October 2020

The month of October has been full of celebrations at Monkey Puzzle Orient Close! Our month kicked of with fun, colourful and vibrant Rainbow day where staff and children celebrated the people who help us. We then enjoyed exploring everything Spanish for Hispanic Day before finishing our month off by transforming the Old Station House into a fun filled, spooky house for Halloween. Children and staff alike enjoyed dressing up and tasty a variety of different tasty foods!

Some of our smallest monkeys in Yellows have been busy exploring different textures such as couscous, oats, coloured rice, paint, cornflour and conditioner. They have been exploring using their hands and zip lock bags which enhanced sensory exploration. They have also delved into books and pictures whilst identifying any familiar objects, animals and numbers. Halloween provided plenty of sensory experiences as the babies made their own paper plate pumpkins, handprint ghosts & skeletons and even made their own witches magic potion which included black paint, water, soap and glitter.

Blue Monkeys have been exploring language skills around the recent celebration of Halloween, this was done as they explored lots of messy sensory experiences such as pumpkin play & making a witches brew. Another highlight of this month included scavenger hunt with Halloween objects- the Blue Monkeys had lots of fun and laughter whilst looking for the hidden objects around their room and throughout their messy play. They have also been focused on Physical skills this month by building simple structures using a variety of resources and with a bit of team work they built a very tall tower! But the highlight of this activity was defiantly knocking the tower down, which they did, many times. Blue Monkeys have also been exploring and developing their understanding of different animals and the noises they make.

The Pink Monkeys have thoroughly enjoyed celebrating Halloween by exploring Pumpkins, talking about size, colour, shape and had lots of fun having a pumpkin hunt in the room which was followed with lots of excited conversation. They also explored some shape and space play through creating their own rockets and sticking on lots of shapes and even drawing around shapes too! To add to this experience, they explored pattern by painting on one side of a paper then with the help of a carer they folding the paper in half, opening up their paper to see a beautiful butterfly made of a mixture of shapes and colours.

The Red Monkeys too have thoroughly enjoyed Halloween and have delved into gooey textures such as pumpkins and their own slime made from bright green cornflour. Creating their own skeletons made from hand prints and cotton buds. They have been enjoying a fantastic brand new book called ‘The Dancing Man From France’ and have been exploring dancing themselves whilst developing balance too! Red Monkeys have also been discovering the Harvest Season and have been talking about plants and how they grow. The Mud kitchen has been extremely popular, they have been busily cooking up Witches potions, pancakes, mud pies and playing shop keepers.