Our muddy, digging area is always popular. Did you know that playing in the mud can make a child healthier? Mud can actually develop a child’s immune system. I would like to share a favourite quote of mine by Mary Ruebush.

“So let your child be a child. Dirt is good. If your child isn’t coming in dirty everyday, they are not doing they’re job. They are not building their immunological army. So it is terribly important”.

It has been proven that playing in mud can make you happier, connects you with nature, helps children learn and develops and encourages children to co-operate, communicate, negotiate and share.

Fabulous!!! Let’s get digging👍🏼

Within nursery the children are always given the right to decided what they want to learn. Over the last few weeks we have been talking about making our own choices and asking the children what there interests are. Recently we have had opportunities were the children have been given the option to take part in a vote. One of our votes regarded an activity outdoors. The children voted on whether they would like to play ring games or build a den out of the branches cut from our trees. As you can see from the pictures it was a large majority vote for a den (or at least an attempt at one).

We loved helping to make play-doh yesterday in the 2’s. We helped to count and measure the ingredients and all got a turn of mixing them altogether. It got very messy but was so much fun!

We are transforming the nursery garden. Our plans include a large vegetable patch and digging area. The digging area will be perfect for finding slugs and worms. It will also mean that the children may get quite muddy. The vegetable area will hopefully be in working order in time for early next year when we will be planting our fruit and veg. The nursery staff would like to say a massive thank you to all the nursery parents and grandparents who assisted with the task of digging, your help was much appreciated. Can we just remind you that the children do go out in all weathers and the will get wet and muddy. Could you ensure appropriate clothing and footwear and a change of clothing in case your child gets wet. Thank you once again.

We have been learning the story The Gingerbread Man and becoming familiar with all the characters. Most of us now know and can join in the repetitive song “run run as fast as you can you cant catch me I’m the gingerbread man” here we are carrying out some art related work on our story of the term.

We are learning the story of The Gingerbread Man in the 2’s Room. Here we are listening to the story at group time. We are also participating in a range of activities related to story.

We had our first stay and play of the session. These are held the last Wednesday of each month. This gives parents and carers the opportunity to see what your child has been learning in nursery, have fun and talk to the nursery staff. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

We have been learning all about how actions are used to communicate with people who are hearing impaired. We have learnt that these actions are called Makaton. During group time we have been learning how to sign the song “Three little Monkeys”. The following pictures are the signs used in the song. It would be great if you could ask your child about signing (actions) and encourage them to practise with you at home.

Over the past two weeks the children in nursery have been learning all about experimenting. Our first experiment saw the children learn all about mixing colours using coloured water and pipets. The children created purple, orange and brown!!! Some even used the colours on paper to create beautiful water colour prints. Our second experiment saw us creating exploding volcanoes of colour using bicarbonate soda, vinegar and colouring. The children loved watch the colour explode on the tray as it hit the bicarbonate but they weren’t to keen on the smell of vinegar!!

Today nursery am and pm visited the lovely school library for the first time. We looked at a range of different books and the children each chose a book to take home for a week.😀