January fun at Hampton
Happy New Year to everyone! It has been lovely to welcome the children back, and a welcome also to the new children and their families. The children have been busy as usual! Oliver and Sophia created different artwork with lovely cutting and sticking. Oliver finished sticking and decided instead to make a game of rolling the pom poms off the table, which made Sophia laugh and she was eager to join in, and when one fell off Oliver said ‘Uh-oh!’ The children explored colour as they explored the peg boards and sorting dinosaurs, and Varun used the pegs and boards to make wonderful patterns. Meanwhile Zach and William used the dinosaurs and wooden blocks to make a lovely pathway through the nursery.
The Children have also played with some small world models. Jasper much preferred the cars playing with Lyra and Ines on a roadway and car park moving the cars around together, and when they crashed they all laughed and started to push their cars as far away from each other as possible, then rushing back together. Ines said ‘Look, we crashed! Hlenhaze loved the train track and spent a long time building it. Zayne came over to play and accidentally stumbled into and broke the track; however this gave the children a new idea, of racing the train around the track and when it fell off the gap created they would laugh and start again. The Children also went on walks, and on one in the park looked for different flowers pointing them out. They also spotted some tall trees, Alba pointed up and said ‘Ooow’ whilst Isla ran around babbling away. Eve and Xanthe spoke about the tree, and Eve said ‘I want to climb it’, Xanthe replied ‘Climb it? You can’t climb it!’
The babies had a good time on the baby gym. Bodie used the steering wheel to spin around whilst Jessie went down the slide shouting ‘Down!’ They have also enjoyed a light disco, and Emma loved experimenting with the light shakers as crawled around the room. Isla and Alba danced around to the music and Alba said ‘Blue!’ pointing to the blue lights. Well done!
Christmas parties and dinners week!
As this week is the last nursery news of the year, we wanted the pictures to do the talking! You will see all the lovely small group events in both nurseries to celebrate Christmas, which is always a magical time of the year for the children and staff team. There have been several parties with party games such as musical chairs and statues, pass the parcel and dancing with lots of smiles and laughter. A tasty Christmas roast lunch was served also this week and the children sat together very nicely, and sang Christmas songs afterwards.
Your children will bring home all the amazing things they have made in their Christmas bags which they have beautifully decorated. They also have a gift from Father Christmas inside which we hope they will enjoy! These will be brought home which you can treasure for years to come.
Thank you to those parents for your very kind gifts for the staff team which are greatly appreciated.
We all look forward to a more stable 2021 and to some sort of new normality, and wish you all a peaceful, happy and healthy Christmas and New Year.
Christmas is coming!
Over the past two weeks the children have been getting into the Christmas spirit! They have taken part in a variety of different Christmas activities, as well as reading Christmas stories and singing Christmas songs. The children and staff collectively have been working on a junk modelling project where they have made a life-size snowman. The children have decided to call him Snowy the Snowman and he is now on display in the window of the nursery! Whilst making the snowman Isla said “Hat, hat” rubbing her head as she helped to put the hat on the snowman, which fell off onto the floor. Alba said “Uh oh” laughing, and then she picked up the hat and put it on her head, dancing around the room !
Another activity that the children have really enjoyed taking part in recently has been Christmas themed stamp painting. We have stamps of Christmas trees, reindeers, stockings, and lots more, and the children dipped these in paint before printing them on the paper to make colourful festive pictures. The children have also been using our Christmas stencils to create pictures of snowmen using white paint on black paper to give a wintry effect. Ines said that she was a painter during these activities and that this is what she wanted to do when she is a grown up!
In the garden the children mixed up mud and water and used it to create their own mud painting pictures. They really enjoyed using the mixtures and Thomas decided to paint a dinosaur with the mud!
The children have been practicing their Christmas songs and have been great at remembering the words and some of the actions too; the favourite songs seem to be ‘When Santa got stuck up the chimney’ and ‘Jingle bells’. They have been listening to Christmas music and practicing their best dance moves to! They were very helpful and decorated the entire nursery with lots of tinsel, bunting and lights, and not forgetting the Christmas tree. They made many of the decorations , including some snowflakes and Christmas trees. Maxwell told us that ‘The elf comes to life at night-time and does silly things, he is always clumsy and if you touch him then the magic will go away!’.
