Saplings have had a wonderful first week back, engaging enthusiastically with our core text Go, Go Pirate Boat. The children showed increasing confidence in joining in with familiar rhymes, using repeated refrains and actions to help them remember and perform the story collaboratively by the end of the week.

Through pirate-themed role play, the children developed their imaginative play and social interactions, taking on different roles, negotiating stories, and working together to build boats. They explored a range of creative activities, selecting and using materials to design pirate hats, shape boats, telescopes, flags, and parrots, showing increasing independence and pride in their creations.

In Communication and Language and Literacy, the children listened attentively to the story and began to recognise and join in with rhyming words. They used these rhymes to support sequencing and retelling the narrative, developing their understanding of story structure and vocabulary.

In Mathematics, the children explored sorting and categorising objects as they organised treasure, created simple repeating patterns, and followed instructions to make “fish stew”. They also used positional language in their small-world pirate ship play, demonstrating an emerging understanding of concepts such as “on,” “under,” and “next to.”

The children also benefited from outdoor learning experiences, showing increasing coordination and control in their movements. They practised ball skills during ‘Cannonball Toss’, explored cause and effect while racing boats in the water tray, and developed confidence and balance while “walking the plank.”

In their play within the Beach Café role-play area, the children engaged in cooperative play, using talk to organise their activities, as they prepared and served ice creams and sold buckets and spades, reflecting their growing understanding of real-world experiences. #earlybirds