An important date for your diary:
Bank Holiday Closing May 2018 Please note that the nursery will be closed all day on Monday 28nd May. We hope you all have a brilliant break and for those with school aged children a restful half-term.
Here are some of the projects the children have been enjoying over the last few weeks.
Pre-schoolers Bake Off!
Our intrepid pre-schoolers have been cooking up a storm recently. So far, they’ve baked banana bread and created yummy Greek vegetable kebabs and coleslaw. They’ve also been practising their phonics, predominantly the letters S, A and T. The children have also had fun mixing water and oil, considering the effects, and then using it to produce groovy lava lamps. Finally, we’ve introduced our pre-schoolers to the bean game, which involves pretending to be a different type of bean. As the ‘bean grows’, we encourage the children to explore making movement with sound.
Great experiments!
Toddler’s Explore their Emotions and Pick up Pom Poms!
May saw our adventurous toddlers looking at their different emotions and translating them into drawings. For the practical among us, we also built houses out of various materials and construction blocks. We’ve also had fun looking at numbers in the environment around us – and when you start to look, you notice they’re everywhere! ‘Pom pom pinching’- picking up poms poms with a clothes peg and transporting them to the correct colour plate – has also been a popular activity. As well as good for developing hand-eye coordination, it’s a great exercise for building the toddler’s colour recognition skills.
Picking up Pom Poms!
Busy Babies enjoy Sensory Fun
Our little ones have been enjoying the ‘super sensory’ aspect of our nursery education programme. In particular, they’ve been looking at different things that roll, from fruit to toilet roll. Together we’ve created a fairy mud garden by mixing soap, water, glitter and mud to make a magical, messy wonderland. We’ve also helped the babies freeze flower petals in water and asked them to observe the changes as the ice melted. Self-portraits have been an important focus too, and we’ve been teaching the children to look at themselves in the mirror and draw what they see, resulting in some amazing images!
Clever babies!
A round-up of the children’s latest activities.
We’re pleased to say that our new educational programmes launched this week, and as discussed at parents’ evening, they promise to be a fantastic combination of learning and fun. The programmes are on display now in each of the rooms, so please come and look at the activities the children will be doing in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, here are some of the projects the children have enjoyed this month.
Pre-schoolers get creative, and muddy!
It’s been a super creative few weeks for our pre-schoolers. They particularly enjoyed making colourful decorations for our new Spring display board – feel free to have a peek next time you’re in. Sensory play activities have also been a big hit with our oldest children. They’ve been exploring a range of different textures and materials, including ‘mud’ car races, ‘flour’ Antarctica and our ‘feel-y’ farm with sand, straw and, you’ve guessed it, more mud!
Easter is always a fantastic time to encourage the children’s artistic skills, so there’s been plenty of egg painting and decorating galore too. While the sun shined, the pre-schoolers loved playing group games in the nursery garden. Firm favourites were traditional playground games, Duck, Duck, Goose and What’s the time Mr Wolf?
Our Spring display full of busy bees and butterflies.
Our pre-schoolers’ new number line.
The nursery’s building site is under construction! (Just like real life!)
Toddler Time
This month the toddlers have been freezing water and food colouring to produce some very ‘cool’ ice paintings. Gently preparing for the pre-school room, they have also been learning to write the letters of their name. The children are also beginning to explore assorted colours and have spent time learning about how to make secondary colours from primary ones.
Cakes are always a fun way to focus little ones’ learning, and we’ve baked and decorated some masterpieces this month to underpin our learning themes. Use of broad vocabulary has also been encouraged by asking the toddlers to describe Duplo towers they built and to compare the sizes of their structures. Maths continues to be a key focus and the children enjoyed playing counting and subtracting games we set up during free play time.
Practising writing letters
Busy Babies
Our babies have been trying out their new flash cards with great success. Messy mornings have also proved popular thanks to our sensory themed play, including splashing around with boats and sea animals in the bubbly water section. With the days getting warmer, the babies found bug hunting sessions in the garden great fun – although spider spotting wasn’t a high point for some nursery staff! Lastly, we went on an animal hunting adventure across the nearby savanna (Alexandra Gardens) where we had the best of weather – brilliant sunshine overhead and big splashy puddles from our April showers – perfect!
Babies enjoying some lovely messy sensory play!
The babies’ and toddlers’ latest work on display.
Our new educational programme is almost ready to launch and promises to be a brilliant combination of learning and fun. We will provide more detailed information about the programme at our next parent’s evening in April.
In the meantime, here are some of the projects the children have enjoyed this month.
Pre-schoolers prepare for Easter
What a busy bunch our pre-schoolers have been! This month they’ve been cooking yummy cheese straws, preparing pretend playdough food (delicious as ever!), and making Easter egg pictures with potato prints. Our pre-schoolers have also worked hard setting up and tackling an obstacle course in the nursery garden – an energetic activity which proved to be a real favourite! There has also been ‘spider shape sorting’, where the children used tweezers to put different arachnid shapes into bowls, and several Easter themed projects, including crafting Easter cards and making chocolate shredded wheat nests topped with mini eggs for their families.
Our Pre-schoolers’ brilliant Easter egg paintings and paper flowers.
Toddler Time
The toddlers have been busy making Easter chicks and on brighter days, building boats made of Duplo in the nursery garden. They’ve also been singing along and performing actions to their favourite songs and enjoying some wonderfully messy body painting! Our intrepid toddlers have also taken part in a balance obstacle course outside, as well as encouraging lots of giggles, this helps them improve balance and co-ordination.
Sienna’s pretty Easter Egg print.
Busy Babies
Our babies really enjoyed the special Mother’s Day event, which was lovely to see. They’ve also been making Easter cards along with other wonderfully sticky and colourful Easter-themed arts and crafts. This month has also seen the babies exploring sensory textures, such as, rough, smooth and hard, singing songs with actions, learning new words, playing with musical instruments and getting to grips with our new animal puzzles. Phew! Our busy babies really love learning through play!
The Babies’ fantastic Easter chicks and Easter nests.
Latest Educational Programme news, plus what we’ve been up to.
We’re excited to let you know that our new educational programme will be rolled out in the coming weeks, once staff have completed their relevant training. As highlighted in our previous e-newsletters, we’re providing the children with seven key stages of learning in line with the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework. The intention behind this new structure is to help the children develop their knowledge by reinforcing their understanding through varied and innovative approaches to key topics.
Here are the educational programmes for each child’s age group.
Educational Programme for Babies
• Babbling Babies
• Messy Fingers
• Super Sensory
Educational Programme for Toddlers
• I move, you move, we move
• Art Attack
• Fingers and Thumbs
• Toddler Talk
Educational Programme for Pre-Schoolers
• Jolly Phonics
• Let’s Get Physical
• Letters and Sounds
• Magical Maths
• Creative Stars
• Little Chefs
• Silly Science
• School Readiness (June – August 2018)
In the meantime, here of are some of the projects the children have enjoyed this month.
Pre-Schoolers in Action
Our pre-schoolers have been very busy over the past few weeks. Activities have included making Valentine’s cards, cooking biscuits (yum!) and making robots. They’ve acted out their favourite stories to the rest of the group and produced some fantastic wriggly worm and ant pictures, inspired by digging for worms in the nursery garden the day before.
Our Pre-schooler’s fantastic wriggly worms!
Toddler Time
Our toddlers have been having a marvellous time in the nursery kitchen whipping up delicious Valentine’s biscuits and decorating pancakes to celebrate pancake day. They’ve also been practising writing the letters which feature in their name and cutting out shapes and learning about each one. To top this off they’ve also enjoyed a teddy bear picnic and even been on an adventurous bear hunt. Busy times indeed!
Babies have the best fun!
What a fun month it’s been for our babies who’ve been making tasty cheese straws and rustling up some very sticky mud pies in the mud kitchen. Mmm, seconds for us please!
They’ve also been super creative helping us make our new Hungry Caterpillar themed board and making pretty Valentine’s cards for their favourite people (we hope you liked them!).
The babies’ colourful Hungry Caterpillar Display