This week has been a busy week of celebrating birthdays, Diwali, All Saints Day, the end of our month of the rosary and bonfire night.
To celebrate any of our childrens birthday we always make a class birthday cake to share. We are getting very good at selecting our ingredients and making sure we have weighed them accurately.
Although we were in holiday we celebrated Diwali with our children this week. Some of our children were able to tell us how their families celebrate the festival. We heard the story of Rama and Sita and a story about a young boy and his family celebrations. We celebrated in a traditional way dressing up in bright colourful clothes in our role play home and decorated with lights inside our classroom. The children worked hard creating Diya lamps with clay and decorations to light up our room. We decorated the outside area creating rangoli patterns so all had a colourful entrance to school. Inside we created similar patterns using loose parts creating a variety of shapes and prewriting patterns.
To end our month of the rosary mission challenge some of us went to Ladywell on the hunt for Mary. The weather was beautiful for our visit and the children did so well walking a long way. We found lots of different statues and images of different people and Mary. During our visit the children noticed a number of rosary beads comparing them to our own. Through the month the children have chosen different things each day they have wanted us to pray for, placing their idea on our giant rosary. Children in our group from other faiths have shared their prayer beads with us which has been lovely.
To end our week we have been learning all about fire and firework safety ready for bonfire night. We heard all about what bonfire night is about and Guy Fawkes. We created our own Guy for our campfire and after toasted bagels. We talked about the different food people have to keep warm and at bonfires then created our own chocolate apples as a treat. During the week we have talked about the differently festivals that take place with fireworks including Diwali using various media and resources to create our own firework displays  and images including through dance and art. After setting up a safe area and reminding ourselves about safety we had some sparklers. Well done all for remembering about being safe and we hope hope you all have a fun filled bonfire night this weekend.
