Over the last two weeks children in EYFS have been exploring the story Handa’s Surprise by Eileen Brown. This links to our current expedition, exploring all the different ways we can travel, as Handa is a little girl who walks a long journey to her friend’s village with a basket of fruit on her head. Little does she know there are some cheeky animals who pinch her fruit along the way!
An exciting activity was using all of our senses to explore a pineapple, mango, avocado, orange and passionfruit that feature in the story. Afterwards we created beautiful work by writing sentences about what we found out.
Then we had great fun taking part in an African drumming workshop. Steve from Unbeatable Energy used percussion instruments to retell an African folktale about an Anansi spider.
He then taught us how to play African drums by tapping along to catching rhymes such as ‘juicy juicy mango!’. The children loved making their own music and dance moves and then performing this to their parents at the end of the day.
A big thank you to the parents who came to watch our performance. We loved that you had an opportunity play the instruments too! It was an experience the children will definitely remember. 🪘🎶
