St Mary's House Visit

The children went to visit St Mary's house to visit the elderly residents this week. They took a variety of activities to share with the ladies there. On arrival Emily waved to everyone and said "Hello, hello!" as she walked along which made all the ladies smile. Douglas was very eager to show everyone his drawing skills, and the children handed out pens to the ladies in order to join in! Sami began to cheer "They are doing it" when he noticed that everyone was drawing along with him. William proudly gave one of the ladies and a picture, he smiled and said "it's a duck" he then held his arms out to give her a great big hug. This week the children explored shapes and structures during their sparkle time. Ines placed shapes on top of one mother to build a tower, and giggled and said "All fall down". Molly began to name each of the colours she could see and stated to sing the rainbow song; everyone started to join in and helped Molly to finish the rest of the song. Zach picked up a shape and looked through the bottom, he started to chuckle and said "Everything is green, I can see green, green and green!’ Everyone found their own shape to look through this prompted a lot of laughter.

This week the babies have been exploring paint and the marks they are able to make. Jonny waved his hands through the paint, and every time the paint moved around the table he banged his hands on the table with excitement. They have also been exploring different texture from oats, foam and sand. Lyra began to fill her bucket up with sand using her hands, she then tipped the sand out of the bucket and kick her feet through the sand giggling away. Jasper used a spade to fill up his bucket, before an older friend helped him to tip it out into a sandcastle, with Jasper started over again giggling at his friend. When they were finished Jasper gave Hlenhaze a big hug. 

Swimming at Molesey

Some of the preschool children have begun their swimming classes, and have a great time in the lovely warm waters as you can see, having the pool to themselves! They gain water confidence and we plan to continue these classes in the New Year. They have also had fun with our new letter stones. They felt how smooth they were and explored the various letters. Lily and Ida searched through the stones to find the letters in their name. Ida placed her letters in the correct order and copied them brilliantly. They also discussed the sound of the week 'Z', holding up the 'Z' stone. Lily said "Z for zebra!" While Sophie said "Zip begins with Z!" The children have also been hiding in their own den this week, using torches to help them see. They crawled under the table, taking turns as they went and used their imaginations. They pretended that a big scary monster was chasing them but in the den they were invisible. They moved their torches around, watching the light as it flickered from side to sides 

This week the toddlers have been very busy indeed! They have been involved in tea parties with one another. The girls have enjoyed having food round the table and the boys enjoy drinking out of the cups standing up. We also made a snowy farm with flour for the children to pour over the animals to make a snowy effect. This soon turned into making the staff look like snowmen which made the children and the staff laugh a lot! Tomas enjoyed naming all the animals in the farm "Horsey, sheep, chicken", and Ada kept shouting "It's snowing!" whilst throwing it in the air over the farm. The older children have been learning to count to ten this week and Sienna has loved joining in with the actions we created for some of the numbers. We also made yellow and green salt dough which the children enjoyed moulding into different things for example stars, gingerbread men and sausages!

The babies have been getting very messy and using all of their senses by exploring the jelly! We talked about the different colours and they loved to grab it and poke it fingers to poke it. the best part of course was tasting it! We also talked about how it felt cold and sticky and that it smelled like oranges and strawberries. Faris and Harry particularly enjoyed this activity, and flicked the sticky mixture all about! They have been painting using the cottons buds, dabbing them onto paper plates using their hands to explore paint further, and very interested in the marks that they were making. On one of our daily walks, the babies took some bread to feed the ducks. Harry enjoyed throwing the bread at the ducks laughing as they swam over to eat it!

Sparklers!

This week the children had their sparkler party. They spoke about how to keep themselves safe with Eve pointing out "You can't touch them". The children were very excited about using the sparklers and having a glo band in the dark. Molly spun around excitedly showing everybody hers and Douglas held his hands up and said "I'm glowing, I'm glowing! ‘ . During the event the children were fascinated by the sparkling lights and were quite eager for a turn. Xanthe smiled as she moved her sparkler around and Zachary made shapes saying "Circle" each time he waved the sparkler around. The babies also joined with fun, with Jasper smiling from ear to ear as held the sparkler with mum.

The children have been exploring the sensory room in the gloom inside, and used the light box to look at various shapes. The children moved the shapes along the box, Isla pointed out her favourite colour was pink and began to chant "Pink, pink, pink". This caused everyone to talk about what colours they could see and what shapes they could find. William held his hand over the top saying "I can see my hand ".

This week the babies have been collecting and exploring leaves. Lyra felt the texture by scrunching the leaves in her hand and smiling. The older babies threw some of the leaves in to the air and watched them fall to the ground. They then stamped about on the , listening to the crunchy sounds underneath. They have been involved in various sensory activities this week . Oliver used his fingers to poke the play dough and Abigail used her hands to explore the bubbles waving her around in the water to make a splashing movement. The more the bubbles moved, the more Abigail began to splash!