Ponds and Pondlife with Bangers & Smash

This Summer, we’ve been thinking about ponds and pondlife at Bangers & Smash!

Pond-dipping in the Mother Goose Wildlife Garden! © Kitty Pidduck

Kitty ran pond-themed sessions at regular Bangers & Smash nurseries, The Oval Montessori, Crystal Nurseries, Under the Willow, School Outdoors Dulwich and Purple Jay Nurseries.

She also presented Project Celebrations for parents and carers at Under the Willow and School Outdoors Dulwich.

Regular Bangers & Smash nurseries

Each week, regular Bangers & Smash nurseries explored songs and activities on the theme of ponds and pondlife.

Children and staff enjoyed:

• learning two new Hello songs (one for the first half of term and one for the second):

  • Dulce, Dulce (a Spanish song about rocking a baby to sleep)

  • Dipidu (a Ugandan song about saying good day)

• meeting a toy dinosaur called Dippy Doo and inviting him to have a drink from the ‘pond’ – a blue cloth spread on the ground

• looking at a book about pondlife, Ten Tiny Tadpoles

• passing a toy tadpole in a jam jar round the circle and listening to Kitty’s song, Tadpole

• thinking about how tadpoles change into frogs and singing:

  • The Little Green Frog

  • Five Little Speckled Frogs

  • Joey Is A Frog

  • At The Edge Of The Pond

• listening to children’s songwriter, Raffi, singing The Little White Duck

• looking at a toy caterpillar and singing, There’s A Tiny Caterpillar On A Leaf and Little Arabella Miller

• talking about how caterpillars change into butterflies and singing, A Caterpillar Crawled

• choosing children to take it in turns to wrap themselves in colourful patterned shawls and change from caterpillars into butterflies

• dancing with scarves like butterflies to Calico by Sarah’s band, Flook

• thinking of other animals that might like it at the pond and singing:

  • The Ladybugs’ Picnic

  • 1 2 3 4 5, Once I Caught A Fish Alive

  • Five Little Ducks Went Swimming One Day

  • I Had A Little Turtle

  • Horsey, Horsey

  • Goose Family (another of Kitty’s songs)

  • Here Is The Beehive and Busy, Buzzy Bumble Bee

• adding all the above animals to Kitty’s ‘pond’ and taking it in turns to pick one to sing about

Kitty’s ‘pond’ complete with five fish, seven ducks, twelve ladybirds (out of shot), one goose, one frog, one turtle and one dinosaur!

• bringing it all together by featuring all the animals in a new version of an old favourite, Old Macdonald Had A Pond

• dancing like dinosaurs to Walk The Dinosaur by Was Not Was

Under the Willow and School Outdoors Dulwich

On Wednesday 3 June, Under the Willow and School Outdoors Dulwich brought their termly projects to a close with Project Celebrations for parents and carers.

Staff and children presented songs and activities on the theme of Transformations about animals that change when they grow.

Children at School Outdoors Dulwich loved flying round the log circle like butterflies!

School Outdoors Dulwich performed in their log circle as one big group while Under the Willow split into three smaller groups – babies, toddlers and preschoolers.

Each performance was special but highlights included children changing from frogspawn into tadpoles into frogs in Joey Is A Frog and flying round the circle like butterflies in There’s A Tiny Caterpillar On A Leaf.

Oval Montessori Garden Party

And finally, Kitty was delighted to be invited to the Oval Montessori’s annual Garden Party on Tuesday 7 July.

Everyone had a brilliant time dancing to a Brazilian band and the children loved playing along on claves and shaky eggs!

Starting the new school year with Bangers & Smash

We hope you enjoyed the Summer holidays and look forward to seeing you in September for the start of the new school year!