Picnics & People Who Help Us!
Over the past couple weeks the toddlers have loved exploring and experimenting both indoors and out. They had lots of fun exploring different jobs people do, starting with construction. Some of the toddlers made beautiful digger pictures using card and glue with Freddie saying “I made a big digger!”, whilst others enjoyed a construction tray with diggers and cereal for them to pick up, crush and move around. The tray also proved to be a bit too tasty as Cleo, Sophie and Oliver could not stop eating it while giggling with each other. The toddlers then enjoyed some role play where they were dressed as fireman to save the animals from the burning tower. Luco shouted to his friends “It’s fire!” then fireman Josh and policewoman Kitty helped to rescue the animals. Next the toddlers tried their hands at being doctors to the dolls. They used plasters and stethoscopes to check them over and make them feel better. Margot used gloves and a wipe to wash her doll, when she had finished she said “Baby all clean”, then all of a sudden Margot let out the biggest sneeze all over her baby and said “Oh, I clean it” and rushed to get another wipe.
The toddlers have enjoyed exploring the garden in the lovely weather. While doing rock painting in the garden, Izzy said “I like pink” as she was choosing her colour. There was also a rock cleaning station with water, sponges and toothbrushes, which proved to be a favourite area for Sebastian and Otto. T as the two of them had a great time splashing around in the water and laughing every time it got them wet. Continuing on with the theme of water play, the toddlers especially loved building the marble runs into different shapes and taking turns to pour water through each one to see where it would go. Otto. A stood on the bench to pour the jug of water and shouted “Look it’s there!”. When he saw it come out of the other end, he then turned to his friend saying “It’s you now” while passing them the jug.
The last couple of weeks have been filled with lots of fun activities in the baby room, allowing the children to explore their senses and develop their social skills. The children especially enjoyed sensory play with cornflakes, with Monty and Oliver using their hands and spoons to scoop cornflakes up and drop them back into the tray below. Harry used his hands to fill his bowl to the top with cornflakes and then knocked it over, saying “Oh no!” as the cornflakes all spilled out into the tray. Amelie enjoyed squashing the cornflakes instead, listening to the crunches as she did so and laughing each time.
In the garden, the children really enjoyed joining in with some mud painting, using the mud from the garden mixed with a little bit of water. Isla, Monty and India had lots of fun coating their paint brushes with mud and spreading it around on their joint piece of paper with good control. Ava saw how much fun her friends were having from the sand pit and decided to join in, grabbing the spare brush and adding to the group painting.
Nursery Growing Area and Colours!
Over the last couple of weeks, the pre school children have been helping out with the nursery growing areas. Zoe and Alba worked well at turning the soil over and Alba realised quite quickly, “This is hard work!” with a gentle sigh. Zoe was very amused at the amount of worms that they found in the process. Many of the children have absolutely loved the responsibility of being able to look after the areas, including watering and checking the plants daily for growth and the seeds they have sown to see if anything has started to grow. Each day Isla has come in to nursery, she has asked, “Are there any tomatoes or peas yet?” Zac picked up on this and one day when Isla asked, he laughed and said, “No Isla, we need to be patient and keep watering them”. The children have also been discussing what vegetables they would like to pick and eat with a roast dinner. Ari chose the carrots whilst Florence chose the green beans telling all of her friends, “They are my favourite, they are so yummy and delicious”.
The children have also been exploring colours and of the favourite activities was a coloured ice painting one. The most exciting part was clearly when the children found that there were dinosaurs frozen in to the ice blocks, giving them the chance to use the dinosaurs feet to do some painting. Charlie and Max were fully engaged making paint marks on the paper with Sophie telling them, “Wow boys, that looks so lovely and colourful”. Immy and Amelia had smelt the scent of peppermint in one of the blocks and Amelia said, “It smelly just like an ice lolly”, encouraging her friends to smell the ice.
The children also really loved getting messy whilst playing with the spaghetti rainbow. When Olivia saw the rainbow, she gasped slightly and said, “That’s a beautiful rainbow”. The best part of course was mixing all of the colours together. Alastair commented, “But now it looks like a silly rainbow”, which made his friends laugh.
Bushy Park and Horses!
Over the last couple of weeks the toddlers have been extremely busy, taking part in lots of fun and engaging activities, exploring the outdoors and getting their hands dirty. The toddlers had a great time digging up vegetables and doing a little bit of farming themselves with our very own farming builders tray. Sebastian got stuck in straight away and made his way around the tray collecting all of the baby corn. Amelie put all of the farmers into the farm house “They’re cold I put on the heating beep they warm now”. Luciano had fun peeling the layers off of the brussel sprouts and Jude used all his strength to snap up the carrots.
The toddlers explored senses such as touch, smell and taste when playing with this activity and they had the best time. Getting out and about for a day, the toddlers went on a trip to Bushy Park. They hopped into the buggies and off they went. As the toddlers were out for the whole morning, we took snack and a blanket and had a picnic style snack on the grass which they enjoyed very much. Jasper found a stick so big that he had to recruit his friends to help lift it. Cleo used all her might and gave an almighty “Uurgh” as she lifted one end. They continued exploring and come across some huge logs and ran straight over to them. They climbed over and under, sat on and jumped off the logs, all whilst sharing this fun moment together with their friends. On the way back from Bushy Park the toddlers stopped off and admired the amazing Hampton Court Palace. Sophie pointed to the roof in excitement and notified her friends on what she’d seen “A witch” and after a discussion about witches she then exclaimed “A dragon” which Margot repeated “A dragon up there”.
Back at nursery, the toddlers have been having huge amounts of fun spending lots of time in the garden. The toddlers put on their builder hats and got to work driving the diggers around in the sand and moving one pile to another. Amelie took it upon herself to go and get a tool in order to make her job easier. She realised that using the digger was taking too long to scoop up the sand and so used the tool instead. She said “I’ve got big spade to pick up sand now”. The other toddlers soon copied this great idea!
The new foam bricks have been a huge hit with the toddlers who have been stacking them up as high as they could and knocking them over. Kitty and Sophie were working together to build the tower. As one was balancing the bricks, the other would say, “Oh careful, it wobbly” and laugh aloud when it was knocked down.
The under two’s have really embraced exploring the outside environment over the past couple of weeks as the lovely spring weather has arrived. As well as enjoying spending plenty of time free flowing in the new outside garden decking area, they have also spent long periods of time out on walks around the nursery grounds and even venturing off to the river.
Whilst out on one of the walks, the babies had the opportunity to watch a large boat being offloaded in to the river. This completely fascinated the little ones. They watched in amazement as Isla very loudly called out, “Boat, boat”, whilst shaking her arms and legs with excitement. As the boat made a splash in to the river, Harry giggled and said, “Uh oh”. At the end of the walk, the children sat down on the grass to have a relaxing picnic snack. Eva was very amused that the ducks were approaching them and was really laughing as the ducks got closer. She then continued to make duck gestures at them and her friends, using her hands.
Outside in the garden, the children were very engaged in a bubbly water activity. Matilda and Gabriel were pushing the balls around the water and watching intently as the bubbles were being moved around the tray. Matilda picked up the balls and was then dropping them back in to the water, very quickly realising that she was making splashes. This really made Ava giggle was she was sitting back, intrigued what her friends were up to.
