What a fantastic month we have had with the children experiencing fantastic learning opportunities. As a Childcare Group we celebrated Pyjamarama Day where we promoted the wonder of books and the importance of reading with the children. The children enjoyed wearing their pyjamas to nursery reading a variety of stories developing their imagination skills as they were excited to share the stories with their families.
As a Childcare Group we also celebrated Saint George’s day dressing up as knights and dragons, where our Pre-School children discussed why we celebrate Saint George’s day. Following on from the discussion all the children made their own shields and coats of armour using different collaging materials.
The children have also been having lots of educational fun through Gardening Clubs and they have planted fruit and vegetables learning all about how to care for the plants, understanding the important requirements needed for the plants to grow. The children are excited to see how they will grow, using their fruits and vegetables to cook in Little Chefs cooking club as well as promoting healthy eating throughout the nursery.
Our Baby unit have had a brilliant month using their exploratory skills to extend their learning of the world around them through sensory activities. They have looked at farm animals and they have enjoyed stomping their animals in a variety of messy play activities such as gloopy mud and mashed potato. The Babies have enjoyed tummy time where they have used their sense and their motor skills to reach for objects and they have enjoyed listening to nursery rhymes.
Following on, our Babu unit have been looking at the topic of ‘under the sea’. The children carried out a variety of activities such as painting animals and making sand pictures, linking this topic to the outdoor environments where the babies got to dig in the sand and had great fun carrying out water play, they loved getting very wet and splashing about with the boats, and reflective objects.
EYFS link:
Expressive Arts and Design – Exploring and Using Media and Materials – 8-20 months: Begins to move to music, listen to or join in rhymes or songs.
Physical Development – Moving and Handling – 8-20 months: Enjoys the sensory experience of making marks in damp sand, paste or paint.
Expressive Arts and Design – Exploring Media and Materials – Explores and experiments with a range of media through sensory exploration, and using whole body (8-20 months)
Our younger Toddler Class have been looking at different animals, naming the animals and making the sounds of the animals too. They have enjoyed washing the farm animals with toothbrushes as they were in a muddy field, which helped the children to develop their fine motor skills. The children have enjoyed their outdoor learning experiences and Forest School sessions where they have collected different coloured and shaped leaves and they drew around them to see what shapes and patterns they could see.
Our older Toddler Class have been busy with their project of Dinosaurs, enjoying a range of educational opportunities using the Dinosaurs to measure, collecting natural resources from the outdoor environment to create a sensory Dinosaur World for their Dinosaurs to live. The children have learnt which dinosaurs were the biggest and which ones liked to eat leaves.
EYFS link:
Understanding the World – The World – Notices detailed features of objects in their environment (22-36 months)
Mathematics – Shape Space and Measure – Notices simple shapes and patterns in pictures (22-36 months)
Our Preschool Class have been focusing on becoming school ready, busy looking at letters and numbers this month. The children have taken part in some fun activities where they have used fishing rods to catch the letters from their names and they have developed their pencil control and have been able to copy some letters form their names. The Pre-schoolers have also been looking for numerals within their environments and they have been excited to identify numbers and they have practised forming the numbers using pencils and paper.
As a class the children have shown great interest in the exploration of books with Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see? Which sees the children explore colour, gaining an understanding of the 3 prime colours and colour mixing. The stories centres around the animals the brown bear sees, which allows the children to further extend learning and understanding.
EYFS link:
Physical Development – Moving and handling – can copy some letters from their names (30-50 months)
Expressive Arts and design – Exploring and Using Media and Materials – 30-50mths: Explores colour and how they can be changed.
Literacy – Reading – 30-50 months: Joins in with repeated refrains and anticipates key events and phrases in rhymes and stories.
Communication and Language – Listening and Attention – 22-36 months: Listens with interest to the noises adults make when they read stories.
