“Dancing days are here again, as the summer evenings grow.” Led Zeppelin

Seedlings

The children have had a very busy week.

Annabel’s favourite activity was den making. She giggled as she crawled through the draping material. Leo absolutely adored our dance party where he busted some brilliant moves.

We also spent lots of time working on the children’s colour recognition through various craft activities. One saw the youngsters throw cotton balls filled with paint at paper to see the marks they made. It’s safe to say the children all thoroughly enjoyed watching the paint splatter. We asked the seedlings to try and name the different colours we used.

To expand on this, the children took part in a tie dye activity involving paper secured with rubber bands. The Seedlings were fascinated to see the colours spreading to create different patterns. Our rainbow Tuff Tray was one of the week’s real highlights. The children had so much fun playing with sensory scarves, building blocks and their favourite poppers.

Our week ended with some mark making. This activity saw the children drive cars and trains across paper with pencil and pen ‘appendages’ strapped to the rear.

Star Of the Week:

Finn – For tiding up so beautifully.

Lower Oaks:

August has arrived! Time is flying and it’s nearly transition time for our Lower Oaks- we have been talking about changes, worries and being brave! We have spent some time involved in relaxing breathing and yoga to calm us!

We have been investigating volcanoes, particularly Mount Vesuvius. We have spent our week making lava with glycerine and red paint, and looked further afield at earthquakes in Japan!

The children decided after reading “the winning team” about junk model boats, they wanted to make some too. They certainly got stuck in designing boats from egg boxes, plastic bottles and rafts from sticks! All recycled items- we will race them next week!

Finneas has shown fantastic focus during our volcano and earthquake activities and has answered some complex comprehension questions! Well done!

Stars of the Week:

Our whole class for their interest and intrigue.

Upper Oaks:

What an adventure we had this week as we set off on a big day out to Broughton’s very own beach.

Our journey began with a very special train ride – and what a crew we had on board. Imogen took charge as our wonderful train driver, making sure we all got to our destination safely. Peggy was busy keeping everyone refreshed with drinks and snacks along the way, while Ada and Xander were on ticket duty, checking that we were all ready to travel.

Once we arrived at our destination, the children wasted no time in jumping into our ‘sea’ and playing on the sandy beach. The weather was just what you’d expect from a British summer holiday, a little cloudy, but that didn’t stop us as we finished off the day with a delicious barbecue followed by ice cream with sprinkles.

We’d like to say a huge thank you to Lauren and Joe for arranging a truly brilliant visit from Jason the firefighter. The children were so excited when the fire engine pulled into our drive. Jason greeted them all in the playground and taught Upper Oaks some facts about firefighters and the kind of rescue work that they do. He then showed them all the equipment in the fire engine.

The children were fascinated by the enormous hose pipes and ladders. Jason even turned one of the hose pipes on for them briefly! Many of the group asked insightful questions and had lots of ideas about what it means to be a firefighter.

The youngsters couldn’t believe their luck when Jason invited them to climb into the fire engine to explore the equipment and uniforms up close. It was an absolutely brilliant educational event for the children.

Star of the Week:

Jacob – For being a good friend.

Forest School:

The children have shown a great interest in the passage of time and have been studying clocks in nursery, giving them a sense of knowing, such as I will be going home at ……. when the big hand is pointing to ….. and the small hand is pointing to …….that’s in ……hours/minutes.

Luca was fascinated by my watch particularly as it’s digits are displayed in Roman numerals, so we have compared numbers and ancient numerals. Cindy helped the children bring this to life in the woods where the team made their own dial using foraged materials. 

They came across a ladder and set about making a ramp against a tree prompting a lot of discussion about safety, stability and focus!

Well done everyone, you demonstrated such splendid teamwork this week.

Acorns:

This week our Acorns extended their knowledge of space.

To start off the week we challenged the children to make telescopes by painting cardboard tubes. Arlo particularly enjoyed this activity whilst looking at a practitioner with a big smile on his face; Nellie opted to paint the inside of the tube rather than the outer and rather liked her work. The children then chose which colour tissue paper they would like to resemble the lenses, secured at the top with a little help from the practitioners. The children had lots of fun peering through and pointing at what they could see.

We then grabbed some scarves and started building dens using chairs and pegs, Arthur thoroughly enjoyed making his way through the den rather like a commando.

Star of the week: 

Ernie for his amazing tidying up

Saplings:

This week the Saplings have enjoyed working on their colour recognition.

All the Saplings had a chance to create their own paper plate fish, which have been hung in our room; they have enjoyed talking about the colours they used and watching them spin round from the breeze. They used tissue paper to decorate and Theo told practitioners his was “beautiful”.

The Saplings also enjoyed looking out of the window to see a Fire engine visiting the Upper and Lower Oaks groups. Teddy and Arthur were fascinated by the flashing lights and all the children loved having a look at the “neenaw” after they had woken up from their nap.

They’ve particularly enjoyed our sensory story books this week, feeling the different textures and talking about the colours they see.

The Saplings once again enjoyed spending time in the garden, the construction area was most popular wowing us all up with their inventiveness and teamwork.

Star of the week: 

Robin for always being helpful and being so brave during her visits to Lower Oaks.