When we explained to the children that we wanted them to dip sponges into paint and water and throw them at the side of the Stepping Stone building, you can imagine their hesitant little faces. Naturally, we don’t go about our every day business behaving in such a way. However, as Katy Perry so boldly sang once…’You’re a firework…come and let your colours burst’. This is exactly what we wanted the children to do. And actually, we weren’t exactly asking them to throw paint soaked sponges at the actual wall, there was an old bed sheet and a football goal post involved also.

With this week’s theme being ‘Fireworks’, its been all about colour, shape and sounds which has opened up all sorts of wonderful conversations supporting the children’s development with Communication & Language, Understanding the World as well as Expressive Arts and Design. Learning that blending colours makes new ones, discussing the shapes and patterns that we can make and the differents types of words that we can use to describe fireworks has all been a part of it. We have also seen the children engaging in lots of physical experiences as they have mixed, thrown and flicked paint to create a beautiful firework sky, which has turned out magnificently. They have also been dancing to Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’ smash hit daily, busting out some truly snazzy moves to replicate the shapes and speeds that fireworks can make. Maybe you’d like to put the track on at home this weekend and have a TOTAL BLAST together in the lounge?

Sometimes things don’t quite go to plan. An activity called ‘Fireworks in Jars’ very quickly turned into potion making but was nonetheless insightful and again, opened up lots of opportunities for conversation. By mixing warm water, oil and food colouring (and in our case a whole lot of glitter requested by the little ones) you can make some beautiful shapes and colours and watch them inside of the glass. Of course, if you are 3 years old, what is more fun is to mix it all together and create a miniature tornado and watch it spin around!!! OBVS!!! We do believe we shall be finding glitter for weeks. It also seemed like a good idea to allow the children to peel their own oranges this week. It was all going well until a few eyes got in the way of the citrus spray. No harm was done however and it has taught the staff to give the children more opportunities to do things independently. They really enjoyed peeling the fruit themselves.

Going back to the bed sheet. We are incredibly proud of the result of this project. As you can see it looks like a real firework lit sky. Every stroke, splat and splodge that was imposed onto a forgotten and unused piece of fabric has turned it into a masterpiece. Quite frankly it’s a piece of art and worth millions. We have decided that Stepping Stones are to be the new Banksy. Let’s face it, he’s passed it (we think) and it’s high time he ‘stepped’ aside for us. Therefore, we shall be auctioning off the piece of artwork which has been signed personally by Stepsy. We shall be starting the bidding at 50p. All proceeds will go towards some new bed sheets for a certain individual who is still scratching their head…

Finally, you may notice from one photo, that it took a lot less convincing trying to get the children to paint the sheet than it was trying to get them to pose for a photo with it at the end!!! Figures! đŸ˜‰ We hope you all have the most dazzling weekend and enjoy any bonfire/firework displays you may be attending. We hope they will be BOOM BOOM BOOM, EVEN BRIGHTER THAN THE MOON MOON MOON! đŸ™‚