Keeping Warm, Healthy Eating & New Textures!

Since returning to nursery after the Christmas break, the toddlers have been busy talking about how to keep our bodies healthy in the cold weather which includes wrapping up warm and making sure to eat healthy foods. Harry said “I got my gloves and my hat” during a discussion about what they were going to wear in the garden and Sadie said “I got my hat too, that’s funny Harry!”. Whilst exploring with fruit peelings in the sensory tray, Emily used a toy spoon and fork to scoop the fruits into her bowl, holding up each piece for everyone to see and squealing when they plopped back down into the tray.

Despite the chilly weather, the children loved being outside on their daily explorations, even being lucky enough to see the first few snowflakes of the year! Over in the mud kitchen, some of the children collaborated during a group cooking session with Isla, Phoebe and Joseph mixing at the table, while Blair ferried the mud to and from the tray to the table and Ava poured the leftovers into a pot on the floor. Phoebe announced, “We making biscuits!” and began stirring with her stick while Isla and Joseph repeated the sentiment as they too mixed and chopped with their tool of choice. A couple of the toddlers had fun racing balls with different sized ramps and guttering. Henrietta lined up her red ball and Edward with his blue one and they began rolling them down the guttering, Edward exclaimed, “Whee! So fast!” where as Henrietta watched on quietly before running after both balls. Edward then explained the aim of the game to Henrietta when she returned with the ball “It goes down here” while showing her where to put it.

Over the last week, the under twos have been exploring various textures. Max and Rafe were very inquisitive as they watched Kelly gather the materials for the activity. Max got stuck into squishing and squeezing some cornflakes using his hands, all the while enjoying the crunchy sounds. He was bringing his hands closer to his ear each time he was squeezing the flakes. Leo then picked up a spoon and was trying to cut up the Weetabix with it. This made the cereal spill on to the floor which made Max laugh and start to babbling at Kelly as if he was telling her what had happened. Imogen carefully used her fingers to press the cornflakes onto the table top between picking up handfuls and eating them. Rafe, after seeing what Imogen was doing, took his Weetabix, giving a big, cheeky smile as he put it into his mouth. Billy was watching from the sidelines but was very quickly tempted to join in and was soon enough getting involved with picking up a handful of cereal and eating it, and as he did giving a big smile.

The babies also explored textures through paint. Matilde got stuck in by putting her hands in the sandy paint. She initially had a bit of a confused look on her face but she looked at Callie as if questioning why the paint had a strange texture to it but was keen to carry on and particularly enjoyed making marks on the paper with her hands. George watched on to start, but after some encouragement he began to explore the different pots. He was dipping his hands one after the other, watching the paint in amazement as it was spilling out of the pots, before then tapping his hands on his paper. Cora’s favourite was clearly the blue paint with risotto in it. She spent most of the activity feeling around the paint, taking hold of handfuls of the risotto and showing her peers before splatting her hands down onto her piece of paper.