Our Duckling Visitors!
The toddlers were so very excited for the arrival of the duck eggs this week and even more exited to see one hatch out on the very same day they arrived! In the lead up to their arrival the children made their own pond pictures and crafted ducks with play dough, collage materials and lots of natural resources. They also got to enjoy the story ‘Farmer Duck’ at circle times, where they were able to investigate the story sack with lots of different ducks inside. A group in particular really seemed to enjoy a water activity with ducks, frogs, lily pads and bubble wrap frogspawn. A couple of children began moving their arms at a fast pace creating waves in the water, causing the ducks to move around on top of the water causing lots of giggles. As plenty of splashes ensued there were smiles and laughs as the some of the children began getting droplets of water all over each other. One child began balancing a duck on one of the floating lily pads, “Woah woah it’s going to fall off!”.
As the toddlers got to go and visit the ducklings while they were hatching there was excitement in the air and each child’s eyes lit up and they had cautious but excited little smiles on their faces as they approached. One child asked why the duck was still inside the incubator and once it was explained that we needed to wait for a friend to hatch out so he had some company she began telling her friends, “We need to wait for two ducks!” whilst holding up two fingers, “one more duck needs to hatch out!”. Another child kept looking from the duck that had hatched to the eggs that had cracks in before stating, “I like it!” with a big beaming smile. A group of children began getting louder with their excitement until a friend gently reminded them to not scare the ducks and held their finger to their lips saying, “Shh we need to be quiet!”.
The under 2s have been very excited to meet the ducklings this week at nursery and watch as the eggs begin to shake and crack, and see the ducklings coming out and fluffing up in the incubator. On their way to preschool to visit the ducklings, the Under 2s smiled and looked around showing their excitement brewing. A couple of the children were slightly hesitant when they first saw the ducklings, standing slightly back as they peered into the cage, but after a moment they carefully approached and began to point at them, curious as to what they saw. One of the ducklings opened its beak which made the children giggle. They overheard some of the preschoolers saying “It’s talking, it’s saying quack quack!”, to which the Under 2s began saying, “Quack, quack!”. They have also been able to join in with a duck themed circle time, where the children sang about Old Macdonald’s ducks on the farm, 5 little ducks, and reading through the book of the month ‘Farmer Duck’.
Whilst out on the daily walks, the children have been on the hunt to find some ducks in the river which they can feed. Whilst walking in the buggies, the children excitedly shouted ‘Duck!’, and ‘Quack quack!’ as soon as they spotted a couple of them swimming along. When the ducks came onto the grass, one of the children excitedly exclaimed ‘Hello duck’ whilst waving, which led to a couple more children also waving to the ducks as they approached. Once the children were out of the buggies, they all peered curiously at the ducks, with a couple of them crouching down to inspect them closer. When one of the children shouted ‘Duck’, another turned quickly and let out a quiet ‘Shh’, before a group of them sat down and watched from a slight distance as the ducks tucked into their snacks that the children had thrown them.
Sunflowers and Gardening!
Over the last couple of weeks, the preschool children have been observing the changes of trees and plants in the garden, which have rapidly grown as we welcome the warmer weather. The children have had the opportunity to plant their own sunflower seed pots to take home as well as planting some in preschool, which they have been very eager to see develop each day. After the long Easter weekend, there was good progress on the growth of the sunflowers which many children noticed as they came in to nursery and were eager to show their friends. These sunflowers will be planted in the new herb development area in the nursery garden when they are ready to be transferred and the children will be testing their maths skills and doing weekly measurements of the stalks. The children have been eager to water the vegetable and herb gardens daily and are very pleased to see lots of growth within the vegetable patches which has triggered lots of investigations and conversations as to where and how many fruits and vegetables are grown.
The children have also been very excited to welcome the hatching of the butterflies from their cocoons this week and will be getting ready to release them in to nature at the beginning of next week. The children have been doing daily counts of butterflies each morning as they come in to nursery with a small group of children quickly noticing that there had been 3 butterflies hatch over just one night. The children have been looking in to life cycles of tadpoles to frogs and ducklings to ducks as they await eagerly for the arrival of the duckling eggs next week.
The children have also been challenging their fine and gross motor skills by taking part in large and small scale threading activities. Many children were able to find the first letter of their name amongst the alphabet threading boards whilst others going going on the large scale threading board in the garden. The children worked together to pull the string through all of the holes and admired their group work once they were finished.
Healthy Body Happy Me!
Over the last week, the Pre school children have had the opportunity to join in with many activities to support ‘Healthy body, Happy me’ week. During group times, the children have been discussing the importance of looking after their bodies and how they are able to do so. Some of the children were suggesting which exercises they could do such as jogging, stretching, Yoga and even “Pilates like my mummy”. Some other children were debating between themselves which foods are healthy to eat and which foods are not so healthy. This quickly turned the conversation on to which snacks the children like to eat and when one of the children suggested a biscuit, another child reminded them, “But you mustn’t eat too many of them because they have sugar in them”. The children engaged in an activity where they were able to identify foods from the home corner that they thought should be in the healthy column and which foods belong in the unhealthy foods column. One of the children looked at the unhealthy column and suggested, “But it is ok if we eat those foods sometimes, we just can’t eat them all of the time”.
Throughout the week, the children have joined in with many exercise classes, observing the effects of exercise on their bodies. After a short spout of exercising one day, some of the children held their hands to their chest and laughed together as they detected their heart beat and how fast it was beating. Remembering a previous conversation, one of the children suggested, “Remember if you take a deep breath and breathe out, your heart will slow down again, that’s because you get more air in your lungs”. When the children followed these instructions, they were soon enough ready to get going again and again, each time detecting their heart rate when they took a break.
As well as many activities and conversations surrounding the physical side of our bodies, the children have been discussing their emotions and what makes them feel a certain type of emotion and then following up with what they think they could do to help with each emotion. The story book ‘The Colour Monster’ was used many times throughout these discussions where the children were able to identify a colour in relation to an emotion and letting each other know which colour they felt and what made them feel this way. The children were able to identify many emotions including happy, excited, worried and sad and listened intently to their friends when they spoke about how they felt.
