Week Beginning 5th may 2026

The Investigation Hub at Sidney Grove

Characteristics of Effective Learning

This week the children have been keen to use the rope outside and requested to play the wriggly snake game in which the rope is wiggled and they have to jump their feet over without them touching. A few weeks ago this game was introduced to the children and some were quite reluctant to jump over the moving rope, preferring to stand back and watch. Over time, those children have practised jumping over the rope when it was still and have had lots of encouragement from their peers. All of the children are now keen to join in with the wriggly snake game and are enjoying the added challenge of having the rope lifted higher and higher as they jump!

Parents as Partners

Our core text this week is Superworm by Julia Donaldson. The children have explored elements of rhyme and rhythm as we shared the story together. Using play dough we have compared the length of worms using target words ‘longer’ ‘shorter’ and the children have also used worms to compare the length of objects in the learning environment. In the garden the children have searched for mini-beasts in all places! Some children enjoyed sharing the story as they worked with playdough, making the characters in dough as they listened! ‘I decided to make a different one… a toad!’ ‘Oh my gosh! Superworm saves toad!’ The Rising Three children practised some fine motor control using tweezers to rescue worms from the soil!

Outside Learning

The children have enjoyed accessing learning opportunities in the garden, mud kitchen and on the soft surface this week. As the weather improves we are able to offer wider outdoor learning opportunities such as a new painting station, a reading area with cushions and a beanbag and horizontal mark-making onto a white sheet. We have also introduced a wider range of large loose parts such as different sized tyres, planks and crates which the children are accessing in open-ended ways! Some children have enjoyed bouncing small tyres down the steps and have even been aiming for targets as they roll them.

One of our Investigators was the very proud winner of a book which he found in the Community Garden this morning! We hope you love the story, it was actually one of our favourites!

Wishing you all lovely weekend!