This week the children at MonkeyMoos have had the chance to explore some more amazing trays this week!!! Worthing created a teddy bears picnic for the babies. The babies are really interested in pretend play so the tray was created to expand on their pretend play skills as well as using the sensory experience of tasting sweet and different foods. Highdown created a tray on the children’s interest which is currently building. The children were able to use their skills in many different ways from mathematical skills to imagination skills. And lastly Winklebury created a Monster tuff tray which was based around Monster Inc day as sensory play is a big interest of all the children we wanted to incorporate this into the tray.

All of these are tuff trays are amazing and the children were able to enjoy while learning but which tray will be this weeks winners………….

Worthing’s tuff tray

INTENT ~ This week I chose to do a teddy bear picnic tray with the babies. This pretend play is an interest to the babies, as they enjoy feeding the teddies. I wanted more of the babies to come and expand on their pretend play skills as well as using the sensory experience of tasting sweet and different foods. I wanted the babies to learn some keywords; CAKE and STRAWBERRY. 

IMPLEMENTATION ~ In the tray I provided some teddy bears and placed them in the four corners of the tray. I placed four spoons in the tray in front of each of the teddy bears, as well as a bowl each and a drink of milk. I then placed a bowl of cupcakes into the middle of the tray so that they were in easy reach. I scattered some strawberries around the tray as well. 

IMPACT ~ The babies absolutely loved coming to explore this sensory/ role play tray. They came in from the garden and straight away came and sat down next to the tray. One of the babies sat down and picked up Peppa Pig and a cake, she began to feed Peppa and said “Yummy” before tasting the cake herself. The other babies used their senses, touch and taste to feel the crumbly cake and taste the sweet strawberries. The older babies copied me saying “Cake” and “strawberry”.

Highdown’s tuff tray

INTENT ~ I based my tray on all the children’s interest which is currently building. Throughout the week I have seen a huge interest with the children using their skills in many different ways from mathematical skills to imagination skills. I wanted to follow their lead and interest as I thought that is the best way to get their attention. I reset up a building activity that the children had created all by themselves. I wanted them to explore their shapes, colours, sizes and extend their communication skills when playing alongside others.

IMPLEMENTATION ~ The way I set up this tray was by looking and observing at how the children had created their buildings and how they made it look. With this I recreated their buildings using all the different tools and blocks around the room. In the tray there was rainbow wooden blocks, magnetic shapes, duplo bricks, large wooden blocks with different shapes as well as different objects such as dinosaurs, vehicles and small world people for the children to extend there play and not just with building with the blocks.

IMPACT ~ As the children were getting creative with building and constructing with the blocks around the tray, they were asked open questions from “how many blocks do you have?” to “what are you making?” with this the children extend their own visions by going to find building pictures and looking through them and identifying what they can see to then extend their learning by recreating the pictures that had gained their interest. Once all the children had finished the building in the tray, they had gotten even more imaginative by moving their buildings to different parts of the room. As a final finishing point, the children kindly asked the us “can we leave it here?” and “can you take a picture so we can show pour mummy’s and daddy’s?”

Winklebury’s tuff tray

INTENT ~ This week’s tuff tray is based on the national day – Monster’s Inc Day which we also made into a sensory tray. Sensory play is a real big interest of all the children at the moment so we wanted to incorporate this into the tray. This tray was also to encourage language skills as well as encouraging the children to share whilst having fun. We aimed the tray for all ages of  children, from babies all the way to preschool. 

IMPLEMENTATION ~ The tray consisted of flour, cut up spaghetti which was dyed blue and gloop which was coloured purple which is cornflour and water mixed with some painted add to change the colour.

IMPACT ~ The children really enjoyed taking part and getting messy in this tray. They used their fingers and hands to mix and feel the different sensory resources. They used their imagination to create their own monsters. The children have really enjoyed exploring this tray and using their own imagination.