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Happy New Year! We hope you all had a great holiday, and are as excited about 2018 as we are. Click on the image to view our newsletter to find out what we've got planned.
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All of us at the nursery want to say a HUGE thank you to everybody who came along to support the children at their Nativity play. We were blown away by how many people came to the church, and gave so generously in the Parish Room afterwards. Also we'd like to extend big thanks to Tesco for their kind donation of that smashing prize hamper.
This term's fundraising effort has been fantastic, and we've raised the following amounts:
Cake sale: £103.22
Raffle: £191
Nativity refreshments & photos: £90.75
Which comes to a grand total of £384.97! We are so grateful for your generous support. All money raised will be put towards improving the nursery facilities - we've got some big plans for 2018, so watch this space!
SNOW DAY! The children may have not been at nursery for very long today (the adverse weather conditions meant that we took the decision to close the nursery just after lunchtime) but they certainly had fun while they were there. The snow was naturally all anyone could think about, so we went outside to enjoy it. We had a snowball fight (of course!) and caught snowflakes on our tongues. When it got too cold to be outside, we brought some snow inside to see how it melted in the warmth. Our practitioners created a snowy scene using flour and the Snowman props from last week; we also put 'The Snowman' on the interactive whiteboard to add to the atmosphere. We were all very sad when the fun had to come to an end!
This morning, we recreated a theatre in the nursery. We made tickets, served up popcorn and watched a CBeebies pantomime on the interactive whiteboard. In the afternoon, we were lucky enough to see some real theatre, as we were invited over to St Mary's school to watch the dress rehearsal of the KS1 Nativity. Our children were delighted by the show, and loved all the songs. It has made them all very excited about performing in their own nativity next Monday!
There was much sadness when the children arrived to see that the snow had all melted from the nursery garden (the adults weren't quite as upset!). We still had our indoor snow scene to play with, so any sadness was short-lived. The children were having sensory fun in the afternoon, mixing up concoctions using jelly and mini marshmallows. There may have been a small amount of tasting, we couldn't possibly comment!
The children were met with a couple of intriguing set-ups this morning. At one table, they were invited to sail on the number sea: boats, ships and sea creatures were afloat among different numbers. The children could identify try to identify the numbers, and maybe put the corresponding number of toys on the number "rafts". On another table: SPROUTS! Love them or hate them, it isn't Christmas without sprouts. The children weren't eating them, but they were weighing them, cutting them, rolling them, peeling them, pinging them across the room like tiny cannonballs... It turns out that sprouts are lots of fun!
One of our tables was turned into Antarctica today, with more fake snow, paper snowflakes and Emperor penguins. The activity with the Brussels sprouts was so popular yesterday that we set it up again today, and encouraged the children to peel them (which helps to improve their fine motor skills, as well as getting some practice in for helping in the kitchen on Christmas Day!). Elsewhere, the children had fun weighing and measuring using our new Numicon scales. And we got into a party mood with a few games of musical chairs and musical bumps. We also did one last rehearsal of our Nativity songs - don't forget, the big show is on Monday at 10:30am!
Is your little one disappointed that the snow melted so quickly this week? Then they may enjoy recreating the winter wonderland that appeared on Monday by trying this week's craft. This also uses bubble wrap which, if you've done as much Christmas shopping on the internet as I have, you probably have already!
For this you will need:
You may have heard the news that there have been confirmed measles outbreaks in Liverpool, Leeds and the West Midlands. There are also several large measles outbreaks in Europe, with Romania, Italy, Germany and Greece being the worst affected countries. Here in the South East, there has been a confirmed outbreak of measles in Surrey in a range of age groups.
Measles can be a very serious disease, leading to ear and chest infections, fits, diarrhoea, and damage to the brain. Measles can kill.
Your child is at risk of measles if he or she has not been given the MMR vaccination. All children are offered the MMR vaccine as part of their routine vaccination schedule, usually within a month of their first birthday. Children then have a second injection of the vaccine before starting school, usually at three years and four months. Two doses of the MMR vaccine are needed to give the best protection. If your child has not received both doses of the MMR vaccine, please consider making an appointment with your GP as soon as possible to get them immunised. If you are unsure whether they have received the MMR jab, check your child's personal child health record (the Red Book). If this doesn't help, contact your surgery.
What's that in the nursery? A BOAT, you say? The children had excellent fun with our "fishing on the ocean" role play - they sat in the boat with fishing rods, while ocean sounds played through the interactive whiteboard and other children looked up facts about whales and dolphins on the nursery iPads. For those children who were not seduced by the call of the sea, there was a fascinating activity involving frozen hands! Not real hands, obviously - our practitioners filled rubber gloves with water, hid little toys, shapes and numbers inside, then froze them overnight. The children had a great time melting and chipping away at the frozen "hands" to discover what was hidden inside; some children recognised that the numbers inside the hands correlated with the number of objects that were frozen. Another popular activity today was festive potion-making - the children loved mixing together glitter and coloured bubbly water, indeed it was so popular that we had to add more containers so everyone could join in!
There were many requests for a repeat of the frozen hands activity today, and we were happy to oblige. The children used warm water in spray bottles to melt the ice; this segued into an activity where we compared how high we could squirt the water into the air! We visited the church for more rehearsals, and the children are getting very confident with their performances. We don't want the children to get bored singing the same songs over and over, however, so we had a fun singalong to different Christmas tunes today using the nursery karaoke machine. The children really worked on their turn-taking skills, as there was a lot of competition for the microphone! We also had fun dancing along to the music, and playing party games like Musical Statues and Sleeping Lions.
The children were being scientists today, as our practitioners set up the infamous Diet Coke/Mentos experiment. This is a great way of investigating cause and effect, and also excellent fun for the children. If you've never tried it at home, we highly recommend it! All the new Nativity costumes have now been bought, and we are taking pictures of the children wearing their costumes in advance of the big show on Monday 18th December. They all look fantastic! Your child's costume should have come home with them this week; feel free to let them wear it around the house to get used to it so they are comfortable on the day of the performance!
While Nursery is all about play, we are also aware that a big part of our job is preparing children for the next step in their educational journey: "Big School". As such, today we've been focusing on helping the older children to practise writing their name independently, which will be a key skill when they enter Reception. All children had the opportunity to work on their numeracy, as we had an activity where we were trying different things with our new Numicon shapes - weighing them, adding them together, and so on. Number is a very abstract concept; Numicon uses patterned shapes that children can physically manipulate and fit together, so that when combining numbers they can physically do and see calculations. It's a great way to get children to internalise mathematical thinking.
In a child-initiated activity, we had a train in the nursery today! We built it with chairs and other pieces of furniture, and the children made train tickets. We also made tickets for the "cinema" (a showing of a Christmas cartoon). The children also had a lot of fun decorating biscuits today - although none of these made it to the bake sale, sadly (they must have looked just too delicious!). The bake sale itself was a roaring success, with almost £100 raised! The money will go towards the Nursery's fundraising total, which is used to improve the facilities for the benefit of all our children. Thank you so much to everybody who baked those delicious cakes and biscuits, and to those of you who came along and gave so generously. You are all superstars!
Is your Christmas tree up yet? It's always lovely to have some little keepsake ornaments that your little one has made, and which come out year on year. So this year, why not try this cute and simple button Christmas tree ornament - it's sure to be something that will have pride of place on your tree in years to come (or hide it round the back, up to you!).
For this you will need:
Winter is coming at nursery this week! We began by making our very own snow, which as well as being a lot of fun also had a mathematical element as the children needed to measure out exact amounts of water to add to the snow mix. After this, the children enjoyed a screening of 'The Snowman' and could then re-enact the story themselves using our small-world set up with laminated characters from the film. Away from the snow play, other children had fun playing with home-made jigsaws made from photographs of all the children at the nursery; elsewhere, in a completely child-initiated role play activity, we created a bus from chairs and a wooden steering wheel. This also lead to some spontaneous singing - the wheels on the bus go round and round, all day long!
We continued with our exploration of 'The Snowman' today, helping the children to make their own snowmen by sticking cotton wool onto pre-cut card snowmen shapes - they then decorated them with glitter (naturally!) for a lovely snowy sparkle. Other children got creative at our junk modelling table, using a wide variety of materials to create whatever they liked! This sort of open-ended play is great for stimulating children's imaginations, and is so easy to do at home if (like us) you have an overflowing recycling bin! There was excitement today as we visited St Mary's Church to rehearse our Nativity play. The children loved singing their songs in the church, and are very excited about performing for you in a couple of weeks' time.
The children were helping to develop our Santa's Grotto area today, by wrapping up presents to put under the Christmas tree (good scissor control and fine motor skill practice!). One of the children wanted to play hairdressers, so our practitioners extended this play by adding a phone, till and appointment book. We also had fun dancing and singing along to music on the karaoke machine. In the morning, we had set out an area with the giant coins, but this did not seem to be a popular activity so when one of the children requested to play with the Hexi-snaps we put these out instead. As a team, we think it is so important for the play to be child-initiated; if an activity that we have prepared is not being played with, then we are more than happy to do something else!
We've been looking at 'The Snowman' all week, so today we provided an area with stills and props from the film so the children could reenact the story themselves. At another table, there were prompts laid out to encourage creative play (e.g. "Use your play dough to make presents for Father Christmas", "Use your play dough to make decorations for the Christmas tree") along with a variety of materials. We were also making paper chains, which led to the use of lots of positional language (longer, shorter, taller, smaller). It wasn't all about Christmas today, however, as our practitioners had set up an awesome Dinosaur World table for the children to enjoy, which included literacy and mathematical elements (as well as a brilliantly squishy jelly swamp for the dinosaurs to stomp around in!).
It's December, and we're officially on Christmas countdown! Our practitioners have made a picture advent calendar for each child to take turns opening, and we acted out the Nativity story to enhance the children's understanding of what we are celebrating. There has been a very kind donation of a pram, which meant the toy babies got an outing today; the children had fun dressing and feeding them, then pushing them round in the new pram. We also have a new fishing game, where the children use rods to catch fish - great for their motor skills!
By 'eck, it's cold out! This week's craft takes advantage of the freezing conditions to make a lovely decoration to hang outside your home, so wrap up warm, brave the cold, head outside with your little one and make an ICE WREATH.
For this you will need:
The rain cloud the children created at the end of last week is now hanging proudly above our water-play area. We love how the children are helping to shape the nursery environment. It's Road Safety Week across the UK, so at the nursery we have planned some fun activities to help raise the children's awareness of how they can stay safe on the roads. Elsewhere, there was construction using Mobilo - if you've not come across this toy before, it's a selection of geometric elements which can be easily combined using various connectors. There are countless possibilities for creating models, which promotes the children's creativity and fine motor skills. The only limit is their imagination!
There was tremendous excitement today when a real fire engine drew up outside the nursery! Don't worry, there wasn't a fire - the fire fighters were visiting St Mary's School as part of road safety week. The children loved seeing the fire fighters spray water and foam all over the school driveway - it looked like Christmas had come early! Inside the nursery, our nativity scene is set up for the children to investigate in the weeks leading up to Christmas. As well as introducing them to the various elements of the Nativity story, this set-up also can help the children with their language skills mathematical thinking (how many kings are there? How many shepherds? What animals can you see?). At another table, there was an altogether more wild small world set-up, with the children enjoying playing with different wild animals at a water-hole.
The children were still talking about yesterday's surprise visit from the fire engine, so in response to this our practitioners set up a play area with wooden fire station, a fire engine and emergency helicopter. This sort of spontaneous, child-initiated planning means that we can respond to and develop the children's interests. We are continuing to prepare for the imminent arrival of Father Christmas by making reindeer food with the children. They were weighing oats on the scales, which helps to develop their fine motor skills as well as providing an opportunity to work on their mathematical understanding. And we got our bodies moving with a dance and movement session, where the children enjoyed high energy games of musical bumps and musical statues; other children had fun singing along on the microphone.
We were exploring floating and sinking at "Wendy's Water Works" today. While the children were investigating, our practitioners would mind-map their findings (e.g. "What happens if we fill up a container that floats?"). Mind-mapping is a way of integrating writing into the children's play and is a great way of bringing literacy right to the heart of what we do. Elsewhere, the children were making play dough "pizzas"; other children were playing a game where they pretended that fluorescent laces were slime - this led to us making another batch of bright green play dough "slime" for them to use as part of their imaginative play.
All week the children have been enjoying our wild animal set-up, and we extended this by reading 'We're Going on a Lion Hunt' with props to bring the story to life. Other children were learning about the night sky on the nursery computer. In the garden, the children had fun making up different chasing games and racing cars down a track - the latter activity was great for developing their mathematical knowledge, as they were talking about which car came first, which car came second and so on.
