This week saw the start of the counting down to Easter; this was done in a variety of two ways; namely singing and baking and then more singing! All wholly beneficial to the soul! 

In circle the children have begun to now sing about Isaac Newton, Marie Curie and, of course, Archimedes. Tim has written a catchy little number we call the ‘Science Song’ and our children refer to it as the ‘Eureka! /Apple on Isaac  Newton's head’ song. We have five little ducks with a usually loud quacking mother duck as well as singing for the whereabouts of the Muffin Man. We find him by passing a hat around the circle –much like pass the parcel – and whoever has the hat when the song ends is the muffin man! The children play this in a variety of ways; some are suspicious of the Muffin Man hat and ignore it, don’t want to touch it or have anything to do with it, others play the game and pass it on happily, and a few eagerly grab it and then attempt to style it out singing with gusto, not passing it on and then crowning themselves the Muffin Man when the song ends!… Will be interesting to see how it all goes in our Spring Term singing circle this coming Thursday…

Another  preparation for Easter came during baking when the children donned their newly sewn gingham aprons, courtesy of Anna, and set about making rice crispie chocolate nests. They were all very excited and what was impressive was their self restraint in not munching as they made! They popped some chicks in the nests, one child confirming ‘but we won’t eat the chicks’ and were very delighted when there was enough mix to make two each! They didn’t last long as they were tucked into at pick up time whilst going out of the gate. 

And finally to The Music Fun Day! Tim has been wanting for a while to do an event, not only to promote the nursery but also something that all parents, current and old can enjoy… and so the Music Fun Day became a thing! Very exciting and as the name says fun fun and even more fun! Tim was able to pull together some stellar, and hugely accomplished, musicians and the band played for 2 sets of about an hour. All who attended enjoyed the day and the resounding consensus was that the music was simply fantastic; not only were there were the standard nursery songs – such as 'Wind the Bobbin Up’ and ‘If you’re Happy and you Know it’ and a delightful version of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little star’ when full audience participation happened but also there were numbers like ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’, ‘We all live in a Yellow Submarine’ and ‘I’m the King of the Swingers’ (from Jungle Book). The richness of the music was appreciated and the band are already thinking about the next event! Roll on the festival! 

We began the week meeting up again with Archimedes who we discovered was quite the bright spark! He loved circles and spheres and best of all he liked to measure anything he could about them.

So! We took a few leaves out of Archimedes books and wondered how we would  measure round our heads and we were to call this the circumference just like Archimedes had done. The children suggested using a ruler but it wasn’t bending so we used to string to measure round our heads and then the ruler to work out how many centimetres. We had no shortage of volunteers and the children enjoyed seeing who had the biggest head and how the circumferences of our heads all compared to one another; interestingly enough there was only a few centimetres between the biggest child’s head and the adult heads. Hmmm... interesting! We speculated that this was because we are born with such large brains and would you believe it?! – clearly inspired by the genius of Archimedes, we looked it up and we were right; By 2 years of age the child’s brain is nearly 2/3rds of the size of the adult brain. This aptly brings us to fractions – another one of Archimedes' loves and of course Pi (but that would be confusing!).
 
We played around with fractions and named them, and also filled the cup up to a quarter, a third, a half and then full. We also added the stones to the water and measured in fractions how much the water was displaced. So much fun!!

And at the end of the week we had a real treat. On the eve of St Patrick’s Day we were joined in circle by a couple of Irish Dancers. They did some reels, danced with the children and then merrily jigged an exit! Some of the children tried on the very bedazzling orange dress too. The conclusion from one boy was that it was ‘too heavy and itchy’ to wear all the time!

This is Archimedes! We have been learning about him and his principle of water displacement. And the children absolutely delighted in putting him in the bath, and also putting blue stones in our pint glass with the black marker. Each time we did this over the week there was intense interest, anticipation and laughter as Archimedes splashed in the bath and water spilled out of the bath. And the stones made the water rise higher passing the black marker drawn on the pint glass.

And the icing on the cake? ‘Eureka! Eureka! Eureka!’ Everyone cheered! 

During the week one girl came up to me and said ‘Fawzia... when I got into the bath last night the water rose all the way up to the ‘lollipop’ in the bath.’
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I asked her to tell everyone in circle, and then followed up with the question, ‘why did the water rise up?’ 
One boy immediately answered, ‘water displacement.’ Brilliant!