Rain & Rockets!

Over the past couple of weeks, the preschool children have ventured up in to space in their new role play space ship. When coming in to preschool, Youcef noticed that the space ship was ready and stood mesmerised, looking at all of the tin foil walls. As he looked he whispered, “Wow”, with a big smile across his face. Once the children were inside the spaceship, Rowan was very eager to get the headphones on, offering a set to Lana too. Whilst they were attempting to get the headphones working, laughing at the muffled voices, Olivia got herself comfortable at the keyboard advising her friends, “You need to sit down now, I am the pilot”. Rowan giggled at Olivia and said, “But we aren’t in a aeroplane, you are an Astronaut!” Olivia smiled at Rowan and agreed “Yes, an Astronaut”. Lana, Amèlie and Alfie discovered the masks and put them over their heads and were using the spinning dial to turn to show Olivia the direction of where to go. Iris was encouraging her friends, “We need to go this way now”. Once the children were happy that they had arrived in space, Flo remembered a very important fact to tell her friends that the children had learnt the previous week. She reminded them, “Remember there is no gravity in space, we might float away, we need to be careful!”. This then prompted the children to recall parts of a Pip and Posy story book, explaining the difference between helium and gravity.

Outside, the preschoolers have seemed to have really embraced the colder, wet weather and have not been phased by this at all. Getting their wellies and wet suits on, Isaac encouraged his friends, “Look, there is the biggest puddle to splash in!”. His friends were of course very keen to join him and made the biggest splashes they possibly could which made everyone laugh and very wet. Over on the field, the children loved a football game, taking it in turns to let each other be the goal keeper and taking shots at the goal keeper. The children were very encouraging to each other, cheering on both the goal keeper to save the goal as well as the striker. Joshua and Jasper enjoyed their own made up game which involved throwing the ball through the hoop as the hoop was tossed in to the air. Again, cheering each other on at each attempt.

Space Exploration & Seasonal Ingredients!

Over the last two weeks, the toddlers have been getting stuck into all things Autumn. As the weather transitions, the toddlers have been able to watch the leaves turn orange and begin falling to the ground and have collected lots of leaves, conkers, pine cones, twigs etc for their artwork. In the garden, the children really enjoyed an activity where they used a mix of their imagination and real items to create soup. The children were given small root vegetables and collected the garden material themselves. Using pots, pans and water gathered from the mud kitchen, they began combining the ingredients to make their soup. India poured water into a pot and said, “I use carrot, mix it, mix it”, and then went onto using a parsnip. After the soup was cooked and cooled, Blair picked up a serving spoon and began offering it out for others to try. She held the spoon out and said, “Eat, eat” and “Yum!”. 

Inside, the children have been exploring outer space and engaging in exciting sensory experiences, including zooming into outer space. With the children’s help we had set up a sensory corner using blankets, netting and lots of glow up toys and lights. The children entered, sat down and we shot up to space! The children sang the song ‘Zoom Zoom’ as they flew about, looking at the lights and listening to outer space sounds and music. Oliver said, “Shhh! Listen how quiet”, as he calmed his friends down to listen to the space sounds. 

The last few weeks in the under twos room have been filled with lots of different art activities. The children especially enjoyed taking part in some berry painting. Finley loved squashing the berries in his hands and spreading the juices around his piece of paper; and even snuck a little taste of the berries with a big smile on his face. Santiago looked at the berries with a puzzled look, unsure what to do. The adults demonstrated squeezing the berries as Santiago he began to use his hands to make splotches on his paper. Rafe enjoyed squeezing the berries in his hand and watching as the bits squeezed out between his fingers and dropped onto the table.

Outside, the children had lots of fun with a scooping activity in the tough tray with pasta, cups and spoons. Max watched and listened as the pasta was poured into the tray and smiled when they crashed and crunched as they landed. Margaux had fun trying to catch the pasta as it was poured from a cup, babbling away as she did so. Sienna, however, enjoyed using a spoon to mix around the pasta in the tray and using it to bump the pasta; listening to the noises as the pasta cracked and smashed.

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.

Weather Experiments & Pirate Adventures!

Over the last couple of weeks, the toddlers have been very busy exploring different types of weather. As the weather slowly changes and we transition into autumn the toddlers have been looking into what this might bring, including both sunny and cold weather, thunder storms, hail and some environmental changes such as leaves cleaning colour and petals falling. The children really enjoyed a storm cloud science experiment that involved water, crazy foam and food colouring. The foam represented the clouds in the sky and each of the children got to drop food colouring into the clouds and watch them slowly descend into the water, acting as rain drops. Matilda was very interested in this activity and approached right away, picking up a pipette and squeezing out all of the food colouring. She then watched closely as it fluttered down and spread out “Look its falling down...more!” and ran back to collect some more food colouring into the pipette. Eloise stared with fascination as she let the food colouring come out drop by drop “Look its raining! I making rain on the clouds.”. Blair seemed to take enjoyment from squeezing out as much food colouring as possible and squealing “Ahh!” as it spread out across the foam. 

In the garden, the children have enjoyed making dens to protect themselves from the elements and sitting in make-shift boats to sail around incase of flooding.  Oliver dived straight under the blanket and said “I’m hiding from the wind!” followed by a gasp and shocked face “Oh no, it windy!”. Isla laughed at this and said “I hiding with Ollie” while holding her hands over her face. Meanwhile, Harry decided to climb in an upturned stepping stone with his big brother Alfie and said “We in the boat!” which started a beautiful rendition of ‘Row row row your boat’.

The under-twos have had a busy couple of weeks experiencing lots of different sensory activities. Inside, the babies had fun digging for treasure whilst exploring being pirates. Megan immediately went for one of the spades, digging around the oats to find the treasure buried underneath. With each piece of treasure that was dug up, Finley got more and more excited, waving his hands around seeing if his friends were also seeing the treasure he had found. Soon all of his friends were gathering around as he showed them the treasure that he had dug up.

Another activity that intrigued the babies was playing with “Parrot feathers”. They were all ecstatic when a member of staff threw the feathers up in the air causing them to float back down, landing on everyone’s head. George was mesmerised by all of the colours letting out lots of “Ooos” and “Ahhs” as the feathers fell down in front of their face. The little ones fully engaged themselves in to exploring a sensory sack full of lots of different textures for them to discover. Henrietta found a shiny blue one straight away, showing a member of staff that she could see her reflection in it. Imogen grabbed two of the textured squares and started clapping them together with a huge smile on her face, reacting to the noise they made as they came in contact with each other.

Outside, the babies engaged in their very own ‘Walk the Plank’ balancing game. One by one they walked across trying not to fall into the sea creature filled ocean that surrounded it. Santiago in particular loved it, a big smile was spread across his face as his friend Max cheered him on from the sidelines. However, when it came to Max having a go, he found it was much better to sit on the plank admiring the pretty seashells he had found rather then walking across it! One of Billy’s favourite activities was playing with the boats with the big bubbles in the water tray. He moved the bubbles out of the way letting out a big squeal as he found one of the many boats, lifting it up and letting the water spill out making lots of splashes as it poured back into the tray. This massively entertained Cecelia who had joined the babies from preschool to play with them. To finish the week off, the babies had lots of fun moulding some playdough with lots of different tools. Rather then rolling the playdough with the rolling pin, Santiago much preferred to poke it with the end of the rolling pin instead. Rafe saw all of his friends having fun and made a short appearance to squeeze the playdough and then waddle away laughing. He found this very funny and decided to repeat it multiple times, confusing all of his friends.