Nursery

Week beginning - 18.07.2022:

This week the children enjoyed a range of different water and ice play activities to keep them cool during this extremely hot weather, they had fun washing the crockery, cutlery, pots and pans from the Home Corner with the scrubbing brushes and cloths and showed hand-eye coordination as they played ‘Hook a Duck’ in the water filled tuff-spot tray.  The children also actively participating in science and sensory play, where they used the wooden hammers to break the ice to release the toy animals and dinosaurs that were frozen it in.  During this time, Miss Ainsley discussed with the children about changing states (i.e. solids and liquids) and how water turns to ice when frozen and how when ice melts it turns into water.  Additionally, the children developed their fine-motor skills and independence as they made their own ice cream cones, only needing a little staff support. They scooped on the ice cream and then opted to add chocolate sprinkles, flake and dessert sauce before tucking into their tasty treats!

Week beginning - 11.07.2022:

Every Thursday morning since returning after half term at the beginning of June, the children have been actively participating in a weekly music and movement session with Lauren from Active Families North East CIC.  The children follow instructions well and model what the adults are doing following the song words, moving and expressing themselves freely developing their gross-motor skills and coordination whilst also having lots of fun! 

Week beginning - 04.07.2022:

This week the children showed an interest in Dinosaurs, in which we set up the tuff-spot tray with artificial grass, added pebbles and log pieces along with a selection of different dinosaurs.  The children engaged in small world play, a lot of roaring took place and one of the children loves Dinosaurs and knew all the names of them and informed their peers of what they are!  Following on from this the children enjoyed working together in small groups to complete the Giant Dinosaurs Floor Puzzle using the method of trial and error to rotate and connect all the pieces together. The children also had great fun making salt dough fossils creating imprints using the toy dinosaurs.  

Week beginning - 27.06.2022:

This week, the children actively participated in a group activity with several of their peers, where with staff prompting they took turns and also increasingly followed the rules to match pairs during a simple memory game. The visual memory and discrimination involved and the identification of patterns and relationships and similarity and difference support children to learn about early representation and problem solving and other benefits to playing memory games are improving:

• short term memory 
• visual recognition 
• language building
• concentration and attention 
• critical thinking
• fine-motor skills
• confidence and social skills

Week beginning - 20.06.2022:

Following on from last week, this week the children matched the selection of handprints not only by colour but by size, making comparisons between the handprints.  Additionally, the children showed hand-eye coordination as they effectively pegged the handprints into pairs.  Also the children enjoyed exploring the Rainbow Architect Blocks and were able to order them by size from “little to big” and then “big to little” (i.e. ‘large - small’).  After this they matched the different shaped blocks by colour to “make houses” and then made imaginative and complex ‘small worlds’ with the blocks by building and balancing them together and on top of each other! 

🍦17.06.2022:

Today, the children received a treat as an Ice Cream Van visited the school, the children throughly enjoyed either an Ice Cream Cone or Ice Lolly and it cooled them down on the warmest day of the year so far! 🌤 🥵 

Week beginning - 13.06.2022:

This week the children engaged in some adult directed matching activities, where they classified and sorted items that were “the same” by colour, shape and size. The children developed their knowledge and understanding of what a ‘pair’ means and reasoning by identifying the ‘odd one out’. Once the children grouped/classified the items, staff then encouraged them to compare the items further to learn more specific similarities and differences between items both within and between matched groups.

Classification is a fundamental pre-number learning concept that children learn about the world around them. Children need to learn how to sort and classify before they are able to move onto work that involves numbers  because they need to know what they are counting, before they are able to actually count them. 

Week beginning - 08.06.2022:

Since the children really enjoyed playing with the toy till and exploring money as part of our Jubilee related activities before half term, we decided to change the Role-Play area from a Home Corner to a Supermarket.  The children this week have engaged in imaginative play, where they have took turns to be both the Cashier and also the Customer.  The children enjoyed pretending to make shopping lists and filling and emptying the basket, shopping trolley and shopping bag as well as further developing their knowledge and understanding of money.  Additionally, many of the children shared and spoke about their experiences of going shopping with their family members within their home environment.

‘Dancing through the Decades’ Workshop - 26.05.2022:

In celebration of the Royal Platinum Jubilee, each year group throughout school actively participated in a dance workshop. Nursery children enjoyed warming up before moving in various ways like animals to music from Disney’s The Lion King - soundtrack before later warming down.  The children had so much fun! 

Week beginning - 23.05.2022:

This week we have been celebrating the Platinum Jubilee and 70 years of her Majesty the Queen being on the throne by engaging in Royal related activities! The children have enjoyed creatively making Union Jack bunting to decorate Nursery and crowns to wear. They built Castles and Palaces with the different Construction resources and sand, as well exploring some play dough activity mats and a fine-motor activity where they had to decorate a crown by placing and positioning buttons and Pom Poms on the circles. We have shared stories about the Queen and Royal Family, the children pretended to ‘write and post letters’ to the Queen, exploring and adding stamps, as well as playing with the toy till and money that also featured the Queen’s head and did some detailed observational drawings of her royal highness! On Friday the children all came to Nursery dressed in red, white and blue clothing and they enjoyed having a tea party and received a commemorative coin.

🎶 Additionally, check out the videos of the children’s performances of the Jubilee song they have been learning for the occasion…

“Happy Royal Jubilee, Happy Royal Jubilee, And we thank you, Your Majesty, Happy Royal Jubilee!” 

Week beginning - 16.05.2022:

This week the children enjoyed playing outdoors and being physically active as well as developing the outdoor area for remainder of the Summer Term as hopefully we will be outdoors even more than we are now with the weather getting warmer! 
 

The children love to be outdoors in the fresh air, where it gives them the opportunity to move freely, develop their gross-motor skills, balance and coordination as they play on the different equipment, as well as exploring the natural world around them!

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The importance of outside play in early years can’t be underestimated and below are just some of the many benefits it offers to children:

Encourages an Active Lifestyle - Children who learn to play outdoors are much more likely to continue to enjoy outdoor activities such as walking, running and cycling as they get older. Given the number of gadgets and new technology available to us all, outdoor play is an extremely important factor in combatting an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.

Appreciation of Nature - Learning in an outdoor environment allows children to interact with the elements around us and helps them to gain an understanding of the world we live in. They can experience animals in their own surroundings and learn about their habitats and lifecycles.

Develops Social Skills - Indoor spaces can often feel overcrowded to children and naturally, they may feel intimated in this type of environment. More space outdoors can help children to join in and gain confidence. By giving children outdoor learning experiences it offers them a chance to talk about what they have done with their peers, staff and their family members.

Encourages Independence - The extra space offered by being outdoors will give children the sense of freedom to make discoveries by themselves. They can develop their own ideas or create games and activities to take part in with their peers without feeling like they’re being directly supervised. They’ll begin to understand what they can do by themselves and develop a ‘can do‘ attitude, which will act as a solid foundation for future learning.

Understanding Risk - Being outdoors provides children with more opportunities to experience risk-taking. They have the chance to make calculated decisions and take part in tasks on a much bigger scale and complete them in ways they might not when they’re indoors.

Week beginning - 09.05.2022:

The children expressed themselves freely with the Musical Instruments, they explored how to use them and learned how sounds can be changed playing them at different rates and volumes, such as fast/loud and slow/quiet.  As well as incorporating them into singing songs and rhymes. Then later in the week the children also tapped out a simple repeated patterns and syllables in both words and songs, developing their listening and attention skills!

 Benefits of children playing with Musical Instruments…

- builds fine and gross motor skills

- supports sensory development

- enhances hand-eye coordination 

- teaches patience and perseverance 

- accelerates cognitive development.

Week beginning - 03.05.2022:

This week in Nursery we have been working on group time situations which allows the children to come together to share thoughts and ideas, listen and converse to each other, participate in new learning experiences, introduce new concepts, read and collaborate with each other during self registration, story time and singing. 
 

The children have been actively involved and Miss Ainsley and Miss Laydon have often been able to increase the length of time for the Pre-School children by the way they reacted, showing that they were ready for more! 

Group time is an important part of our day in Nursery and offers various opportunities for learning and developing important skills:
 

• Gaining confidence: Children are allowed to express feelings and ideas to a group without judgment. Children have the opportunity to gain confidence as they speak in front of their peers.
• Routine and Planning: Children love routine and know exactly when it’s time for group time. By planning out the intentional activities for the day and setting expectations, children are able to navigate through their day and predict the routine.
• A sense of community: At group time the children feel a sense of belonging as they collaborate and discuss. They learn that each child is a valued member of the group as they are provided with opportunities to hear their voices and opinions heard.
• Opportunities for deep learning: During group time, we often delve deeper into our interests which offers opportunities for learning new skills, ideas and concepts.
• School readiness: some of the children start Reception in September and Group time allows children to get ready for learning in a setting which is familiar to school. They build up important skills such as ‘whole body listening’, increased concentration and active listening skills.

Week beginning - 25.04.2022: 

This week at Nursery we have been working and playing together in either pairs or small groups to establish the basic rules of turn taking and practice this by using simple activities, such as; building towers with the wooden blocks, blowing bubbles, dominoes, picture lotto games and hoopla

Miss Ainsley and Miss Laydon model turning taking for the children when they engage in play, making it very clear to the child whose turn it is by using the children’s names as well as direct language to state when it is time to take turns, supporting the children learn to appropriately take turns.  
 

The Pre-School children began to pick up on the order of the turn taking between themselves and their peers and could play cooperatively in slightly larger groups (3-6 children).

Taking turns comes before sharing and they impart vital life skills, as they teach children about fairness and compromise, how to negotiate with others and also that it’s about the taking part that counts! Turn taking is not only an important social skill that young children need to learn but it also plays a significant role in building communication skills too, back and forth exchange is the essence of meaningful communication!

Week beginning - 04.04.2022:

This week, the children have been actively participating in activities related to Easter to celebrate the event!  The children enjoyed making chocolate Easter nest cakes, they listened well and followed staff instructions to add and mix the ingredients before transferring into a paper cake case and adding a little chick for decoration. The children also made cards for their family, they made some bunny ears to wear, creatively decorated some hard boiled eggs and joined in an Egg hunt! Additionally, one of the children kindly brought into Nursery their pet rabbits in for the children to see, stroke and hold and we also did the same with the chicks and we could not believe how much they have grown since last week! 

Living Eggs 

Living Eggs provides a life cycle education programme that enables children to see chicks hatching from their eggs. The children throughly enjoyed this observational experience and they have developed their knowledge and understanding of life cycles, growth and development. Additionally, the programme has also encouraged social interaction and promoted caring and nurturing skills amongst the children, as well as getting them excited to celebrate Easter!

Week beginning - 28.03.2022:

After making Mother’s Day cards last week for their Mammies, staff observed and decided that the children needed a little further practice of tracing their names! The children did really well, showing hand-eye coordination as well as developing their pencil control and pincer grip. Additionally, some of the children recognised their name in print and also labelled the letters in their names, spelling them out!

✏️ Tracing helps children refine their pre-writing skills and builds foundation for drawing and writing letters and words. 

🌻 Sponsor a Sunflower Day - (18.02.2022):  🇺🇦

Today, we are replaced Comic Red Nose Day with a special 'Sponsor a Sunflower Day' to support those affected in Ukraine. The children had fun getting creative and collaged some Sunflowers that we are going to display in and around our Nursery outdoor area to show solidarity and they also individually planted a Sunflower seed, that they are going to take care of and water and watch them grow! 

Week beginning - 14.03.2022:

This week’s interest was ‘Superheroes’, the children had fun making their own masks as well as dressing up, they did very well, trying to or putting on the costumes independently and then engaging in some imaginative play! We also read the story of ‘Supertato’ and the children actively participated in a craft activity where they made their own Supertato characters using different media and materials. Next, we read ‘Superworm’ and the children had fun during messy play as they explored some cooked spaghetti in soil and we also did some string printing pictures and made wiggly worms by rolling the playdough. Additionally, the children enjoyed using the tweezers/tongs to pick up the spiders from the tuff-spot tray spiderweb and doing some threading making spiderwebs, like Spider-Man using paper plates and string!

Week beginning - 07.03.2022:

This week with staff support and encouragement the children were able to follow and complete several different Patterning Challenge Cards - repeating simple patterns based on quantity, size and colours. The children sought challenge and showed a can do attitude, whilst also displaying attention to detail and maintaining focus for a period of time! Staff observed that the children could do AB patterns more easily and independently in comparison to patterns involving more than 2 colours or variables.  For children, repeating patterns is a great way of testing recognition and problem-solving, alongside aiding teaching towards mathematics for counting, shapes, space & measure.

📚World Book Day - (03.03.2022):

Today we celebrated World Book Day by dressing up as our favourite book characters and participated in a range of different play activities in each area, where Miss Ainsley or Miss Laydon incorporated and read us a story related to that area of play and learning!

We also enjoyed sharing the books that we brought in from home with each other and Mrs Hill read to us the book - ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ at Story time! Additionally, at Snack time we read the ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea!’ 

🥞 Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Day - (01.03.2022):

Today, the children throughly enjoyed some messy play, they followed instructions well and added and mixed all the ingredients from the Pancake recipe together in the tuff spot tray using the different utensils. The children then engaged in some imaginative play as well as some pouring, filling and emptying using the pots and pans from the Home Corner.

Also the children had fun making marks and drawing the toppings that they like or would add to make their perfect pancake! Then at snack time, the children enjoyed some pancakes as a yummy treat to celebrate the day, they picked what toppings they would like and independently added them to their pancake before eating them all up!!

Week beginning - 28.02.2022:

In the Maths Area we recently, added a Number Line, where the children attempt to hang the woven seagrass numbers (1-10) onto a washing line using clothes pegs but the children struggled to open the pegs, in which Miss Ainsley and Miss Laydon decided to incorporate another activity to the Finger Gym to practice and develop this skill further by putting the pegs onto some feathers.

The benefits of these activities are:

• Hand and finger strength – opening a peg requires the children to apply a force against a resistance. For many children this can be a challenging task. Opening a peg helps to develop the intrinsic muscles of the finger and thumb.
• Hand endurance – similar to strength, endurance develops when sustaining a force against a resistance. Encouraging the children to open a peg for as long possible will help to build resistance, important for functional tasks such as handwriting.
• Pincer grasp – development of a functional pincer grasp is fundamental to success in tasks such as handwriting, feeding and dressing (buttons, zips and shoe laces). Using pegs will help the children to develop accurate and automatic movements in their thumb and index finger.
• Hand preference – placing pegs in the midline and encouraging the children to reach out will help to establish and strengthen hand dominance. This is important in for handwriting and fine-motor tasks.
• Motor accuracy – placing a peg in a specific location requires motor accuracy.

❤️ Valentines Day - (14.02.2022): 

All of the children made a Valentine’s Day card for their loved ones and we spoke about our families and how much we love them! The children enjoyed cutting and collating with the coloured cellophane pieces and sticking them into a laminating pouch and putting it through the laminator with staff support and careful supervision. We then cut and made them into heart-shaped sun catchers that we attached to the card but that were also a little gift to be keep and could be detached and used after Valentines Day within the home! Additionally, the children had fun adding and mixing the ingredients to make biscuits, before rolling out the dough with the rolling pin and using the heart-shape cutter.  Once cooked and cooled the children enjoyed adding pink icing and sprinkles, as well as tasting one of the biscuits before taking the others home to share with their loved ones!

Week beginning - 14.02.2022:

The children have been pretending to be Tigers since celebrating Chinese New Year, in which we decided to enhance this through the focus of Wild/Jungle Animals, which they have throughly enjoyed!

The children have had fun engaging in some small world play with the toy animals and during this time, the children named the animals that they knew and Miss Ainsley and Miss Laydon also introduced the children to some animals that they did not know! We also discussed the habitats of where these animals come from, where they live or where we would see them!

The children enjoyed making an animal mask, colouring it in and looking at the distinguishing features of the different animals as they did this and made marks. The children then enjoyed looking at themselves in the mirror whilst wearing the masks they made! Following on from this, the children participated in a group activity, where they took turns to play the Animal Pattern Matching Game. The children explored the picture cards and sorted and matched the animals to the correct pattern. Some of the children also observed and made the connection to Miss Ainsley’s leopard print shirt dress she was wearing!

Additionally, the children displayed good hand-eye coordination as they completed the Jungle Animal Pattern and Pencil Control/Mark-Making cards and listening to a range of stories about Animals, such as ‘Walking through the Jungle, Jungle Fun Run and The Star of the Zoo’. As well as enjoying some music and movement, where the children moved like different animals and made different animal sounds! 

😊 ‘Dress to Express’ Day - (10.02.2022):

To celebrate Children’s Mental Health week, staff and the children came to Nursery today wearing whatever makes them happy! The children also participated in several activities, they explored some Emotion flashcards and mirrors before creatively decorating some paper people and they also had fun exploring the playdough mats, using play dough to make a face, again exploring and discussing emotions! Then at story time we read the Book - ‘Sometimes I feel…SUNNY’ that reflects different feelings!

Week beginning - 07.02.2022:

When the children recently made Fruit Kebabs for snack, they really seemed to enjoy putting the different pieces of fruit onto the wooden skewers, in which this week Miss Ainsley and Miss Laydon decided to provide the children with a range of different threading activities using various materials and resources.

The children actively participated and they inserted pipe cleaners into mini colanders, drinking straws into hole-punched cardboard tubes and put pasta onto wooden skewers. The children also had fun making pasta necklaces and bracelets and then proudly wearing them!  Additionally, within the Maths Area, we added some Threading Shapes to be a continuous provision resource, the children enjoyed threading and weaving the shoelaces “in and out” of the holes around the different shapes!

Threading has helped the children to develop their hand-eye coordination and concentration skills as well as a variety of mathematical concepts, such as; colours, patterns, shapes and counting. 

Threading is a great activity to help children develop fine motor skills essential for being able to draw, write, do up buttons, tie shoelaces, open lunch boxes and more! 

NSPCC Number Day - (04.02.2022):

The children explored a range of different Number activities and resources in all the areas of learning, development and play and they also had a special challenge to complete set by Mrs Woodhall, where they had to express their number recognition and knowledge on a plain white t.shirt. Each class in school was set this challenge in which to show progression of number skills from age 2-12! Additionally, the children also enjoyed a counting story ‘One Ted Falls Out of Bed’ and Number Rhymes.