Reminders: Oaks 1 and 2 are having their Easter bonnet competition and tea party on Thursday, 2.30-4pm. We would love it if their parents could join us too.
The nursery closes from Friday 29th March reopening on Monday 8th April.
Seedlings:
This week, the Seedlings focused their learning on the colour yellow and Easter.
The children got crafty exploring flowers and leaves from the garden when designing their Easter cards. The Seedlings had the freedom to choose which coloured egg-shape card to use and which natural resources to work with. Tamsin said she wanted the purple flowers and Otis asked for the yellow flowers. As well as providing an opportunity to work on colour recognition, this activity served to enhance the children’s vocabularies as we encouraged them to repeat words like ‘petal’ throughout.
Great fun was had by all during our Easter bingo game. This saw the children choose a card each before trying to find the matching image on the bingo card. Amara selected the ladybird, while Kit chose the yellow chicken.
As a group the children made salt dough ornaments, taking turns to roll out their dough before selecting a cutter. Genevieve and Daneyal both plumped for the egg-shaped one. Once their makes were dry, the children got to work decorating them.
Stars Of the Week:
Kit and Daniel – For their enthusiasm when joining in with nursery rhymes.
Saplings:
The Saplings’ week started with a St Patrick’s Day-themed scavenger hunt. We challenged the children to look for green, orange and white objects around our room. William cleverly pointed out that the ceiling was white.
Cindy spent time talking to the children about Easter and the special creature who comes to visit. The Saplings were very excited and asked questions such as ‘Why is the Easter Bunny coming?’. Isla quipped: ‘The Easter bunny is going to come to nursery and bring us eggs like Santa brings presents.’
While making their own salt dough ornaments, Imogen and Jacob wowed us with their ability to recall all of the ingredients needed. The Saplings worked very hard when rolling out and cutting their creations and did so well combining the salt with flour and water.
An Easter Tuff Tray activity saw the Saplings use tweezers to lift coloured eggs through the gaps in masking tape.
Star Of the Week:
Maeva – For expressing her own ideas during activities and being a great role model in the class.
Acorns:
The Acorns have really enjoyed exploring different textures and materials this week.
A Tuff Tray filled with shredded paper, pom-poms, cotton wool and tissue proved to be very entertaining. The Acorns loved tearing the paper and rolling the pom-poms, feeling the variety of textures with their hands and feet.
Next, the children had fun with our textured ball box which provided the chance to use words including bumpy, soft, knobbly and smooth.
Mark-making both indoors and outdoors has also been popular with the Acorns, and it was lovely to hear them babble to one another as they decorated paper, the floor outside and our chalkboard. Sensory scarves were a hit too. The children giggled as they brushed the scarves across their faces.
Star Of the Week:
All our Acorns for their enthusiasm this week.
Oaks 1:
What a lovely week we have had here at Broughton Cottage!
The children adored getting ready for our cake sale, spending an afternoon carefully measuring out all of the ingredients before showing off their creative skills when decorating their bakes. Oaks 1 really stepped up to the challenge of manning our stall and did a brilliant job of talking their customers through the prices. Ronnie even explained that the children were raising money for charity. We are pleased to reveal that we raised £73.00 for Comic Relief.
With the arrival of some milder and drier weather, the children have been busy in the garden planting carrots and vegetables. We’re hopeful that Oaks 1 will return after the Easter break to see their vegetables starting to grow.
The children are of course very excited about the prospect of the eggs in the incubator hatching too.
Star Of the Week:
Ronnie – For his cunning sales technique during his cake sale duty.
Forest School
The children were disappointed that their totem pole had disappeared when we arrived and there was lots of speculation as to where it might have gone so we took to our heels and searched the area. After much effort we discovered it had been added to one our dens, presumably by the wood’s owners perhaps not everyone appreciates our creative spirit!
Our walk off piste threw up real challenges with a lot of ‘stuck in the mud’ games which were really not intentional however, the children showed such a wonderful team spirit as they helped their friends to pull their wellies from the thick, squelchy mud. Perhaps a ,little early but it was our last Thursday session for now and it seems the Easter bunny knew this as it had ‘planted’ some little eggs within the nooks and crannies of the trees and the children had wonderful fun seeking them out.
We ended the session with an egg and spoon race; four teams of three. The children took on board the instructions, worked in their teams and incredibly, there was very little cheating!
Well done everyone.
Oaks 2:
Oaks 2 have been working so hard on their Easter crafts.
We started the week by creating our very own papier-mâché eggs. The practitioners were extremely impressed with how accurate and precise the children were when placing the paper onto their balloons. The children loved sticking their hands into the water and glue solution, with a number of the group getting very messy!
We then moved on to learning where eggs come from while looking at the life cycle of a chick. The children boosted their scissor-handling skills, cutting out various pictures very carefully before placing them in the correct order.
Oaks 2 also had some fun with green water play in a further celebration of St Patrick’s Day. We were thrilled to witness the children displaying brilliant sharing and team-working skills.
It’s clear that the children are very excited about Easter – there’s been a lot of chatter about the Easter bunny coming to visit with a delivery of chocolate eggs, in fact they have been sitting on their own ‘eggs’ in the hopes that their care and nurture will result in an egg ‘delivery.’
Star Of the Week:
Oli – For great musical movement participation.
Yours sincerely
The Broughton Team