Younger and Older Babies Enjoy Outdoors
The long summer days are finally here! Our youngest children have been making the most of the sunshine and enjoying time outdoors. One of their favourite things to do is to visit our local park. Here we spend time spotting and talking about the local wildlife, including visiting a family of growing baby ducks.
The nursery garden is also the ideal space to enjoy sensory play. The babies love our mud kitchen, bubble play and, of course, sploshing in our water trays full of boats and squirty sea creatures. Our flower beds are alive with colour at the moment, and the babies particularly love spotting buzzy bees and butterflies.
Bubble play in the garden
Making potato prints
Indoors, we’ve been reading classic stories like The Hungry Caterpillar and Where’s Spot? as well as singing nursery rhymes like Pat A Cake, Pat A Cake and Old MacDonald Had a Farm. The babies have also been making prints with objects, like vegetables. All this play usually follows by a well-deserved nap!
Toddlers Become Curious Scientists
Over the last few months our toddlers have enjoyed a variety of exciting and educational activities. Highlights include doing fun science experiments designed just for them. We’ve been watching bubbling baking soda and vinegar volcanoes erupt and experimenting with mixing colours and creating a ‘rainbow in a jar’. As well as hands-on, these activities are great for sparking curiosity and discovering how materials react to each oth
Now the sun (and us) has our hat on, the toddlers have also been spending time playing in our nursery garden. We encourage the children to help grow and nurture the garden.
Vegetables we’ve planted together – and are actively growing – are baby carrots, strawberries, and scented herbs. Getting little ones involved in gardening is a great way to teach them about plant growth and how to take care of them, as they water and care for their seedlings.
Planting seedlings
Messy play
The toddlers have also been learning about underwater creatures and, to bring the theme to life, we created a cardboard of aquarium full of colourful fish. Well done children!
Pre-Schoolers Prepare for School
With September approaching, our oldest pre-schoolers have been busy preparing for starting primary school. We are exceptionally proud of how far they have come in the last few months and the raft of new skills they’ve learnt.
Under our school-readiness programme, we cover all educational and emotional aspects of starting school. This includes aspects, such as practising Jolly Phonics – a method teaching letter sounds to help them build words – recognising and writing their names and holding a pencil correctly. We also help them learn independence, for example, knowing how to use the bathroom, and putting their coat and shoes on.
Helping the children develop their own ‘sense of self’ is important for building confidence and feeling comfortable when starting school. Under the ‘All About Me’ module, we spend time encouraging them to talk about themselves, their likes and dislikes, and their emotions. This helps the children to communicate their needs in an unfamiliar setting, and take simple actions, such as putting their hand up to go to the toilet or answer a question.
Of course, nursery is all about learning through play, so all these activities are carried out in a way which maximise the fun factor. Playing games, making cakes, talking about our families at circle time, it all feeds into being school-ready!
We’re so proud of you and wish you the very best of luck for the next chapter of your learning journey.
Graduation Day 2024
