“‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’” —The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Thank you to everyone who joined us for Meet the Teams on Tuesday; I hope it was beneficial.

Staffing news – We welcomed Angela to the Saplings group and we are very pleased to have her with us.

Zaynah has decided to leave nursery work and has been offered a position as home help. She will leave early May and we wish her well for the future.

Notice – With such unpredictable weather at the moment could we kindly ask parents to put sun cream on their child before coming to nursery. 

Seedlings:

This week, the Seedlings continued their mini-beasts topic by taking a detailed look at Eric Carle’s story The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The practitioner read the story aloud and the children took it in turn to post the selected food into the caterpillar. We took the opportunity to chat about healthy eating too, explaining how the sweet treats gave the caterpillar a tummy ache. Otis carefully chose the plumbs to post, while Genevieve excitedly found the pears. Ashlynn waited patiently to post her chocolate cake.

To follow on from the story, the children made fruit kebabs by selecting a range of fruit they had seen in the pictures of the story. Carter’s favourite choice of fruit was satsumas and George picked apples and melon. The children enjoyed their fruit kebabs for their morning snack.

As a group, the Seedlings created a caterpillar number line by carefully painting paper plates green to represent the body. Willow was keen to paint her plate red so it could become the head. Numbers were added to the plates before they were displayed on the wall.

Later on in the week, the children loved exploring a Tuff Tray where bugs were frozen in ice. Amara and Annabelle held them in their hands curiously, exclaiming ‘cold’ and ‘oooh’. The Seedlings returned to the Tuff Tray a few hours later and were excited to see the bugs floating in the the water with Annabelle sweetly quipping: ‘Incy Wincy Spider’.

Star Of the Week:

Carter – For growing in confidence and showing independence.

Saplings:

This week, the Saplings have had fun learning all about gorillas.

During circle time, we discussed where gorillas live and considered what their diet might consist of. William suggested that they eat bananas, while Avery treated his peers to a realistic impression of a gorilla roar.

A creative activity saw the Saplings create gorilla masks using black fur. Connie marvelled at the softness of the material. The children also used fur when making gorilla puppets out of small paper bags. With the help of practitioners, the children improved their dexterity as they used child-safe knives to slice up bananas.

Star Of the Week:

Lyra – For her brilliant listening when the story Why Elephant Has A Trunk was read out. We were really impressed that she was able to give a clear and concise response to a question she was asked about the plot.

Acorns:

This week in Acorns, we’ve been continuing our topic of spring.

Bubble wrap mark-making proved to be very popular among the children. They giggled as they walked over paint covered by bubble wrap and expressed their excitement as the colours mixed together.

Next, the children created beautiful works of art by stamping different textured leaves dipped in paint and animal footprints onto paper. Before the Acorns got to work, they headed outside to hunt for leaves of different shapes and sizes. To extend the activity, we asked the children if they’d like to dip the hooves of their favourite farm animals into the paint too.

Continuing on with the Acorns’ growing interest in animals, we set up an Old MacDonald-inspired Tuff Tray. We used different materials including blue and green sensory scarves to represent the grass and water and there were of course lots of animals scattered around. A rendition of Old MacDonald Had a Farm was the perfect end to the activity.  It was brilliant to observe the children pointing out the different creatures referenced in the song.

Star Of the Week:

Alba – For settling in so well after her holiday.

Oaks 1:

After a successful trip to Australia last week, our Oaks 1 children decided they wanted to go straight to Italy.

Theo made a very good point when he stated that we’d need passports if we wanted to keep jetting about the world like this, so we made our own travel documents.

The children were delighted to have a scoop of Annette’s berry gelato and happily sipped on babyccinos topped with chocolate or cinnamon in our very own coffee shop. Rosie had a fantastic afternoon being the manager.

School places have now been offered and Oaks 1 have been excitedly discussing where they’ll be off to in September. Over the coming months, we’ll be working towards school readiness, starting with the idea of wearing a PE kit. We’ll spend time encouraging the children to get themselves dressed.

Star Of the Week:

Lydia – For settling so nicely into Oaks 1.

Forest School

This week we remained at basecamp from the entire session and the children had a wonderful foraging for materials they could get creative with. Following their trip to the stream last week they decided to make fishing boats using some excellent driftwood rescued from the water. Raul was particularly impressed with his efforts using keen diligence and perseverance to assemble a mast, working alongside Cindy and ‘putting her right’ as to the exact requirements!

Freddie showed off his excellent rope tying skills whilst Theo, Mia, Ralph and Charlie spent a good deal of time and effort combining food ingredients to make nourishment for the birds – we hope they enjoy the end result. The proof is in the pudding as they say so we shall see next week!

Oaks 2:

Oaks 2 have had a busy week making recycling bins for our new recycling centre. We introduced the children to our motto ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’.  We spent time discussing ways we could give any of our unwanted rubbish a new lease of life. The adults brought in lots of rubbish and it was up to the youngsters to decide what needed to be recycled and what box it needed to go in – rubbish bin or the recycling one.

The children also had lots of fun playing with earth-themed cloud dough. We mixed cornflour and baby lotion together to create a wonderful smelling solution. Oaks 2 adored manipulating it to form different shapes.

Oaks 2 also rolled up their sleeves and got baking some delicious cereal bars using up some unwanted store cupboard ingredients. As the children got stuck into the challenge, we chatted about why it’s good to make use of food before it goes off or becomes stale.

Star Of the Week:

Dylan – For showing great listening and understanding of the new routine in our room.

Yours sincerely

The Broughton Team