Belly laughs, giggles and guffaws, we did it all on World Laughter Day! Making people laugh is so much fun! We told funny stories, *very* silly jokes and enjoyed some fun-filled performances on our brand-new stage! (FYI slapstick is totally our vibe). Not only does laughter fill us with feel-good endorphins it also teaches us about how we can spread happiness to others. Laughter really is contagious! See you’re smiling already!

Space was our next stop, as we channelled our inner Jedi and headed off to a galaxy far, far away…for Star Wars Day! We used the force (fine motor skills) as we moulded galaxy playdoh, messed about with moon sand and created super solar system bottles. We even headed to the kitchen to make milky way marble icing for our space themed biscuits! The perfect yummy treat for any intergalactic explorer!



 

Our fantastically funny book of the month - The Dinosaur that Pooped a Planet - written by Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter (from the boyband McFly), combined laughter and lots of lovely space related words as we followed the unbelievably crazy journey of Dino and Danny. After zooming off into space, Danny realises that he’s forgotten Dino’s lunchbox, and it results in a totally cosmic catastrophe! This explosive (?) adventure is not only brilliantly funny (total toilet humour that kids love), but the rhyming and vocab are out of this world! It’s a POD favourite for a reason! We brought our activities back down to earth a bit as we dug into some dino fun! We flexed our gross motor skills as we mimicked movements of different types of dinosaurs. We twisted like a T-Rex, tiptoed like a triceratops and ran like a velociraptor. We excavated dinosaurs from ice, rescued them from mud and made our very own dinos from craft items like glitter, sequins and sand. We also had roarsome fun making balloon print footprints and stomping them on to black card just like a dinosaur!



 

There’s nothing we love more than celebrating our little people, so National Children’s Day was the perfect chance to pull out all the stops for some extra-special feel-good fun. National Children’s Day is all about celebrating children, recognising their talents, and allowing everyone’s beautiful individuality to shine. This gave us another opportunity to celebrate each other and talk about what makes each of us individual, unique and special. We had loads of fun reading stories that promote kindness and working together in group activities that promoted inclusivity and friendship. It was a fantastically feel-good day!

The POD was a hive of activity as we popped our nature explorer hats on and learnt all about bees for World Bee Day. We headed to our spring garden to watch the bees busily collecting pollen and talked about how they use this pollen to make honey. Having found out that bees just LOVE lavender we got our senses buzzing with lavender-scented playdoh and used our garden kitchens to make sweet smelling perfumes inspired by the other flowers the bees visited! The bee-inspired activities didn’t stop there - we headed indoors to craft some bees of our own and talked about the oh so important role the humble bumble bee plays in our ecosystem. It was lots of busy buzzy fun!



 

May was filled with a dash of magic too, as we jumped into some fairy tale fun with Jack and the Beanstalk, the Gingerbread Man and Goldilocks! We counted our number beanstalk and watched it grow as we put the numbers in the correct order all the way to the top! We practiced our running like the Gingerbread man and worked on story sequences remembering all the people the Gingerbread man ran away from. Then like Goldilocks, we worked on understanding sizes and used new vocab that helped us tell the difference between big/large, small/little, full/half full.

We’ve had a marvellous May even if we say so ourselves! But June promises to be just as good as the POD gets ready for summer sunshine, water fun and of course lots of lovely learning! We’re already extremely excited!