March Newsletter 2022

March has been a busy month for all the children here at Blackberries, they have loved spending time in the garden enjoying the spring sunshine. The children have been having lots of educational fun learning about the season of Spring and looking at the changes within the gardens. Our very own Blackberries Garden Club has been started and the children have planted flowers in small groups discussing how we keep them growing as well as looking at different parts of the plants.

We also celebrated Red Nose Day and the children took part in a range of red-themed activities throughout the nursery and in addition the children enjoyed dressing up for World Book Day.

In our Baby units, the children have enjoyed lots of messy plays, using senses and incorporating the farm animals in their play. The children have learnt lots of new songs and especially their favourite nursery rhyme, Old McDonald. They have explored animals in sensory-based activities such as gloop, yellow shaving foam, edible paint, and green wobbly jelly. The children especially enjoyed creating their own versions of the animals in playdough and drawing and painting them. The children have enjoyed looking at the animals in different books with the staff and exploring the features of the animals they can see.

The babies have demonstrated their awareness to sound and begun picking up on new words and dancing along to the music singing to their favourite nursery rhymes, such as ‘Five Little Ducks’ and ‘Five Little Speckled Frogs’.

Our Toddler units have been exploring everything about animals and minibeasts. One of their favourite stories has been ‘The Very Lazy Ladybird’. They have enjoyed exploring the forest and nature garden looking for ladybirds and have extended this by counting their spots and looking at the different patterns.

Our Toddlers have also been looking at farm animals making animal masks, using different coloured resources to make the different farm animals. They have also been naming the features of the animals and making the sounds.

The children have also enjoyed learning about all different types of vehicles, how they move and what they are used for. The Toddlers were able to embark on a recreative experience in the garden, using loose play with adult support and some input from the Pre-School children to create their very own fire engine. They also used loose tubes and planks to create a boat race in the water tray to have a race against each other. This created lots of fun for the children and we were able to discuss and share their knowledge about boats and the sea.

Our Pre-School units have been busy this month looking at the Spring flowers and how they grow. The children have learnt how to care for the flowers and how they grow. The children then explored pre-cut flowers focusing on the details of the petals, using these to paint with and make marks on the paper.

Mathematics has also been a focus this month for the children, focusing on numbers and quantity linking this to what we recognise in our everyday environment. The children engaged in activities including how many stems were on the carrots, where they had to select a numeral and stick that number of stems on the carrot.  

The children have also been looking at different jungle animals, learning their colours and prints of the animals. Pre-School participated in a selection of Little Chefs activities which they have linked to the jungle theme, such as Jungle Ranger biscuits, animal biscuits and animal pizzas.