It’s that time of the week again where the nurseries compete to be the winners of the Tuff Tray Challenge! The nursery staff have all been voting for their favourites this week, but who will be the winner? This week, have seen 3 different tuff trays! Winklebury had a visit from The tiger who came to tea. Highdown taught the children how to eat all the colours of the rainbow and Worthing made sure the children knew all about fire safety. Who will be this weeks winners?
WINKLEBURY- THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA.
INTENT- Over the last couple of weeks we have enjoyed reading the story book “The Tiger who came to tea”. This was to help the children to understand how to recite and remember what happens in each story and get the children to interact more during story times. So we focused on The Tiger who came to tea.
IMPLEMENT- The tuff tray had a tiger stripped theme. Orange rice for his skin and black salt for his stripes. We then added things that are in the story. We made sandwiches, added biscuits and made a cup of tea. We had a tiger, piece of cake and not forgetting a tin of tiger food. Of course the children had a sandwich, biscuit, and a small very weak cup of tea. Now it was time to explore, they enjoyed all of it and did so well to share all the resources.
IMPACT- What we wanted to gain was for the children to remember, recite and focus at a story for a long amount of time. They have very much achieved this and we think this was a great story to start with.They now sit and focus for long amounts of time and love to discuss the story after and talk about everything that happen.
HIGHDOWN- EAT ALL THE COLOURS OF THE RAINBOW.
INTENT- This week our tuff tray was based around encouraging children to try new foods by exploring the colourful world of foods. The tray was set up as a rainbow using different colours of fruit and vegetables. The idea around the tray was to let the children use their hands to feel different textures, smell different foods as well as talking about likes and dislikes. This is to help the children to learn about new foods and that food makes us big and strong.
IMPLEMENT- In this tray, we included all the different fruit and vegetables of all colours to form a rainbow. We had, watermelon and strawberries for red. We had carrots and orange for the orange. Sweetcorn and yellow peppers for yellow. Broccoli and cucumber for green. Blueberries and aubergine and to finished some grapes! We also added different size spoons for the children to use if their didn’t want to use their hands. We wanted to use different colours in the tray for the children to explore by naming them, looking at different textures and smell.
IMPACT- All the children absolutely loved this tuff tray! They all got stuck in straight away, some went in with their hands whilst others used spoons to see how much fruit they could scoop up. Throughout the tray the children enjoyed sneakily tasting the foods and even trying new foods that they hadn’t tried before! This encouraged the children to talk about the vegetables they have at lunch and tea as well as the fruit they have at snack time. As the children kept mixing the fruit with the spoons and their hands they began to make up a song together “mix, mix, mixing.” Towards the end the children used their imagination to make a fruit smoothie!
WORTHING- FIRE! FIRE!
INTENT- This week we have created a fire safety awareness tuff tray for the children to learn and understand about the job of a fire fighter, including how they use their equipment. We wanted to the children develop their language skills by enhancing their vocabulary by using lots of descriptive words like “hot” and “flame”. We wanted the children to have an interactive experience with putting out the fires and learning how fire fighters do this. We also wanted the children to learn about different types of fire, including safe fires like the campsite.
IMPLEMENT- The tray was filled with lots of sensory stimulation to engage the children’s sight and touch senses for the children to experience a range of textures and colours with the rice and spaghetti. We used the red, orange and yellow spaghetti on the house to represent an unsafe fire. We used firefighter figures holding hose pipes to indicate the firefighters working hard to put the fire out; shown by the blue rice on and around the fire to indicate the water. Shaving foam was also used to show the other ways fire fighters can tackle the fires. There was a campfire made from colourful tissue paper and sticks to show how fire can be used safely and also having a positive purpose. We also had fire trucks for the children to see the emergency vehicles that the fire fighters use.
IMPACT- The children very excitedly came rushing over to the tray ready to play. The children immediately went straight to the house and began exploring the spaghetti, they used both their hands to pull and stretch the fiery mess. Straight away the children understood the scene that was set, without any prompts the children picked up the blue coloured water bottles to “put out the fire” role playing being firefighters. The children showed concern for the “burning” house. This lead to a discussion about fire alarms and how to put out fires. The children explored the camp fire setting by pretending to keep their hands warm this sparked a conversation on how we use fire safely in our everyday lives, “to cook food” a child said. All of the children were fully engaged with this tuff tray and have loved being firefighter for the day!!
AND THIS WEEKS WINNERS ARE… WORTHING!
