April News 2021

We have had another busy month at Monkey Puzzle Orient close as we introduced our room’s monthly planning challenge. This month’s theme was ‘Use your imagination – Role Play’ and children and staff alike delved into exciting activities creating their own circuses, Italian restaurant and going on their very own Bear Hunts. A massive well done to Blue Monkeys for winning this month’s challenge.

In Yellow Monkeys this month, our babies have been focussing on Role Play, this was a fantastic opportunity for them to develop many skills including speech & language and understanding the world though caring for babies, cooking for their friends, emailing their parents as well as being builders and taking part in constructing large structures using the foam blocks and tool kit. For some down time the babies have also been learning how to stretch their bodies as they took part in baby yoga whilst listening to calming music.

Blue Monkeys had a wonderful time exploring and delving into messy play. The babies were able to use their whole bodies to play and explore the messy play such as ice cubes in warm water, scented playdough and flowers whilst their carers encouraged the use of single words to describe what they could see and feel with one of the favourites being ‘cold’.

It has been all about Maths in Pink Monkeys this month as our toddlers explored numbers, colours and shapes. Shape and number printing provided excellent learning opportunities for the children and they identified and compared the shapes, colours and numbers as they printed them on paper. Numbers have also been interpreted into their songs and they explored the nursery rhyme board singing ‘5 Little Ducks’, ‘5 Little Speckled Frogs’ and ‘1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish alive. The month was finished off with a giant colour and shape hunt around their room.

Our eldest children in Red Monkeys have been developing their fine motor skills by taking part in some drawing and creating their own animals and monsters whilst others have practised writing their own names and common words. They also took the time to appreciate the world around us for Earth day as they spoke about who we share our planet with, why we need to keep it safe and what it means to us. Our pre-schoolers finished their month off attending their very own fairground where they had a variety of brightly coloured decorations, a popcorn stand and played pin the nose on the clown.

Children and staff alike celebrated everything English for St George’s Day as they created their own flags, explored the national flower of English and delved into cottage pie and an afternoon tea. Easter also provided a heap of learning opportunities as children of all ages as they learnt about spring animals, identified the shapes and colours on the Easter eggs and took part in large scale egg hunts.