had lots of fun playing with it - we took it outside in the end and it was lovely that so many boys were acting out the story once it was no longer indoors!

Inspiring small world play environments

We love making small world environments for the children to explore. The children love them even more, adding and changing them throughout the day (often coming up with much better ideas than us lol!)  :-D Here are a few individual ones we have made, all to fit in with our current topic, Under the sea!

I put out this invitation to play this morning and the children have been actively exploring and telling stories all day with it. Lots of building has been going on, stacking the tiny bark pieces on top of the larger wooden blocks - quite a difficult feat it turns out to be!!

What are your favourite invitations to play this week?