November 16, 2020November 16, 2020 by riverside

What We’ve Been Up To

Babies enjoy squishing and singing!

Our littlest ones have been enjoying plenty of sensory play. This involves putting those little fingers to work feeling, squishing and smooshing all kinds of different materials and textures. Alongside touching shiny autumnal conkers and crunchy leaves, the babies have been playing with water and, a firm favourite, spooky slime.

We try to get out in all weathers and the babies have spent time in the nursery garden and being taken on walks to the park. Saying hello to and feeding the ducks is a source of much excitement.

To help the babies learn the sounds and meaning of words, a regular part of their routine is singing nursery rhymes and songs. As well as energetic bouncing, the babies love to shake rattles and sing along.

Things that go crunch in the night! The babies enjoyed touching the autumnal sensory play.

Toddlers get seriously spooky!

Our Toddlers loved dressing up for Halloween and playing in the nursery pumpkin patch. They also enjoyed lots – and we mean lots – of spooky sensory play, including working their hand-eye coordination by picking up ‘googly eyes’, bats, bugs and other Halloween creatures with tweezers.

Other eerie activities included concocting magical potions, pumpkin carving and making Meg and Mog’s breakfast from play dough and shaving foam. Yum!

Role play is brilliant for sparking early imaginations and we have introduced a wide range of new dressing up outfits for the children to wear, from doctors and dentists to construction workers and scientists. To fuel their creativity further the children have been playing in the nursery’s pizza and ice cream parlour whipping up delicious treats for everyone.

In arts and crafts the children have been making and painting sparkly firework paintings. They also created numerous red poppies to mark Remembrance Day.

Reuben and Millie’s amazing Pumpkin

Olivia enjoying all the spooky shenanigans

‘Wing of bat, eye of newt…’ our magical potion ingredients

Our wicked witch sensory play

Our Remembrance Day poppies

Getting a pizza the action – the children’s pizza parlour

Pre-Schoolers carve pumpkins and practise computer skills

As ever the pre-school room has been a hive of activity these last few weeks. As well as scooping out scary pumpkins and harvesting the nursery pumpkin patch, the children have been drawing, colouring and painting pictures. This included an impressive array of Remembrance Day poppies and sparkly rockets for our November display board.

Practising handwriting is an important part of our pre-schoolers’ development. Alongside working on forming letters to write their names, the children have been practising typing words on the nursery computer.

There has been a flurry of excitement around our role play area, which currently holds a pretend post-office. The children have loved playing postmaster stamping envelopes and sticking parcels. Just in time for Christmas!

With lots of energy to burn it was great to see Coach Abid’s Multi-sports sessions return to the nursery. The children had a lovely time outside taking part in races and hula hooping in the sunshine.