New Languages, Foods and Music!

The pre school children have thoroughly enjoyed getting involved with role play cooking in the mud kitchen. They were pretending to make birthday cupcakes for their friends. Tomas had seen his friends mixing bark and mud in one of the saucepans and told them, “Hang on guys, I know what we need to make it better” whilst searching through the box for the cake tray. He placed it on the mud kitchen and Jasper told him “That was a great idea” and gave him a cuddle. After the cakes were finished, Tomas, Leo, Jasper and Ethan went on to offering cakes to many of their friends whilst singing happy birthday to them.

The children also went for a nature walk to observe the changes of the colours of the leaves that have started to fall from the trees now that we are approaching the autumn season. Sienna had noticed that one on the trees still had “All of its green leaves” but the tree next to it “Has got orange and red leaves”. Joshua suggested to Sienna “Maybe that’s because that tree didn’t get enough water to drink”. The children collected a whole bag of leaves and enjoyed doing sticking back at nursery with the leaves and feathers. Whilst on the the children found several mud piles and Jack asked “What is this for?” Monty went on to tell him “That’s where the moles live, they dig underground so they can stay nice and safe”. They then came to another big mound of stones and Ethan started to laugh and said, “That must be the house for a really big mole”.

This week, the toddlers had the chance to learn about the different countries their friends are from as well as exploring the different cultures celebrated by the toddlers and their families. To start the week the toddlers explored China, making yin-yang plate puzzles and playing with sticky rice in the messy tray! After exploring China, the toddlers were off to Spain and Germany where Sadie and Lana carefully decorated some flags using pens, glue and paints. The toddlers enjoyed waving their flags around at the ‘cultural’ disco and dancing away to songs in different languages. Sophie showed off her leg shake while Chloe jumped up and down. 

Outside, the toddlers had a go at countries native sports which included curling. This was made possible using imagination, brooms and frisbees. Tommy and Reegan tried their hardest to push the frisbees as hard as they could with their brooms however they didn’t go very far which made them laugh. The toddlers also tried table tennis and football which were a big hit. James showed off his kicking skills by running really fast and shooting the ball at the wall. Blake demonstrated great hand eye coordination when hitting the ping pong ball with the bat. 

Back inside, the toddlers explored tasting some new foods from India, Spain and American thanksgiving however they were luckily not tried at the same time. When visiting France, the toddlers had the opportunity to make their very own french baguette which they thoroughly enjoyed. Charlotte had fun squashing it flat like a “pancake” she said while Issac preferred using his fingers to make prints. To end the week of cultures, the toddlers learnt to say hello in all their friends languages, for example Spanish “Hola”, French “Bonjour”,  Punjabi “Sat Sri akãla”, Mandarin “NÍ Háo” and German “Hallo”! 

The under twos have been having a lovely time exploring different textures during messy play activities. Margot and Otto enjoyed feeling the paint on sponge rollers, squeezing and moving their hands to spin the sponge and make marks on the paper. The babies also experienced hand painting, choosing which coloured paint to dip their hands into. Youcef got very excited choosing green and brown colours, scooping up handfuls and smearing it all over the paper. Ada, Kitty and Freddie were a bit more cautious, just dipping their fingers in the red and yellow making a few marks and Otto made some lovely patterns. 

The children have had fun using musical instruments, Ada, Amélie and Margot loved shaking the rattles listening to the beads inside and also playing with the cars, picking them out of the box, spinning the wheels watching them move. 

Outside the babies enjoyed going for an early autumn walk, where they got to see some horses and a big tractor. They also, helped to feed the ducks beneath the bridge, holding on to some bread but not much of it got thrown in! When it was time to leave we said goodbye to the ducks and Kitty, Youcef and Sebastian all waved cheerfully. In the garden, Kitty liked taking the coloured pegs out of the board, Amélie was feeling the different treasure basket pebbles and Margot explored the wooden racing cars, trying to fit them into a wooden box.