Monday
Many of the children went to a firework display over the weekend, so this week we are basing many of our activities around this experience. Today, we had a small world setup where toy figures were watching a firework display (shown on one of the nursery's iPads) - this led to plenty of discussions with the children, as they shared their experiences and feelings about the firework displays they had seen. We have also started our Christmas craft activities this week (we LOVE Christmas at St Mary's Nursery!) but we can't tell you too much about those as the children want to surprise you with their festive creations...!
Tuesday
We have started gearing up for our Nativity play (which is on Monday 18th December - head over to the diary page for more information), and the children have started learning their Christmas songs. Expect to hear them a lot over the coming weeks! We will be sending the words to the songs home so that you can practise with your child. Elsewhere in the nursery, we have been exploring the concepts of night and day to tie in with our activities based around Bonfire Night.
Wednesday
Christmas crafting is continuing apace, apologies if your children are a bit glittery by home time! Today, the children also began making their Christmas lists to send to Santa - they were cutting out pictures from catalogues to stick to their lists, and the scissor control was helping to promote their fine motor skills. The children have also been enjoying some water play today, as well as problem-solving with the wooden puzzles.
Thursday
We built a small-world "Jurassic Park" set up today, a child-initiated activity which proved very popular. The children were also working on more top-secret festive crafts to surprise you with at Christmas, which were great for developing the children's pincer grip, scissor control and fine motor skills. We have started learning about the Nativity story, to prepare the ground for our Nativity play.
Friday
As it is Remembrance Sunday this weekend, today the children painted poppies and explored different ways of applying paint to the paper. We discussed Remembrance Sunday and the reasons why it is important to commemorate it. The children gave some very thoughtful comments in our discussion. Elsewhere in the nursery, we made roads out of tape on the floor for the children to drive toy vehicles along. The roads were in different shapes (triangle, square, rectangle) to promote the children's use of mathematical language. And, ramping up the Christmas spirit even further, Santa's grotto made an appearance at nursery today! Next week we will be using this in various role-play and crafting activities.
