‘Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.’ – Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

Seedlings:

The Seedlings have had a fun-packed week as they continued with their ‘on the farm’ topic.

The youngsters had a brilliant time playing with two large boxes and a child’s driving toy.  They used their imaginations to pretend they’d made a tractor by putting the two boxes together and placing the driving toy inside the larger one. They took it in turns to drive the homemade farm vehicle along while towing a trailer full of their friends. As they played, they sang ‘driving along in my little red tractor, bringing in the hay’.

At story time, we read Axel Scheffler’s tale On the Farm. The children had the practitioners smiling with their fabulous animal noises.

Our farmyard-themed baby yoga activity was popular with the Seedlings. The children worked ever so hard to perfect the different animal poses. They also followed instructions on how to make a horse shape brilliantly, while also saying ‘neigh, neigh’.

Star Of the Week:

Robin – For showing independence in her potty training.

Saplings:

This week, the Saplings have been bringing alive Michael Rosen’s book We’re Going on A Bear Hunt.

The children decorated spoons which they then waved around during the appropriate part of the story. Tamsin, Lyra and Sienna chose to make a ‘swishy, swashy spoon’, whereas Lowri and Finneas decided on a ‘splishy, splashy spoon’. All of the children joined in with the story enthusiastically and Isla finished off the end by saying word perfectly: ‘We’re not going on a bear hunt again!’

The Saplings loved re-enacting the story in the garden, with Avery demonstrating his running skills to show us his favourite part of the book.

Other activities the Saplings have enjoyed this week have included making their own bear faces. Connie knew she needed ‘one more googly eye’. The children also created their own caves and made a brilliant bear hunt collage using mainly natural materials – with the exception of snow and water.

Star Of the Week:

Amalie – For being kind and passing a glue pot she was using to another child who was waiting. She also sweetly helped her friend find her shoes before going in garden.

Acorns:

The Acorns have loved their busy week at Broughton Cottage.

To kick things off, the children got messy by creating cloud dough. The Acorns showed off their mixing skills by expertly combining cornflour and baby lotion. The children got stuck in with their hands and loved manipulating the cloud dough with their fingers.

This week, the Acorns also embraced their ‘life at the zoo’ topic. Because painting with farm animals was such a hit last week, we decided to do it with zoo animals. The children loved self-selecting zoo animals before dunking them into paint. The Acorns were intrigued by the footprints left behind after pressing the animals onto paper.

Next, the children had fun playing with different animal masks. We decided to add a musical element by singing Down in The Jungle and referencing each animal. The children stood up when their animal was mentioned. It was lovely to see the children dance and make animal noises with their friends.

Star Of The Week:

Emilia – For fully embracing messy play.

Oaks 1:

This week in Oaks 1 we’ve been looking at our environment, considering what’s around us at home and nursery.

We discussed what an address is and why we have numbers on our houses. We then talked about the colours of our front doors and who we live with. The children were able to tell us who they live with and also acknowledged that our journey times to Broughton Cottage are different.

Our weekly dedicated art sessions – aimed at giving the children the chance to explore different tools and mediums such as paint, chalk and oil pastels – have continued to be popular. From next week, we’ll begin to teach the children about the work of famous artists.

Oaks 1 have been enjoying lots of oranges at teatime, so we’ve decided to collect up the pips. We are planning to plant them to see if we can grow our own orange trees.

In a bid to support communication and language skills, we’ve been working on the way the children participate during circle time. We’re proud to say that everyone did a fabulous job of creating a circle, listening to any instructions given and speaking clearly and confidently.

Star Of the Week:

Mia – For her excellent handwriting and letter recognition.

Forest School:

This was out final ‘Tuesday’ rotation so we embraced the time we had with the group to reflect on the past 6 weeks and what we had achieved.

Our registration focussed on calculation and estimation tasking the children to work out just how many steps it would take to get to ????? Some over calculated which meant we then had to work out just how many was too many beyond the estimated number. The children did very well as they thought hard.

The seeds planted some weeks ago and carefully protected by a wooden barrier erected by the children were finally beginning to shoot up above the soil so the next group will take up the batten and monitor their progress.

Cindy and 5 volunteers attempted to build a large platform by criss-crossing some extremely long logs; whilst it was a challenge, they soon managed to achieve their aim and were proud of their efforts.

Theo decided we should all make treasure maps which the children joined in eagerly. The hollowed-out trees and rabbit holes were ideal as hiding places and the group enjoyed quizzing each other as to the whereabouts of the treasure.

Oaks 2:

This week in Oaks 2, we’ve been exploring our garden.

The children have been really fascinated by all of the creepy crawlies and have loved keeping a look out for them. It was such a joy to see the youngsters showing such care and respect for living things. While outside, we spotted slugs, snails, worms and birds. The children started to ask questions about where such creatures might live.

We spent time enhancing the children’s scissor-handling skills while playing a cutting and sticking matching game. Oaks 2 were brilliant at arranging the different cuttings into categories.

Circle games have also been a firm favourite this week. The children sat beautifully as they were introduced to several new ones with the most popular being Pass the Pirate Hat. Oaks 2 found it so entertaining and giggled as they entered the centre of the circle to show off their best swashbuckling moves.

Circle games like this are excellent for keeping children fit and healthy, while also helping them work on their focus and concentration skills

Star Of the Week:

Emma – For being such a good listener, particularly during circle times and story times.

Until next week…

Yours sincerely,

The Broughton team.