Welcome back to the final half term of the school year! We hope everyone had a lovely, restful half term break. We are very much looking forward to the weeks ahead and enjoying the time we have left with this fantastic group of 3 and 4 year olds!
On their return to the classroom this week, the children were all quick to notice that our lovely Hungry Caterpillar, that had been happily munching away on our entrance area display board, had been replaced by a stunning Rainbow Fish.
As you may remember, the children created the scales for the fish before half term using food colouring dropped from pipettes (https://st-matthews-cofe-primary-school11.j2bloggy.com/Nursery/discovering-colour/).
Although very beautiful indeed, the Rainbow Fish seemed rather lonely, up on the display board all by itself – just like in the story…
So, we decided to make some friends for the Rainbow Fish and, as the Nursery children know all about what it means to be a good friend, who better than the Nursery children themselves to go up on the board! The children quickly set to work, creating mini-mermaid versions of themselves to become the Rainbow Fish’s friends!
They used rolling pins wrapped in bubble wrap to create a scaly effect on their tails and bodies, using primary colour paints, alongside their impressive knowledge of colour mixing once again, to achieve wonderful rainbow effects. They then carefully glued on a printed photo of their face, before adding brightly coloured wool for their hair!
I’m sure you will agree, the end results are delightful! We decided to call these mini-mermaids ‘mer-children’ to avoid any gender-labelling.
We were inspired to make our mer-children after reading two fantastic mermaid books this week which link nicely with our current ‘Splish, Splash, Splosh’ topic. The first was the classic Julia Donaldson story ‘The Singing Mermaid’ and the second was ‘Mermaid’, written by CBeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell. Both are well worth a re-read if you happen to come across them.
We think you’ll agree, our Rainbow Fish looks much happier now that it is surrounded by all of the Mer-children!
If you look very closely, you will notice that each Mer-child has a tiny, shiny scale in their hand, just like the Rainbow Fish. This is because the Nursery children are all friends and know just what to do when someone feels alone;
“we use kind words”
“we use gentle hands”
“we take turns”
“we can share”
“we hold everybody hand”
Well said Nursery!