Wet Walks & Sunny Sand Play!

The pre school children have continued to enjoy exploring the nursery grounds over the last couple of weeks. Even on a rainy day, the children set out to find some puddles, looking for the “The biggest puddles we could find” as referred to by Luna. Whilst getting ready for the walk, Max asked his friends, “On our walk, when we look for puddles, do you think there might be some ducks in there?” When Max realised that his friends looked a little confused, he started to laugh and reminded them, “Remember there was ducks in the big puddles on the big field”. A couple of the children remembered and started to recall the story, “Oh yes, remember we were splashing in the puddles with the ducks and geese!”.

Whilst out on the walk, it didn’t take long at all to find some big puddles and the children couldn’t wait to stomp through them, giggling as the water splashed everywhere. Some of the children decided to make their own fishing rods with sticks they had collected on the way and Tom used his to make swirling patterns in one of the puddles. This peeked the interest of his friends, some of who copied the motions that Tom was making and other moving their sticks up and down whilst watching the ripples form around the sticks. Rowan had collected some small stones and very gently tossed one in to the water, watching closely as they hit the surface. He called his friends over, “Guys look! When the stones land in the water, they make circle shaped ripples!”. Rowan showed his friends exactly what he meant, whilst reminding them, “Remember not to throw the stones, you just need to gently drop them”. All the children loved having a go with this, taking turns at dropping stones in the puddles.

The children have also really embraced the warmer weather and taken the opportunity to engage in lots of water play based activities. Alfie had collected some sand and placed it in careful lines along the outsides of the water flowing trays and told his friends, “If you make it tall enough, the water will go down the middle”. This piqued the interest of quite a few children who were soon enough all helping to make water dams. Caiden started to collect some bark where he could see the water was slightly seeping through the sand and made an extra barricade. When Madan asked him curiously, “Why did you put that there?” Caiden explained, “It’s because the fish can’t escape, they need to make it down to the bottom of the ocean”. Youcef loved playing with the crabs, pretending to snip his friends and giggling, “Be careful of your fingers!”. 
A Small group of children went to the supermarket to buy some fruit and vegetables this week. They were very excited to choose, weigh and pay for the produce, and even more so to cut and share with the group when they returned.