At The Court House we have been looking at healthy eating recently. We have extended this in the Baby Room to include one of our favourite core books – ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’! We have been reading this book through the week and discussing how we need to have a balanced diet to support our bodies to have energy and help us grow. This very quickly moved to the role play area as we have been looking at our food within this area and feeding our role play babies. Josie saw this opportunity to engage the children in making playdough in all of the colours – making this a learning experience for mathematics in the EYFS as we discuss shape, space, and measure as well as colour. The babies did a fantastic job at having their own ideas when adding labels to the colours and had ‘a go’ with language as set out in the Characteristics of Effective Learning and Communication and Language in the EYFS.
We started by adding our pre-measured ingredients to the bowl whilst discussing how much of each ingredient we had. We then combined all of our dry and wet ingredients before stirring in food colouring to make our different foods. After the playdough had come together, we set out a tray with some of the foods made from the playdough to represent those in the book and the children had a sense of achievement as they recognised this was something they participated in to get the end result. The children had a great time using their senses to explore the playdough, as they used different movement with their fine motor skills to poke, prod, and roll the dough – all supporting their physical development. We have enjoyed experimenting with colour as we mix the playdough and can’t wait to see what creations and colours the babies create next!
