Last Friday the children joined in lots of fun activities for children in need, including a colouring competition,  pudsey playdough and a ballet danceathon in the classroom! Their favourite activity though was our cake snack time! What a treat! Thank you for all the generous donations, they are very much appreciated!

The children enjoyed exploring sound in the playground by tapping their rhythm sticks on different materials to see how sound changes. We found different ways of making sound by tapping, banging, scraping and hopping our sticks around the garden. The children discovered that the metal drainpipe made a loud echo sound, the floor sounded dull when they tapped it and the grass made a soft sound. They also decided that they liked the tingling sound that the railings made when they ran the sticks along them the best of all! 

Every Tuesday and Thursday, the nursery children do “Funky Fingers”, a carousel of 4 fine and gross motor activities designed to develop strength in fingers for pen grip, increase dexterity and develop hand eye coordination. These are some pictures from recent funky fingers activities! Why not try some of these at home?

Last week in nursery, whilst learning about bonfire night, the children enjoyed taking part in a science experiment to create fireworks in a jar! We added a few drops of food colouring to a small amount of oil, gave it a stir and watched what happened when we poured the mixture into warm water! When the food colouring sinks through the oil, into the water and begins to dissolve, it looks like tiny fireworks exploding in the jar! Amazing!

This afternoon Nursery and Reception have been learning about and celebrating Diwali, the festival of light! We have been tasting Indian food, making peppermint creams, creating rangoli patterns, doing some traditional Bhangra dancing and making clay diva lamps. We have all been super busy but we have had such a great time!

As as autumn turns to winter, the children have been enjoying the last of the crisp autumn sunshine and making the most of exploring the garden to investigate mini beasts, leaves, conkers and other signs that the season and weather is changing!

Before the half term, the children helped to cook an Autumn soup using lots of lovely root vegetables! They included potatoes, carrots, cabbage, swede and butternut squash! The best part about cooking was tasting the soup they had made afterwards! It was a success! Here are some of the things the children said after trying their creation, 

“It’s yummy and it’s delicious and it’s very healthy because everyone made some.”

“It’s got lots of ingredients. Some lettuce and there some carrots.”

“It’s like beans!”

“Can I drink it?”

“It’s yummy!”

As the children become more settled into the nursery environment, they are beginning to feel more adventurous and are happy to explore more freely. Last week (23rd September) we were particularly excited to venture into the outdoor playground and develop our confidence in this area!

A huge welcome to all our nursery children and well done for a fantastic first two weeks at nursery! You are all settling in really well! Keep up the good work! Here are just a few pictures of all the fun activities we have got up to in our first few weeks!

Nursery enjoyed having a teddy bears picnic on the field yesterday.