What We’ve Been Up To!
Younger Babies enjoy our new sensory lights
The babies are enthralled by our new sensory light toys. Suitable for even very young babies, the glow construction blocks change colours when turned on their sides. There is also a set of light up cylinders containing beads which the babies love to hold.
Sensory play is a key part of babies’ development, helping them discover how different materials feel and develop fine-motor skills, such as grasping and feeling objects with their hands. We refresh our sensory play stations every day, giving the babies new textures to try. During the past few weeks, they have explored sand, spaghetti, and water with lots of toys to splash and squirt. One of their favourite sensory activities was rummaging for farm animal toys amongst tactile materials. Amoo-zing work babies!
Oakley says ‘paintbrushes are so 2022, this year it’s all about the broccoli brush!’
They also cooked up some delicious treats, including making and decorating Easter biscuits.
Older Babies search for mini beasts and babble to Moo Music
The older babies have been making the most of the sunshine by spending time in the nursery garden. There is plenty to explore but one of their favourite things to do is practise making marks using different items, such as chalk, leaves and water. They also love searching for mini beasts like woodlice, worms, and ladybirds. When we find one, we carefully bring it over to the group to talk about before setting it free.
The older babies get especially excited when we find a worm. This has inspired us to read the book ‘Superworm’, the story of a how a wriggly, squiggly superhero rescues his animal friends.
Lily creating leaf art in the sunshine.
The highlight for the babies is our Moo Music session. There is a different theme every week. Most recently Farmer Hayley took the children on a moo-sical adventure to the moon. The babies loved singing along to the bouncy song and doing the actions – we hope you’ve seen some of these at home.
Toddlers explore the nursery garden and paint with different materials (including mud!)
Our little explorers have been doing just that, exploring! This term they have been super busy in the garden, playing on the equipment, going on insect hunts (several juicy worms in the flower beds were spotted) and discovering patterns you can make with mud and sponges.
Learning through play is what our toddlers do best. To spark their imaginations, they have been hunting through sensory trays to hook out and name different shapes. They have also started learning the numbers one to ten by tracing them.
The toddlers all agree though that painting is one of their best pastimes. During the last few weeks, they’ve created some enchanting masterpieces – decorating mini beasts, painting with mega blocks and, of course, colouring in their magnificent coronation crowns.
Digging for wriggly worms – lovely work Axel!
No day at nursery is complete without a spot of singing, and one game that tickles our toddlers repeatedly is ‘what’s in the bag?’. The game involves taking turns picking a wooden spoon out of a bag, each spoon is decorated with a picture of a nursery rhyme, which we all then sing with gusto. Our current favourite? Incy Wincy Spider of course.
Pre-schoolers get arty and learn about the people that help us
Our pre-schoolers have been creatively inspired over the last few weeks. Activities include making animals out of clay, re-creating Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night painting, and making symmetrical butterflies.
We have also been learning about different work roles, in particular about the people that help us, like the police, doctors and dentists. Alongside dressing up in role play outfits, we have talked about what the people do. Our pre-schoolers were excited when PC David came to talk to us about what it is like being a police officer. He even let us peek in his police car too!
Sensory play is high on the list of our pre-schoolers’ fun things to do. As well as using tweezers to extract shapes out of the water tray (splashy and educational too), they have been mining dinosaur bones from salt dough rocks, and fishing out under water creatures from a sea of shaving foam.
Our big tweeze sensory play – picking up the feathers is fun.
School children get ready for primary school
We can hardly believe it, but our school children will be putting on their backpacks and heading off to school in September. This term, they have been busy learning key skills they need through our unique pre-school learning programme.
The programme encompasses elements such as Jolly Phonics (a fun method of teaching children to read and write using sounds and actions), learning to recognise and recite numbers, and writing their own name.
They have also been mastering pencil control using the ‘froggy legs’ technique. This involves holding the pencil between the thumb and first finger and making the knuckle move in and out like a frog’s legs. The children responded really well, and we were impressed with how many can write their full names.
Another aspect we encourage is building the children’s social and emotional skills. For example, being able to express and communicate their thoughts and feelings effectively. To support this, we have been playing games exploring our different emotions. We put scenarios into a hat and asking the children how they would feel, for example, ‘if your classmate spilled water on your painting’ or ‘your mum cooked your favourite dinner’. This helps the children learn how to explain to others how they feel, and also see the world from other’s perspective.
It’s not all work though, our pre-schoolers have also been having fun making caterpillars from magic clay, playing PE games in the sunshine, and making up imaginative puzzles.
Don’t forget our pre-schoolers graduation day is on Friday 7th July at 3.30pm.
We look forward to celebrating this amazing milestone with you.
Noah, Edward and Romy making animals from shapes.
