恭喜发财

We have been celebrating Chinese New Year this week!

We watched these videos to help us learn what this celebration is about.  After watching the videos, we made a plan of all the things we could do for Chinese New Year.  We plan to paint Chinese letters, make flags, make lanterns and use red and yellow playdough.  (We found out that these are lucky colours!)  We also want to add Chinese costumes and artefacts to our music area and the house corner.  We also plan to do a Chinese dragon dance!  Please ask us more about Chinese New Year.

We will also be eating Chinese snacks all this week for snack.

Our nursery topics are planned, led and recorded by the children.  We hope to have a parental event to tell you more about this soon!

The nursery staff observe what the children say, make and do in their play.  They identify key areas of interest for groups of children.  This could be an interest in dinosaurs, making ‘food’ in the house corner, exploring ice, animals, etc.

Groups of children who are particularly eager about a certain topic would be given the opportunity to plan this topic using a ‘Talking Tub’.  The ‘Talking Tub’ is full of objects related to the topic which will stimulate conversation.  This can help the children share what they already know and what they want to know.  It also allows staff to identify any misconceptions the children may have.  This discussion will form the basis of the plan for the topic.

The children who were involved in using the ‘Talking Tub’ will record their learning using a ‘Big Book’.  These are also available for parents/carers to look at.  Please read them next time you are dropping off/collecting.  You will find them opposite the nursery sign-in boards.

This term we have been learning to make our own playdough in our newly designed playdough area.  We use a pictorial recipe to help us make the playdough with very little adult help.  This is a fantastic opportunity for us to develop important early literacy and numeracy skills.  Please ask your child more about this.

The afternoon children have been very interested in playing with babies in the newly revamped house corner.  With the help of Mrs Ogilvie, they used a talking tub – please see additional information at the top of the page – to plan a babies topic.  They brought in photographs of themselves as a baby and talked about the changes that had happened to themselves and their friends.  They also suggested that real babies should be brought to nursery to help them learn more about caring for a baby.

Please see the big planning book in nursery to find out more information.

The morning children have been showing an interest in the animals in our garden.  A small group of children who were particularly interested were given an opportunity to plan a ‘Garden Animals’ topic – see the ‘Talking Tub’ information at the top of the page.

The children have been keeping a tally of all the animals that we see in our garden.  The most popular animal is a seagull! The children are keen to encourage more robins and ‘cuter birds’ to our garden.  They have been making a range of bird feeders to help encourage this.

When learning about the difficulty the birds face when finding food in the winter, the children expressed concern about the rabbits.  They researched which foods were healthy for rabbits and were surprised to learn that carrots should only be given occasionally!  They lovingly prepared a range of healthy options for the rabbits and hid them in ‘secret’ places around our garden.

We have been documenting our learning in our planning books in nursery – please look at these next time you are in nursery.

We would welcome any bird experts who would be willing to talk about bird watching/feeding birds to the nursery children.