Tag: nursery environment

Role Play

Role play develops children’s social skills, creativity and imagination. It provides opportunities to play out events that they have observed or experienced in real life and to express their feelings and ideas in a relaxed environment. They can apply and practise life skills as well as develop their literacy and numeracy skills in so many contexts in the role play area. Here is a little gallery of the various roles the children have taken on in our role play area – don’t they look the part so busy in their play?

RSPB Visit

Since we had our canopy built last summer, the birds have been slowly getting a little more confident to visit our garden and the children get very excited if they come to sample some of our bird food.
This week we had a visitor who helped us learn more about the birds we might see and what they like to eat. Kirsty from the RSPB let us hear what different sounds each bird makes and we had great fun playing a game to see if we could remember their sounds to match them to the correct picture. The children got their fingers nice and sticky making fat balls for the birds using lard and seeds then they tried out the binoculars in the garden to see if any birds were close by although a little help was needed to get the binoculars the right way round. Kirsty also showed the children three different nests and talked about the birds that would use them so everyone left feeling very enthusiastic about our local birds and how to look after them.
Here are the morning children enjoying their activities. Photos of the children in the afternoon will be posted soon.

Block Play and Construction

Block play and construction provides many learning opportunities such as problem solving, increasing spatial awareness, developing an understanding of 3D shapes, developing fine and gross motor skills, playing co-operatively, decision making, learning to play safely while managing risk … and so much more. Lately lots of children have shown super skills in this area of Nursery and have demonstrated great teamwork showing themselves to be successful learners, confident individuals and effective contributors.
Here is a taster of the children at work in the construction area. These constructions were a complicated multi storey car park with different entrances for different types of vehicles and a tunnel to let people get into the castle from the princess palace without the “baddies” seeing them. Great work boys and girls!
Click then click again for a clearer view.

Den Building

Problem solving and teamwork are a big part of many aspects of outdoor play and den building and the imaginative play that often happens in dens very much exemplifies this. Outdoor play is always popular, regardless of weather, and we thought we would share these photos we found from earlier in the year showing some of the children busy at work den building.

Delicious Vegetables

Two of our families are pleased to see the photos of the children trying different vegetables in the snack area.

“Good girl Chloe. Mummy and daddy are really pleased you like lots of different vegetables. These look delicious.”

“Nice to see Owen trying red pepper. He loves breadsticks!”

The snack area is always popular and it is encouraging when we see the children happy to try different types of foods.

Learning in the Snack Area

An important aspect of learning in Nursery happens in the snack area where children develop a wide range of skills. They develop self-help and social skills as well as fine motor control when helping to prepare their own snack. Literacy and Numeracy are also part of the experience through talking and listening or, for example, counting the number of pieces of fruit on their plates.
Healthy eating and lifestyle often forms part of our discussions and this week we took the opportunity to develop the children’s global awareness to encourage them to think about the origins of food as we talked about which country the different foods came from and how they arrived on our table. We had carrots, sweetcorn, cucumber and three different colours of peppers for the children to sample along with dip and breadsticks. Some were more confident than others to try a new taste but they all showed great enthusiasm to find out which part of the globe they had come from.
We will be encouraging the children to continue to think about the origins of different foods and to develop a broad range of skills and knowledge in the snack area. We hope that you enjoy these photos of some of our little food tasters.

Outdoor Learning

“Building the Curriculum 2: active learning in the early years, 2007” says ‘All aspects of the curriculum can be explored outside. The sights, sounds and smells of the outdoors, the closeness to nature, the excitement most children feel, the wonder and curiosity all serve to enhance and stimulate learning.’

Our outdoor area is certainly popular all year round, regardless of weather, but when the sunshine comes out, nearly all children choose to spend most of their Nursery session in the garden exploring a range of activities. As you can see, the children demonstrate great imagination and teamwork in the play they create. Dens are built, gross and fine motor skills are developed, a fantastic range of meals is created in the mud kitchen and, of course, there are always jobs to do like watering the plants and painting the house. We hope that you enjoy this little gallery of the afternoon children busy learning in the summer sunshine.

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