New herb garden and playing field games!
Over the past couple of weeks, the pre school children have been extremely interested in the vegetable and herb gardens. Alfie had noticed that some vegetable leaves had started to sprout through the soil and called his friends over to see, “Look, they are growing now, soon we can eat them”. Finley was intrigued by what Alfie was talking about and approached the vegetable patch, observing closely and showed Alfie, “But look, there’s even more vegetables growing”. This peaked the interest of some of their friends who came over to see. Tom suggested to his friends, “Maybe if we give them some more water, the rest of them will grow?” Alba then went on to letting her friends know which vegetable were what by looking at the pictures on the growing area wall. She told her friends, “This is lettuce, these are tomatoes and that one there is carrots I think”. Alfie reassured Alba, “Yes, look, there’s carrots” and pointed at the carrot picture. Ada then led her friends to our new herb patch telling them, “It looks pretty”. Alfie said, “It looks like where the bear goes on a bear hunt”. Finley noticed the lavender and was excited to tell everyone, “These are called lavender, I saw them when I went on a walk with my family”.
The children have also enjoyed spending plenty of time over at the field, enjoying picnics, football games, running races and aeroplane spotting. Sammy really loved a number game, throwing the large dice, then counting the spots and explaining to his friends, “Guys, however many spots you get, you have to do that many jumps”. Zac rolled the dice and they both counted together up to 6. Zac laughed and said, “This time I’m going to do 6 star jumps”. Zac then rolled to the ground and said, “That was hard work, my body needs a rest now”, which made his friends laugh. Some of the other children enjoyed a restful story time. At the end of the afternoon, Sadie, Charlotte and Rowan were discussing having, “A lovely day”. Sadie said how much she enjoyed herself and Charlotte and Rowan agreed, Luna adding, “That was a lovely day”
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.
