Bocketts Farm Trip!
Over the last couple of weeks, the preschool children have been very excited on the build up to their trip to Bocketts Farm. The children have been taking part in many activities including engaging in imaginative play whilst playing with a farm animal set up. Ollie collected as many wooden blocks as he could possibly carry from one side of the garden to the other and started to build a little den for the animals. Tilly was intrigued and asked Ollie, “What are you making now Ollie?” To which Ollie went on to explain, “I have already made some houses for the horses but these animals need shelter from the hot sunshine, so I need to make a den to keep them safe”. This very quickly gained the attention of many others who all worked together to help make various home for different types of farm animals.
The children have also enjoyed a matching animal game where they were pairing the offspring to the adults. India found the piglet picture and instantly placed it with the pig, whilst Cora correctly identified that the kid was to match with the goat. When the children were satisfied that all of the animals were correctly together, they then enjoyed a phonics session, learning the first letter of all of the animals. When learning that a babies horse was called a foal and pronouncing the sound ‘F’, Francis excitedly called out, “F is for my name and Freddie and Finley!”.
On the day of the farm trip, the children were so excited about the whole day, but mostly about the tractor ride. As soon as the fun adventures of the coach were over, with many songs sung on the way, we arrived at the farm and the children were keen to see where we were going to have lunch. Gabriel straight away asked, “Is it lunch time now?” Which made his friends laugh. The tractor ride was lots of fun for the children, all of them looking around almost in amazement at everything could see around them. When getting to the pigs and piglets, Joseph said to Joshua, “They are so cute and small aren’t they!”. Jasper and Margot loved feeding the goats their animal food and each time the goat licked their hands to get the food, they were giggling away. Sienna was amazed by the baby goats, smiling at them each time they did something funny. The coach journey home was much quieter after a busy, fun packed day, with many children taking a short nap before getting back to nursery and discussing their favourite parts of the day with each other during afternoon tea.
Wet Play & Exploring Smells in the Garden!
The toddlers have been looking at the theme of ‘light and dark’ recently where they explored light play with torches and light up toys, as well as light and dark colours. The children had a range of coloured paint on the table, along with some white and black paint, brushes and plenty of paper. Maddie used her brush to swirl through all of the colours, excitedly point to her creation with her brush, “Mixing”. Elizabeth giggled at this and with a brush in each hand began splatting the different colours, as she noticed them mixing together she pointed to a large spread of paint, “It’s big pink!”. Lucy scooped up a big blob of paint and dropped it in front of her and began mixing in white and black and with a big smile commented, “It’s colours!”.
The toddlers went on a tour of the back of the garden, along the windy pathway and looking into each of the bird houses, bug hotels, habitat crates and planters. As a group of them stopped at one of the vegetable planters Tabitha leaned over for a closer look and saw something crawling beside her, she shouted “SPIDER!” while pointing to signal to her friends where it was. Sebastian replied, “Woah it is a spider…. it’s alright, I like spiders”. Clara pointed to a tomato plant at the back of the planter and asked, “What’s that?”, Jenson leaned in close and tilted his head to the side, looking at it from all angles before stating, “It’s a tree”. Further along the trail, the children pointed out the pictures of a ladybird, worm, snail and slug before ending up at the herb garden. Immediately knowing what to do Skandar, Theo and Evelyn leaned in close and took a deep breath in through their nose. Phoebe joined them and said, “I want to smell it!” as she reached her hand towards a mint leaf. She gently rubbed the leaf between her fingers before letting go and bringing her hand up to her nose to smell, “Mmm it smells yummy!”.
Over the last couple of weeks, the under 2’s have been exploring the pipe wall in the garden with a range of items including balls, water, and cars! Freya approached and picked up one of the balls, whilst Zavier observed for a short while before also approaching and letting out a little ‘Ooo’ as he curiously watched to see what would happen. Freya stretched up and dropped the ball at the top of the pipes, clapping her hands and watching intently as it began to roll down the tubes. When the ball reached a point where it got stuck, Freya gasped and nudged it forward to get it moving along the pipes again.
The under 2’s have also loved splashing around in the water to cool off as the weather has warmed up! Lyra ran over and jumped straight in, shouting ‘Splash!’ as she did so, whilst Lydia who was already in the water giggled along with her. Calvin ran over to join in with the fun, laughing as he scooped up a handful of water and sprinkled it over his friends, which made them all laugh. Whilst out exploring the grounds, the under 2’s were very excited to see the ducks come out of the river heading towards them. Lowen clapped excitedly, and began to shout ‘Quack quack’ as they began to enjoy the duck food. Isabella let out a quiet ‘wow’ and then clapped her hands with a big smile on her face.
Exploring Computers, Making Art & Finding Ducks!
Over the last couple of weeks, the preschool children have been engaged in lots of ICT role play since developing their ICT area within the preschool room. Freddie and Isabelle sat opposite each other, both pretending to type at their keyboards. Freddie looked around his screen to see Isabelle and started to laugh, before asking, “Are you busy doing your work too?” Isabelle giggled and responded, “Nooo, I don’t do work, silly, I’m just a child, I’m finding my name!”. Isabelle was able to identify lots of the letters from her name when looking at the keyboard. Cooper approached to see what his friends were doing and instantly spotted the numbers at the top of the keyboard and excitedly called out, “That’s 3, for me and there’s my C, C for Cooper”, whilst correctly pointing at the letter c.
The children have also been getting creative and using a variety of materials to help make some wonderful creations to display on the preschool display boards. Some children chose to make a 3d patchwork elephant for the Elmer display, whilst others chose the foam to make some bee pictures to develop the summer board. Arlo particularly enjoyed an observational sunflower painting. He was looking at the colours within the picture and carefully selecting the colours he would like to use for his artwork.
Whilst exploring the nursery grounds, Gabriel had seen some ducks swimming and got the attention of Joseph and Francis, “Look, the ducks are swimming, can you see their feet in the water?”. The boys all started to laugh together and tried to copy the ducks leg motions. Tilly looked to see what they were doing and said, “But you’re not a duck, you’re a human and we swim like this”. She started to show her legs and arm motion which made everyone laugh.
