Book of the week: Kate, who tamed the wind by Liz Garton Scanlon.
Synopsis: A wild wind blows on the tippy-top of a steep hill, turning everything upside down for the man who lives there. Luckily, Kate comes up with a plan to tame the wind. With an old wheelbarrow full of young trees, she journeys up the steep hill to add a little green to the man's life, and to protect the house from the howling wind.
Activity: Carrying on with the wind theme, this week's adult-led activity was to make some handheld leaf windmills. For this the children were asked to find two suitable sticks, one long and thick the other, short and thin, which they cut to size using eithers secateurs or loppers. They also needed to find a large leaf of which there were plenty at this time of year just lying around the nursery (children are always encouraged to respect nature and not pick leaves off of trees or bushes). They were given some colourful A4 card and a pot of glue so they could stick their leaf onto the card. Once dry, they cut around the leaf shape with a pair of scissors and put it to one side. Then they hammered a nail through the centre of the leaf card, through a short stick and onto the larger stick that would act as a handle. Then, when they pulled down on one side of the card, it spun around like a windmill. Some of the children wanted to plant their windmills so we found some small glass jars, put some earth into them and stuck the windmills in them (as you can see in some of the pictures below).
Additional Activities: We also made some wood and bead necklaces, leaf bracelets or crowns and did some number work using our illustraighted tough tray number chart and some miniature dinosaurs.