2024 - 2025

Week beginning 4th November

This week at nursery we had lots of fun when some of our mummies, daddies and grandparents came to our stay and play session. Together we painted, went on a bus ride and even danced! We explored making marks with paint using cardboard tubes and our fingers to create firework pictures and coloured chalk pens to draw pictures on the garden chalkboards, talking about what we had drawn. We developed our creative skills using sequins, ribbons, buttons and googly eyes to make puppets out of socks and made patterns with squeezy glue and glitter. We practised our fine motor skills by threading pipe cleaners into the holes in colanders and baskets and by using tweezers to pick up pom poms. We enjoyed exploring sound, listening to how our voices change when we shouted down large pipes and experimenting with the different instruments on the music wall. We enjoyed popping bubbles in the garden, jumping up to try and catch them. We have continued to love sharing books, snuggling up with our friends and the adults in the book area or on the sofa and have developed our turn-taking skills by playing card games including snap. We enjoyed pretending to be teachers, using books and phonics cards to act out our together times while our friends sat on their carpet spots. We used our imaginations to pretend the cooker in the home corner was a space rocket, hiding inside before peeping out under the lid to see what was on the moon!

Week beginning 21st October

This week in nursery we have been exploring the Room on the Broom story in the spooky curiosity corner. We tried on witches hats, cooked on the fire and made potions, acted out the story using the soft toy characters from the book and explored bugs and spider webs. We developed our creative skills when we used natural materials including twigs, leaves and feathers to make collages using words such as crunchy, soft and prickly to describe them. We shared books with our friends, snuggling up together on the sofa and used the large wooden blocks to build a house. We enjoyed building dens and pretending we were camping and going on a sleepover. We explored some pumpkins, using knives to cut them up and then looked at the seeds and inside, using words such as squishy, slimy and hard to describe them. We are going to dry out the seeds and then plant them next year to see if we can grow our own pumpkins; we're very excited to see what will happen!

In the garden we had fun mixing paint, shaving foam, pom poms and water to make magic potions and used tweezers to carefully pick out the pom poms. In the mud kitchen we mixed sand, mud and water to make mud bread, observing how the mixture changed in consistency when we added more water. We have continued to develop our gross motor skills by climbing, swinging and balancing on the garden equipment and by riding bikes and scooters. In the sand pit we used tools including spades and trowels to dig and move the sand and explored its texture when water was added. We explored concepts such as big and small by sorting different sized shapes in the tuff tray and naming them,and experimented with sounds by playing with the music wall. We enjoyed the Autumn sunshine by pretending the vehicle climbing frame was a camper van taking us on a trip to Wales!

Week beginning 14th October 

This week at nursery we have been busy developing our fine motor skills using tweezers to carefully pick up pom poms and by turning screws onto bolts. In the creative corner we safely used knives to cut play dough and at snack time we cut up our own fruit. We explored the marks rollers and brushes make when we dipped them in water and painted on paper and used our gross motor skills to roll car tyres and cable reels. We developed our listening skills when we followed instructions using the parachute. We enjoyed sharing books with each other and created and drew a friend in group adult time. In the home corner we cooked with natural resources including conkers, leaves and pine cones and had fun camping in the curiosity corner.

In the garden we explored cause and effect when we jumped in puddles and watched what happened to the water and mixed mud, leaves and water to make mud cakes which we cooked in the microwave. We continued to develop our early writing skills by using chalks to draw pictures and make marks on the giant chalkboards and looked at the marks a tyre made when we rolled it in shaving foam. We explored the shaving foam further, putting our hands and tools in it and then using it to paint the fire engine climbing frame before we washed it all off with bubbly water.

Week beginning 7th October

This week at nursery we have been busy finding out about Autumn and the changes in the world around us. In the curiosity corner we played in the Autumn natural resources shop where we explored conkers, pine cones, leaves, pumpkins, bugs and woodland animals using magnifying glasses to examine them closely. In the creative corner we developed our fine motor skills by rolling and modelling playdough and pushing various natural objects into it including feathers and conkers. We enjoyed painting, exploring the marks we made and the changes that happened when we mixed colours. In the construction area we used our imaginative skills to build rockets out of the giant foam blocks, glueing wooden bricks as a control panel to our finished models! In the maths area we counted objects, matching the quantity to the numeral and developed our pencil control skills by drawing round shapes with marker pens. 

We enjoyed playing in the garden where we jumped in bubbly puddles and poured water down tubes into the tuff tray. We had lots of fun developing our hand to eye coordination using the hosepipe to fill cups and jugs with water and filling a tyre to make a swimming pool! We continued to develop our early mark-making skills by using chalks to draw pictures and attempt to write letters from our name on the giant chalkboards. We have been busy developing our gross motor skills by running, scrambling, crawling, balancing, jumping and climbing and demonstrating how we take care of living things by gently handling and examining a worm. 

Week beginning 30th September

This week we have had lots of fun in nursery playing in the role-play hairdressers. We used the shower head, rollers, hair brush and straighteners to give the grown ups a lovely relaxing spa treatment! We especially enjoyed having a go at using Mrs Bebbington's real hairdryer and found it very funny when our hair blew everywhere. In the creative area, we painted boxes and junk, choosing which colours we wanted and then using a brush to carefully paint them. We explored making marks, rolling trains and other objects in paint before rolling them down tubes and seeing what patterns they made and used chunky chalks to draw on the nursery floor. We enjoyed sharing books and stories with our friends and the adults and had fun exploring what happens to our voices when we talk into tubes. We talked about what happens when we are poorly or hurt and explored the doctor's kit using the stethoscope to listen to teddy and the Gruffalo's heart. We were sad when we had to say goodbye to Mrs Smith, but we made her a beautiful card with lots and lots of glitter and sequins!

In the garden we explored what happens when we mix colours, using a squirty bottles and watered down paint to mix paint and look at the changes. We enjoyed finding out about the effects of movement, running round the garden with scarves to see what would happen. We enjoyed role-play, making mud ice-cream and going on bus journeys on the vehicle climbing frame. We had so much fun when we made our first visit to forest school. We carefully listened to, and followed, the rules. We explored the 'cave' (thankfully there was no Gruffalo inside!) foraged for leaves, looking at and talking about their different colours and sizes, and had fun pushing each other on the swings. We developed our gross motor skills by running, balancing on the ropes and climbing on the large wooden climbing structure. We spent the whole morning there and even had a picnic snack time!

Week beginning 23rd September

This week at nursery we had fun exploring technology. We investigated a range of technological items in the curiosity corner including telephones, calculators, CD players and walkie talkies and used tape measures to measure our bodies. We enjoyed finding out about light and shadows when we turned the lights off and shone the torches on the ceiling and in a den we made in the reading pod. In the creative area, we explored what happens when we mix colours when we painted pictures using paint and used our imaginative skills to make collages using pom poms, feather, tissue paper and glue. In the construction area we worked as a team rolling cars and other objects down planks of wood and guttering and used our imagination to design and build a bus out of the large wooden blocks which we then travelled on to visit the seaside.

In the garden we enjoyed jumping in puddles seeing who could make the biggest splash! We have continued to move our bodies in a variety of ways including swinging, balancing, jumping, climbing and sliding; this helps develop our shoulder and arm muscles which is important for when we late learn to write. We noticed how the babies were dirty so used cloths and bubbly water to wash them in the tuff tray and explored the marks our hands made when we dipped them in water and printed them on the blackboard.

Week beginning 16th September

At nursery this week, we have enjoyed the sunshine spending lots of time in the garden. In the role-play area we had an ice-cream shop where we sold and bought ice-creams, ordering yummy flavours including strawberry and lemon. In the mud kitchen we mixed mud, water and paint to make mud cupcakes carefully spooning the mixture into bun tins and in the sand pit we filled buckets and containers, scooping out the sand with spades. We have continued to develop our gross motor skills by climbing, swinging, jumping and balancing on the climbing equipment and practised our ball skills by throwing and catching a ball. We explored cause and effect, discovering what happens when we jump in puddles of water and developed our early writing skills by drawing on the large blackboards using chalks. We developed our fine motor skills by using tweezers to pick up pretend bugs and worms from the soil in the tuff tray and experimented with different sounds by playing with the music wall, the pots and pans attached to the fence and by making a band with Mrs Nixon!

Inside nursery, we have been busy in the construction area building structures with Duplo and balancing blocks to see if we could make towers as tall as us as well as using the giant wooden blocks to make a bus we could sit in. In the creative area we carefully used scissors to cut tissue paper, sellotape and ribbon to make collages and used our imagination to create junk models, sticking googly eyes on them to make monsters. We developed our hand-eye coordination by using pegs and tweezers to pick up pasta and we enjoyed using chocolate scented play dough and dried pasta to make hedgehogs. We have continued to develop our friendships, playing with one another in the small world area taking turns to play with the people and cars, rolling them down planks of wood to see what happens.

Week beginning 9th September

We've had another busy week at nursery! We've been developing our imaginative skills playing in the role-play market. We've taken it in turns to the shopkeeper scanning the food and the customer using money to buy items before putting it in our shopping bags to take it away, demonstrating our turn taking skills by waiting and sharing. We've been going on pretend picnics, had sleepovers where we snuggled under blankets and used shredded what in the home corner to cook dinner with. We have been practising our mark-making skills by using pencils, crayons and chalks to draw with, paintbrushes and water on the windows and paintbrushes to create paintings. In the construction area, we have been using our problem solving skills to build large scale constructions using the giant wooden blocks and the foam bricks, working as a team.X

Outside, we have enjoyed playing with sand and water in the tuff tray, adding different toys and using brushes to clean off the sand. In the sand pit we have been scooping, transporting and mixing the sand and on the giant chalkboards, we used chunky chalks to draw pictures. We were super excited to dig up potatoes that we planted in the Spring and were very careful when we found snails, holding them gently and looking at their shells. We explored our shadows, what happens when we roll things down pipes, what our voices sound like when we shout down tubes and what we can see when we look through them. We enjoyed making dens and hiding in them and moved our bodies in different ways, balancing, climbing, jumping, going up and over the bridge, running and chasing and playing hide and seek. We had lots of fun when we visited Imagination Land where we scrambled up the slope, went through the tunnels, hid in the tents, played in the house and danced on the stage.

The teachers at nursery are really impressed with how quickly we are learning the rules and routines of nursery and how well we are sitting and listening at story times.

Week beginning 2nd September

We've had a busy first week at nursery. The children who remained with us from last year have quickly settled back into nursery life and have been very kind towards their new friends who have been busy getting to know everyone and learning the nursery rules and routines. We are very proud of them all.

All the children have had great fun exploring the classroom, garden and all the exciting activities on offer. We are looking forward to having lots more adventures together!