Dear Parents,

This week, the Oaks have been helping to reconfigure their room, creating new areas to explore and investigate. They have helped produce their own reading nook where the children can sit and read books in a quiet space, developing their literacy skills along the way. Danny and Alba have particularly enjoyed this and are often lying in the reading corner looking at their favourite books and pointing out key characters within the stories. To extend these literacy skills even further, we have been exploring chalk and the marks it makes on different surfaces. Using their fine motor skills, some of the children are beginning to form letters; Ottie drew a circle and quickly pointed out that it was “for Ottie”.

The Oaks have also been looking at the subject ‘all about me’. The children have created an emotions wall where they can discuss how they are feeling day by day, whether they are having a happy or sad day or maybe even a more complex emotion such as being excited. On this wall, we also have placed mirrors for the children to look at their characteristics and compare with their friends. Theo pointed out that he could see himself and found it fun to pull different faces in the mirrors. The children have also been investigating their various body parts, using the ‘doctors’ surgery’ and doctor’s kits for support. Rowan and Thomas love to wear the stethoscopes and listen to everyone’s hearts and see what effect various movements can have. We will research this further by conducting experiments using fast and slow actions which make our hearts beat faster and how this regulates the rhythm.

The Saplings have been continuing their ‘space’ theme this week, using a variety of resources to get creative including star pictures, using paint, glitter and stencils. The children were able to imprint a starry night sky onto paper by pressing firmly on the stencils to create marks. This was extended further by using other decorative materials to make a stronger representation. This allowed for the children to not only use their physical development but also led to discussions that furthered their understanding of the world. The children made a correlation between the stars and “sleep time”.

The children also combined their efforts to make their own space play dough. This involved the children identifying colours which they associated with space and mixing them together to create a ‘galaxy’ effect. The Saplings used their fine motor skills to hold tweezers in order to try to catch the ‘stars’ (pretty tricky!) Sprinkling the stars into the play dough meant they were able to explore different textures and strengthen their fine motor skills.

The Seedlings and Acorns have been exploring farm animals and the noises they produce by mimicking them (often with hilarious results), using farm stories to extend their understanding of the world. They have created their own representation of chicks by printing yellow handprints onto paper and adding feathers thus testing their pincer grip. This allowed the children to explore different senses and acutely test their hand-eye co-ordination.

The children have also enjoyed lots of water play, investigating lavender bubble bath with different sensory toys. The children thoroughly enjoyed the scent and shaking their hands furiously to make more bubbles, fascinated by the ripple effects caused by their actions.

The Seedlings and Acorns have been working on their gross motor skills by stretching in ‘baby yoga’. Reaching up high to the sky and in opposition, making themselves as small as a ball, as wide as an elephant and as thin as a stick. Many of the children got very excited and were squealing with more exaggerated movements.

Thank you for advising us on how we might ripen our tomatoes. As a result of direct action, we have finally had success and the harvested tomatoes will  feature on our menu this week.

We would like to remind parents that all clothes and items brought into the nursery must be named (a biro will suffice). We have had a few unnamed items go missing recently– in particular, please keep a look out for a blue fire engine t-shirt and navy checked shorts that do not belong to your child and return them to us so that we can reunite them with their owner; thank you in advance.

Stars of the Week:

Oaks:  Thomas – for being kind enough to help his friends get their shoes and coats on

Evie – for being such a good helper at tidying up and listening to the adults

Saplings:  Hassan – for his growing confidence in using a wider range of vocabulary when communicating with adults and his peers.

Seedlings:  Sophia B – for joining in and copying all of the actions in ‘baby yoga’

Acorns:  Leo & Lorelai – for joining in and copying with actions in ‘baby yoga’

We hope you are enjoying the sunshine and having a fabulous weekend, see you next week.

The Team at Broughton.