The Blue Kits have had a wonderful first week back after half term! Our Topic this week has been Diwali and we have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the ‘Festival of Light’, and all of the traditions and customs people take part in to celebrate.
We were very excited welcome Miss Binita back to Oaktree to facilitate a special Diwali workshop for us. During the workshop Miss Binita showed us the traditional clothes that people wear to celebrate and some of us even had the chance to dress up in them! We learned that boys and girls both have different special outfits to wear and we discovered that girls wear a sari. Miss Binita also read us a book about Diwali and we learned that the festival celebrates the return or Lord Rama, the Hindu God. She showed us some Rangolis and the children looked at the beautiful patterns on them. We talked about Diva lamps and Miss Binita explained why Diwali is known as the ‘Festival of Light’.
After learning about Rangolis and how they are made, we continued to explore patterns throughout the week. We experimented with making indentations in playdough with the ‘Loose Parts’ and different shaped stamps, and made patterns and arrangements with the glass gems in our Maths Focus Time.
During Cookery we made Divas from salt dough. The first step was to carefully roll out and shape the dough into the correct shape, making sure to leave space for our tea lights. This was a great opportunity for the Kits to refine their fine motor skills and to use their hands to shape and mould the different shapes. Once our salt dough shapes were baked we painted them with wonderful bright colours and decorated them with glitter.
We extended our focus on Divas in our Art activity where we worked together to make a large Diva from paint and different materials. We also made a big firework display and explored different ways to paint, including rolling balls down drain pipes and stamping with a bunch of straws to make a firework effect.
The Kits were excited to go on their fortnightly visit to Balham Library this week. It is wonderful that the Library is open to us to visit again and we are very lucky to have such a wonderful place to visit on our doorstep. When we visit the Library, the children understand that they need to be very quiet as we enter as there are other people reading books and working. Upstairs in the children's library the children have the opportunity to browse the books and read them with their teachers, before Lucinda the Librarian kindly reads us a story. Finally, when we leave, we check some books out to take back to nursery and make sure we remember to return them the next time we visit!