It’s nearly Halloween which has inspired some of the tuff trays this week. This weeks Tuff Tray challenge has been taken up a notch as staff are battling it out to get an early Friday finish, desired by all! This week Winklebury celebrated ‘Chef Day’ with their pancake themed tuff tray which included making and tasting real pancakes. Highdown got into the spirit of Halloween with their potions tuff tray. And Worthing combined Halloween with the children’s love of trains to create their pumpkin station tuff tray. WHO WILL BE THIS WEEKS WINNERS?
WINKLEBURY- MAKING PANCAKES LIKE A CHEF.
INTENT: This weeks we did a chef themed tuff tray where the children enjoyed making their own pancakes, we chose this theme as one of our national days was chef day and the children have really shown an interest in making dinner and lunch in the home corner. The children had so much fun playing with this tuff tray and really enjoyed helping make their snack. This tray provided the children with the opportunity to learn about how we make some of their favourite breakfast and dessert and what different tools we use in the kitchen. It also gave the children an opportunity to engage in conversations about what they was doing and what different things they have helped make their favourite foods. The tray had all of the ingredient and equipment the children would need to make pancakes, it also had step by step instructions for the children to follow.
IMPLEMENT: After playing in this tray the children even more excited about cooking the pancakes and they were telling all of their friends they were going to make pancakes at home. They learn about how we follow recipes when cooking and how we have to make sure we use the right ingredients. It also tav the chidden about safety in the kitchen and how they need a grown up to help when cooking. The different resources in this tray enabled the children to have a fun learning opportunity. It also showed the children they can learn through touching and playing. This tray engaged the children physical development, speech and language and personal, social and emotional.
IMPACT: The children enjoyed the chef tuff tray. They loved helping each other measure pour and crack the different ingredients they also enjoyed holding the bowl for each other while their friends mixed the mixture.. The children enjoyed flipping the pancakes and then eating them after. They also enjoyed helping each other find the next number of the instruction and working out what they had to do next. The children really enjoyed this tray and making the own pancakes and after they played in the tray they wanted to go home and cook some more stuff with their mummy and daddy.
HIGHDOWN- ZIGGEDEY ZAGGEDY HALLOWEEN POTIONS.
INTENT: This weeks tuff tray was based around Halloween! I decided this tray because the children have been speaking lot about Halloween and what they have seen in shops as well as what they are going to dress up as. In MonkeyMoos they have been using broom as broomsticks and pretending to be witches. I took in consideration that they love to explore things messy and to use their Imagination and out it all together to create a witches potion themed tray. I wanted this tray to encourage making up stories, rhymes and spells, sharing with friends, using their imagination and explore different textures.
IMPLEMENT: In 6 different bowls I added different items of all different textures from soft, shiny, hard, and crunchy. Underneath the bowls I added descriptions of what they could represent from unicorn horns to wart of a toad. As a base it was green paint to make it more potion like and more eye catching for the children. I added a big bowl to the middle of the tray, with jugs and spoons for the children to create their magical potion. Next to the bowl, was an ingredient list as well as prices next to them with could help with there maths skills to look at different numbers. As the main feature I added a witch which could help them to use describing words when making up their spells and sharing ideas.
IMPACT: The children were super helpful and even helped with setting up the tray as they helped taking it in turns to paint the base of the tray green. Once the tray was ready they all got stuck in with feeling all the different items in the bowl. Some children threw them straight into the bowl, whilst others used their strong powers to breaks some items up. They then all took it in turns to use the large spoons to mix the ingredients together and was asked what spells they were going to say. Some children laughed like a witch and said “hahaha.” Whilst others were very clever and repeated words from the ‘Room on the broom story.’ The children really got involved and enjoyed creating potions and pretending to be witches.
WORTHING- HALLOWEEN TRAIN STATION.
INTENT: This week we have been trying to do some halloween activities! We thought we would take their interests of trains and join it to our spooky season of halloween. We wanted the children to expand their vocabulary by learning about trains and pumpkins; the words we learned the most were Halloween, pumpkins, trains and orange. We wanted the children to use their hands and fingers to fit trains and happy land people through the small gaps in the pumpkins.
IMPLEMENT: The tray was filled with the orange, slimy, sludgy part of the pumpkins with the seeds sprinkled around the tray too. We cut some doors on either side of two pumpkins and placed them on either side of the tray too. We then added a train track from the one pumpkin to the other and back round again to make a big circle. We provided some trains and some happy land animals and people to push through the doors of the pumpkins.
IMPACT: Once the tray was done, the children came over to explore the tray! Some of the children were more interested in the pumpkins more than the trains. They used their hands to push the trains through the little doors in the pumpkins before realising that they were getting a bit stuck if they didn’t continue to push them through. “Oh no they are stuck” said one of the children. They then started pushing the trains over the outside of the pumpkins and dropping them down into the pumpkins. Some of the children enjoyed making up their own little stories with the trains and the animals. One of the children enjoyed holding one of the people on top of a horse and began to ride it through the slimy insides of the pumpkin, “Come on horsey, don’t fall off” they said. Another child came over to the tray and held two trains over the edge of the pumpkin “Don’t fall into the lava trains” they said. Then another child came over, they started to explain the different things in the tray, “Wow, halloween” they continued to explain the different textures “Its slimy and orange”.
