On Friday it was the Summer Solstice, which is the longest day of the year. As a staff team at Mornington House, we discussed that Summer Solstice is an opportunity to let go of what no longer serves us, such as habits, relationships, negative talk, commitments and worry. It is also an opportunity to re-connect with people as we share the moment together and to connect also with our planet and to nature. We all wrote on a piece of paper something that we’d like to let go of and put all the bits of paper into a plant pot. We then burned them (safely!) to symbolically let them go.
The children enjoyed taking part in some summer solstice activities. The babies decorated a sun each and enjoyed playing in their garden in the early morning sunshine.
The Twos Room did some summer activities. They played with the sand tray, filling and emptying. They used some hay to hide and find insects using magnifying glasses and tweezers (we carried this activity on outside). We played with natural resources in our role play kitchen. We also did some painting using food colouring and water and we decided to use the colours we could see outside; blue, green, red and yellow. We really enjoyed mixing the paints together.
The children in Preschool learned about the properties of the sun, why it is special to us, how it can be dangerous, when it comes out and how it helps crops grow. They looked at pictures of Stonehenge and explained how people gather there at sunrise to celebrate the solstice. We introduced two poems about the sun and we went to the bathroom to wash our hands to the tune of Sally go round the sun (and changed the names to the children’s names). Happy Summer Solstice everyone!!!
Pre School Leavers’ Museum Trip