Autumn Gathering!
It was fantastic to see such a big turnout for this years Autumn parent get together. We hope you all enjoyed the chance to come in to the nursery and meet and chat with each other. The preschool room was very busy, with lots of activities on offer inside and out for children and parents alike. It was wonderful to see the children showing off their nursery to their parents and taking them to play with what was on offer. Margot had lots of fun playing with the play dough with her mummy, using the cutters to make many different shapes, whilst Sadie enjoyed sharing stories with her Mummy and baby brother in the book corner. Outside; Finley A had lots of fun taking his Mummy on a bear hunt along the nature trail at the back of the garden.
The toddler room was rather busy with the toddlers being very excited to show their Mummies and Daddies where they spend their day as well as all of their favourite toys. Monty and Blair impressed their Mums by showing them how they independently washed their hands after getting covered in play dough. The room was also filled with children who are no longer toddlers, wanting to take a trip down memory lane and explore their old room! The majority of the children were more interested in playing in the garden, taking their parents on a tour and of course, investigating the food table! Phoebe was very keen to show her Mum where the cake table was and indulged in what seemed to be her favourite treat!
The Autumn Social is a very exciting time for the Under 2s as they use the free flow to their advantage and explore the other rooms! Max, Santiago and George all swiftly made their way into the toddlers room, pulling themselves up onto the climbing frame amazed at the size of it. George proudly showed his climbing skills on the frame as well as pointing over at each of his friends who were dotted around the room. Children and parents from the other rooms entered to come and play too. Florence quickly spotted her younger brother Finley, and took his hand and led him all the way through to Preschool so she could show him where she plays all day. It was wonderful to see the under 2s playing with their parents and exploring the big garden; Santiago enjoyed running around with his Mummy following close behind as he explored more of the garden.
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.
