Story Sacks & Colourful Adventures!

The toddlers have been thoroughly enjoying looking at story sacks recently, in particular the ‘Gruffalo’ and ‘Night Monkey, Day Monkey’. When given the choice of all of the story sacks, Maximilian immediately shouted out “GRUFFALO!” and picked up the Gruffalo character from out of the bag. As the story began, each of the children held the character of their choice in their lap, with Maximilian holding up his Gruffalo again as it made an appearance in the story. Margaux looked through some of the other characters and began making animal sounds, with a “Twoooo” as she held up the owl and a “Ssssss” as she pointed to the snake, even repeating some of their names. The next story chosen was ‘Night Monkey, Day Monkey’ and this story sack was a little bit different, as the children were able to add each of the characters to a story board as they made an appearance. To start with, Sienna asked to put the first monkey character on and after carefully taking her time to place it on she leaned in, pressing her cheek against the monkey while saying “Cuddle”. Cora was up next and attached the bats with a proud smile, while Leo attached the ‘banana shaped moon’ with the comment “Banana in the sky!”.

Outside, the children have been loving the construction area and have enjoyed using the tools throughout the garden. Joseph packed up his tool box and took it to the sand pit where he grabbed a digger which he used to scoop up sand, “I building a house for my friends!”. Leo then began using a truck to do the same thing, digging a big hole to the bottom of the sand pit. Rafe and Arlo used the tools over at one of the tables to build aeroplanes, Arlo commented “I making a big big aeroplane like the one I flied in the sky” referencing paper airplanes he had played with earlier.

Over the last couple of weeks, the under twos have had a wonderful time exploring lots of bright and colourful activities and even learning some colours themselves. They have also been on a trip around the world, from the Arctic to the sunny desert, to see what animals they could find. Inside, the children took part in a sensory activity that included animals in shredded paper. The children took a huge interest right away and began to investigate the shredded paper. Leonardo began picking up huge handfuls of the paper and dropping it on his head, laughing with excitement, whilst Zachary sat himself down, right in the middle of the activity and played with the animals. Although the paper was I intended to be hay, the children began lifting handfuls of it and sprinkling it down onto the floor. Phoebe gasped and said, “Wow, snow!”. With that, she laid herself down, spread out her arms and legs and began making a ‘snow angel’. Her friends found this very funny and all joined in.

Whilst out and about on daily walks, the children have thoroughly enjoyed their trips around the Imber court grounds on their own little adventures, whether that be playing peekaboo in the play house of the playground or exploring nature in the fields. During one trip to the park, Sienna, Cara and Charlotte all head to the play house and ran inside. Each of them found a window, poked out their heads and began saying, “Hiya! Hiya! Hiya!”, as they waved their hands about. As they were saying a kind hello to everybody that walked by, Evelyn drove past in her Little Tikes car, “Beep, beep, beep!”, she said, as she waved back at her friends. 

Building Houses!

Over the last couple of weeks, the pre-school children have really engaged themselves in imaginative construction play and have spent a lot of time playing in their new construction area where they have the opportunity to dress up as builders and have their own tool sets to aid their play and build on their imagination. One of their favourite tasks is fixing the tree house. Otto and Sebastian offered tools out to their friends, with Otto offering the drill to Oliver whilst Sebastian shared his saw. Otto gathered his friends, “Come on guys, we need to fix the tree house, it’s fallen down again!”. Together the children worked hard to hammer, drill, saw and even used the rulers to make sure everything was at the right height. After measuring up, Tom suggested, “Maybe it needs to be a bit taller? Or shorter?” Otto laughed and replied, “Definitely taller, it needs to be 100 taller”. Oliver giggled and replied, “That’s too tall for me!”.

Following up from this, the children have also enjoyed designing and building their own houses using the wooden blocks. Sophie and India gathered all the blocks that they would need and Flo got going by putting the bottom base down, telling her friends, “We need to make the bottom bit strong so it can hold the house together”. Sophie reassured Flo, “That’s a good idea!”. Once they had the base down, the children all worked very well together to build up and once satisfied the house was tall enough, it was time to put the roof on. Finley, Margot and Sadie helped each other unravel the blanket to cover to whole house. The children collected some cushions and stories and took it in turns to read to their friends.

Exploring New Tastes, the Ocean & Construction!

Over the last couple of weeks, the toddlers have been focused on the book of the month, Handa’s Surprise, whilst also exploring all things construction. Inside, the children have really enjoyed reading our book of the month and were very excited to try some of the fruits from the story during a food tasting session. Arlo chose the grapefruit to try first, putting it to his mouth and immediately scrunching up his nose, “It so sour!”. Max was really enjoying his grapefruit, letting out a big “MMMM!”. Meanwhile, Megan was carefully exploring her plate; she put the avocado in her mouth and took it straight back out again whilst sticking out her tongue. Ethan picked up a chunk of pineapple and put it in his mouth; with a big smile he said “It’s juicy!”. Henrietta agreed, licking the juice from her pineapple and repeating “Yum!” after each lick. Gabriel tried everything on his plate, commenting “I like avocado!”. Finley and Cooper were giggling, dipping their fingers into the passion fruit and putting in their mouths. Cooper shouted “Like it!”. 

Outside, the toddlers did yoga on the decking with Sam. Rafe really enjoyed pretending to be a tree, swaying his arms back and forth with a big smile on his face. Arthur was able to copy all of the different poses even encouraging his friends to join in by shouting “Come on!” while Emily was very happy observing from the side with a smile. The children were each given a beautifully coloured scarf to use and Matilde copied Sam’s movements, scrunching it into a little ball then opening her hands and watching it open up like a beautiful flower. Matilde watched on with a look of amazement on her face before trying it for herself. Arlo decided to put his scarf on his head and while putting his hat back on and shouted “Look, I’m purple!”. 

Over the last couple of weeks, the under two’s have been on an adventure under the sea, exploring everything it has to offer, from the sea life, to the amazing colours, textures and sounds. They have also been focusing on their book of the month, Handa’s Surprise. Inside, the children took part in a sea creature rescue mission by saving the sea animals from the blue netted material. Charlotte, Evelyn and Phoebe were the first ones to approach and began to investigate. Charlotte bent down and could see something beneath the blue net and gasped, “oh wow, crab!”. With that, she found the edge of the netting and began searching beneath to get to the crab. Whilst rescuing the crab, she discovered more creatures further underneath and encouraged her friends Evelyn and Phoebe to help her. She pointed under the netting towards the sea creatures and said, “Look, look!”, again pointing towards them. Eventually all of the sea creatures were saved by our very brave under twos! 

Outside in the garden, the children have had so much fun in the warm weather, taking part in water play and building sand castles. One activity they all took a lot of interest in was our chalk board drawing and cleaning activity. Using the chalk to draw and the baby mops dipped in water to clean, the children had never ending fun, drawing on and cleaning the chalk board. Sienna walked over and began to draw whilst Leonardo approach and picked up the little mop. Leonardo was unsure what to do at first, so he plopped the mop back into the water. As he did this, the mop caught the chalk board, leaving very interesting marks which caught Leonardo’s attention. He pointed and said, “Oh wow!”. Leonardo dipped the mop in more water and moved it all around the chalk board in every motion he could come up with, creating such beautiful marks on the board.