Firstly, we would like to welcome you all back after the Christmas break and hope that you enjoyed a wonderful time and managed to stay safe. The children have all settled back into their daily routine and have enjoyed being reunited with their friends again. We say good bye to Teddy and wish him well for the future.

The Oaks have really honed their phonics skills as well as their formation of letters in preparation for their further learning at school in September. Some of the children have taken part in word bingo, focusing on the sound that the letters make and how these can be blended to create simple words. Yannick, Evie and Reeve were particularly adept at this and were able to identify a number of words including; ‘sun’, ‘moon’, ‘pig’ and ‘tree’. Not every child was keen at first but after a little encouragement and repetition, even the younger members of the group wanted to take part. To differentiate this for children who are not quite as advanced in literacy, we used pictures as a matching game, which helps visualise the words that accompany the images. In order to extend this, the children later rehearsed holding a pen in a tripod grip (between thumb and finger) rather than a palmar (whole hand) grasp. They used this to follow the shape of the letters, firstly tracing the lines of the letters and then proceeding to copy the letter freehand. The children concentrated on this task for a considerable amount of time and were each desperate to take a turn.

We have also been further developing our literacy skills by delving into favourite stories – top choice is currently ‘The Scarecrows’ Wedding’ and ‘The Runaway Pea’. The children have investigated the various characters and their roles, for example the principle ‘good’ characters in ‘The Scarecrows Wedding’ are ‘Betty O’Barely’ and ‘Harry O’Hay’, whereas the ‘bad’ figure is represented by ‘Reginald Rake’. The children will be extending this idea further by creating story sacks and puppets to be used in our new puppet theatre. This will help the children to develop their communication and language skills as well as their expressive arts and design skills.

The Oaks have particularly enjoyed practising their listening skills this week. The children have been taking part in animal sound bingo. The aim of the game is to listen for the various animal sounds and if they correctly identify the sound, they can put a counter on the corresponding picture. Nova and TJ particularly enjoyed this, as did Florence and Hugo, though Nova was so excited she tried to complete all four boards at once!

Naturally, the snow caused great excitement and whilst we struggled to roll enough to make a snowman of any great stature, play soon turned to snowball throwing – sadly Paige, Karen and Michelle were the main targets and it was soon evident just how accurate the children’s aim was!

This week the Saplings have been settling back into the nursery routine after the relaxing Christmas break. We have had an amazing first week with two new members joining our team. Zoe has moved up from the Seedlings group and we welcome Chloe to the Broughton Family. We also welcome the children that have transitioned to the Seedlings group, with Ottie and Rory settling in well, making lots of new friends.

The children have been exploring the theme of people who help us. They have been able to identify different professionals such as doctors, teachers, dentists, vets, and dustbin men. In order to support the children’s understanding of the world further, the children have taken part in a matching game where they were asked to assign particular professionals to their corresponding image. Theo was especially good at this and was able to describe to the other children what role dustbin men play and how they aim to help us by removing our rubbish weekly so that we can enjoy a clean and healthy environment.

Following on from this, the children have enjoyed acting in role-play, using various objects to make representations and dressing up to extend their play. Jamie has loved talking about the role of a fireman; to extend this, the children have built their own houses out of cardboard boxes, painting and decorating them in a variety of colours. The children used their fine motor skills to rip up orange tissue paper and stick to their buildings, an indicator that their house was on fire. Taking the houses into the garden, the Saplings then used spray bottles as hosepipes to douse the flames. Some Saplings have preferred to engage in retail therapy with Hassan as shopkeeper. They have used the till to make sales, exchanging money as a means of payment, using mathematical skills to count each coin until they reached the correct sum – on occasions the prices have been extortionate!!

This week the Seedlings enjoyed reading the adventures of Elmer so we translated their interest into Elmer theme-based activities including creating their own portraits of elephants as Elmer. Roman enjoyed using his fingers and his whole hand as he created his own interpretation of Elmer.

Ava, Seb and Sofia enjoyed exploring rainbow rice as they used different types of spoons, cups and containers to transport the rice between vessels. They enjoyed the sensory experience as the rice trickled through their fingers and discovered the many wonderful patterns they could make using their fingertips.

Oscar, Leo and Flynn enjoyed playing with our small world happy land safari . The children were able to name the animals and develop their imaginary play as they all played alongside one another.

The children had lots of fun playing in the snow; Sophia made snow balls pretending it was ice cream whilst Leo and Sebastian enjoyed imprinting the snow with their boots and searching for evidence of animal prints.

This week we’d like to welcome back all our Acorns and their families, we hope you had a lovely Christmas and Happy new year to you all! We also extend our welcome to those who have joined us for the first time; Mia, Andi and Adrian.

We spent the week focusing on our immediate environment and how it has altered with the changing weather patterns noting expansive glistening spider webs. The children have enjoyed the sensory experience of water and bubbles. Using their schema of transporting, they used spoons to move the bubbles into different size pots and pans. During this activity, the children used their hands and fingers to feel the warmth of the water. Some decided to make themselves look like Father Christmas by applying a ‘foam’ beard. Shredded paper became ‘snow’ thrown high into the air creating a snowfall effect. The children used pointing and eye gaze to share an interest when watching the ‘snow’ fall to the ground. Using their pincer grip, some of the children helped to tidy away shredded paper, placing it back into the tuff tray. Using shaving foam to create a snow scene, the children enjoyed mark making using their fingers and animal footprints to stamp marks in the ‘snow.’

To celebrate the New Year, we made our own fireworks using paper plates and tissue paper. During the activity the children used words such as ‘bang’, ‘crash’ and ‘zoom’, pretending to be a firework crackling in the night sky. Using palmar grasps to hold the glue spreaders, the children moved the glue around the base in preparation to receive colourful tissue paper thus creating their own firework. Using our sense of sight, we turned the lights off and used a light up globe to make colourful projections on the ceilings and the walls throwing a firework effect throughout room.

Messages:

We would like to remind parents to wear a face covering when dropping off and collecting their children, this is to protect both yourselves as well as our staff. Also, as children are returning from Christmas with lots of new clothing (particularly hats and gloves,) we note that items are still not being named. We ask that you write on the label with pen, name or initials will suffice so that each item is identifiable to prevent them going missing. As the temperature has dropped, please provide extra clothing so that the children are able to go outside in all weathers; flock lined all in ones are ideal.

Stars of the week:

Oaks: Bella – For being more confident speaking out in front of her peers.

Saplings: Rory – For settling into Saplings so well and coping with the transition.

Seedlings: Sebastian – for joining in with his friends play.

Acorns: All our Acorns are superstars this week, for settling back into Nursery after the Christmas break.

Please keep safe and well.

The team at Broughton