Imaginative Outside Play!
The preschool children have really engaged themselves in some imaginative play this week. They worked very well together outside in the garden to build a house with the large wooden blocks. This was instigated after the children had a group story time with the book ‘Room on the broom’. Finley had gathered some of his friends around on the decking area, asking them, “Would anyone like to help me build a house for the dragon?”. This instantly piqued the interest of quite a few of his friends who rushed over to help. Alfie collected some of the larger blocks and explained, “These blocks can be the bottom of the house so it doesn’t wobble too much”. His friends clearly agreed with this idea as they started to place the largest blocks around the bottom of their house. Rowan had carefully filled up a spade, which he brought over and placed on top of one of the blocks. When he noticed that Finley was looking at him inquisitively but Rowan reassured him, “It’s the cement so the blocks can stick together”. Once the children were happy that their house was built high enough so that, “The dragon couldn’t escape” as Tom suggested, they went on to place some logs inside their house and Alfie said, “I know! We can have a camp fire”.
Zack used the new guttering to collect and place them all on top of the house. After positioning them all in place, he then found a ball and tried to place it through the end of the guttering. He very quickly realised that the ball was too big to fit so went off to find a smaller ball. He brought back 3 different sized balls and him and Ellie set to work finding out which ball could fit through each tube. Max came over to join in with their play, asking, “What are you playing?”. When the balls were rolling out of the guttering and away from their house, the children were really laughing together and cheering each other on to collect the balls again.
Seasonal Changes: Exploring Autumn!
The preschool children have really been noticing the changes in their environment over the past week or so, which has sparked many discussions at nursery about the change of season now that we are into autumn. Whilst out on a walk around the nursery grounds, Rowan had noticed that one of the trees leaves had started to change colour. He took hold of Youcef’s hand and then encouraged Zack to follow, telling them both, “If you look here, look closely, the leaves aren’t really green any more”. Rowan gave his friends an opportunity to respond and once he noticed that his friends were closely observing the leaves, he called more of his friends over, “Look here, the leaves are lots of different colours”. Daniel was very intrigued and picked up one of the leaves that had already fallen and pulled it closer to his face so he could observe the leaf with a bit more detail before telling his friends, “It’s brown and green and even orange!”.
Some of the children had collected some fallen leaves and placed them in their pockets to take back to nursery and once they were back at nursery, they found a box to put all of their leaf collections in. Some of the children used the leaves alongside some other natural resources including logs, bark and grass patches. Sadie had added some magnifying glasses and was explaining to Florence, “If you put your eye close to here, and put the magnifying glass close to the leaf, you can see some lines”. Florence examined the leaf before telling Sadie, “Its very beautiful isn’t it!”.
The rest of the leaves were used in an arts and crafts activity. The children had cut the leaves in half, stuck them on to some paper and then used some mark making materials to try and make the same pattern and make it symmetrical. Luna was very proud of her work and seeing that it looked very similar to the actual leaf, she told her little brother, River, that they could take it home to show their mummy and daddy.
The children have new natural resource logs at nursery to include in their play in the garden. Sebastian and Otto had collected some of the larger logs and moved them over towards the tree house and piled them up. Once they were satisfied with their pile of logs and had gained the attention of a few more friends including Ada and Alfie, they went on to find the insect toys to add to their play. They were burying the insects deep in to their log pile and were challenging each other to find them, finding it funny if it was a little tricker to find the insect. Ada laughed and said, “It’s not in there, it’s too big for that gap!”. Otto had hidden one of the insects under the tree house and encouraged Sebastian to find it, “Look closely Basti”, whilst giving him eye contact as to where it was hidden. He let out a big cheer when Sebastian had found it.
Storytime with Yoga and Cosy Dens!
Over the last few weeks, the toddlers have been focusing on our book of the month ‘The Very Busy Spider’. By reading the book almost every day, the toddlers are becoming more familiar with the story. Everyone loved joining in, making the sounds of the farm animals that visit the spider as she makes her web. Whilst playing with farmyard animals, the toddlers enjoyed recreating parts of the story with the animals, with Isabelle asking others if their animals “Want to go for a ride?” with her horse. Before long, several animals were having a wonderful run around the farmyard together, with the children laughing and smiling as they played together!
Inside the toddlers had the opportunity to take part in a yoga class, where a teacher comes in and teaches them simple yoga poses using a story. The story began with a tree and so the toddlers stretched up high towards the sky, just like a tree and swayed back and forth when it got windy. Eloise encouraged her friends but showing how high she could reach, “Look how high I reaching”, she said. Gradually, the story moved onto animals and the toddlers got very excited, making their noises and attempting to walk like that animal. One animal was a tiger, India shouted, “ROAR!”, which made her friends jump and giggle.
Outside the toddlers have been using their imaginations and making boats using our stepping stones. They used team work to turn them over and hopped inside making sure they were singing ‘Row, row row your boat’ throughout. Isla shouted to her friends “Quick, you in the water now!”. The other toddlers responded, “Aa ha! Splash splash splash”.
Over the last couple of weeks the under 2’s have been focusing on animals as their main theme.
A popular activity was a sensory dig tray. Billy went straight over and found a toy horse instantly. Proud of himself he held the horse in the air laughing loudly, this caught his friends attention and they made their way over to see what the fuss was all about. Max started digging around seeing how many animals he could find while on the other hand Margaux was more interested in trying get to as much straw as possible out of the builders tray. More and more babies started to show interest in the digging, but Sienna found it much more fun to sit in the middle of the tray moving their legs around causing the straw to make a funny noise which massively entertained them.
In spirit of the book ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’, the babies also enjoyed exploring a “bear cave” that was made outside. They quickly crawled inside, looking up at the blankets draping above their heads as well as flopping down on the multiple cushions set up inside. Henrietta found a little passage in between the sheets which meant she could easily get in and out of the cave. This entertained her greatly and she repeated going through the passage multiple times getting her friends to follow her round the loop she found. Megan was most confused when she realised her hair was sticking up and getting stuck to the top of the cave!!
Inside the babies engaged in a ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ inspired sensory tray. They loved the little cut out characters, Hugo in particular loved the little bowls of porridge and pretended to eat them. Max very intently scooped some of the oats into one of the bowls and mixed them around to make “Porridge”. Meanwhile Finley and Henrietta were more intrigued by the oats being poured out from a height; delighted at the noise they made as they flooded back into the tray as they gestured for it to be repeated again and again even trying to do it themselves.
