The Christmas Show!

The children loved listening to a wide range of music introduced to them during our ‘Music and Movement’ Unit. They really enjoyed being given the opportunity to express themselves through dance, as they explored responding to music emotionally and physically. It was particularly impressive how the class showed each other respect as they recognised that their friends preferences differed from their own. They also showed how responsible they could be as they handled the percussion instruments with great care.
The children were able to show everyone their fantastic dancing with their performance for ‘Peter Pan’s Christmas Adventure’. They were amazing! I would like to thank you all for helping to make it such a success with the incredible costumes you made. It was absolutely worth all the hard work, the Native Americans looked so authentic and the Snow Spirits looked perfectly ethereal! We can’t wait to watch the video of the Christmas show, coming soon. In the mean time here are some pictures of the children in their costumes.

Chestnuts!

We have been thinking about the change of season. Many of the children have noticed that it is now getting dark earlier. As if by magic, during our discussion on autumn, a thunderstorm hit Treviso and the sky became very dark… So dramatic! We had lots of fun pretending to be wind and rain and investigating outside to see whether the storm had blown the leaves off the trees. Ever since, the children have been bringing in conkers, acorns and colourful leaves for us to look at.

Some of the children mistook the Horse Chestnuts (conkers) for chestnuts and wondered if we could eat them. This led our inquiry into a new direction. First, we thought about which autumn fruits were or were not edible. So many autumn fruits look good enough to eat! Secondly, we observed the differences in their appearance.

Then we tasted the chestnuts! The children were a bit apprehensive…

But most children liked them…

Of course a few didn’t!

The chestnuts we ate were from Combai. We discovered chestnuts can be eaten candied, boiled, steamed, grilled, or roasted in sweet or savoury recipes. The chestnuts from Combai have always been important to the economy of the town and others in Treviso Province.

Medieval documents describe the soil in Combai as particularly suited to the cultivation of chestnuts. We hope that the soil in the Early Years Unit garden is suited to our next line of inquiry… Planting spring bulbs! The children are going to design their own flower bed. We will look at pictures of the flowers the bulbs will become in spring and decide where in the garden we want to plant them.