We have enjoyed practising  for sports day.  We can’t wait for you to come and see us, so we can show you all of the skills we have developed.

 

The children have been practising speaking out in group situations.  They  have enjoyed presenting their artwork, explaining their pictures and what materials they used to create them.

 

 

This month we celebrated World book day.  Some of the children enjoyed dressing up as their favourite storybook characters and were delighted to receive a new book to take home! We also had some parents and carers join us for the book fayre.

Money, Money, Money 💷

In the shop we have created, we have been exploring money through play. We have been matching coins and looking at their shape, size and any visible numbers on them.

 

During December, we were really busy creating some beautiful crafts for our Christmas markets!

Christmas Markets 🎄 🌟 🎅

Thank you to our families that came to the Christmas Markets and purchased their children’s crafts. We raised over £500 for our nursery fund. We hope you all had a great time and enjoyed our Carol singing. 🎶

We had lots of Christmas experiences throughout December. We enjoyed dressing up, arts and crafts, reading the story of Christmas and baking.

We hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year. Since the children came back in January, they have taken part in lots of exciting experiences…

 

The children have been busy helping to prepare some delicious snacks.  We began by making a soup recipe and wrote down all of the ingredients we would need. The children learned about washing their hands before preparing food and how to handle knives safely.  We also used knives to spread the butter onto our bread.

Here we are preparing some vegetable soup.

We decided to make some banana milkshake too!

We are also becoming very independent, selecting our own snack.

The children have been enjoying music sessions this month. They have explored egg shakers, rhythm sticks, spoons and bells, learning to play along to the beat.  We have been practicing making LOUD and quiet sounds with the instruments and have also been learning a few songs in French!

We had a visit from the police who told us about their job and how they help people.  We had fun trying on the police vests and hats; we even got to go inside the police van!

We had so much fun coming into nursery in our pyjamas to celebrate Children in Need.

October

Numeracy skills

In the art area the children have been making spiders for Halloween. They decided what colours they wanted the spiders and set to work to make them. The children practised their counting with corresponding coloured pegs for the spiders legs.

🔥 Fire and Rescue Visit 🔥 

The children were very excited to receive a visit from the local Fire and Rescue Service. The firefighters brought their fire engine with them and the children were given the chance to climb inside for a look. The children were also lucky enough to practise using the hose with support from a firefighter.

 

🎃 Happy Halloween 🎃 

The children have had a fantastic week celebrating Halloween and had great fun dressing up.

RSPB Wild Challenge

Some of the children were involved in helping to create a pond in the community garden as part of the RSPB Wild Challenge Award, which we have now been awarded our bronze award. When the pond was ready, we added frog spawn and pond weeds and waited patiently to see what would happen. We have been lucky enough to observe our frogspawn develop into tadpoles and we are now waiting for them to turn into frogs. The children have all had a chance to visit our pond in the community garden and observe the tadpoles swimming about in the water. There has been special plants put into the pond to provide a food source for the tadpoles, as well as the children having the opportunity to feed them special tadpole food by hand.  From this we have been discussing the life cycle of a frog which has developed an interest in other life cycles such as caterpillars. Now we also have caterpillars in the nursery and are hoping for some beautiful butterflies shortly.

During the first week of February the children enjoyed participating in the Big Garden Birdwatch.  They used the binoculars to look closely for birds and used bird books and posters to help identify which birds they could see.  The children learned how to record their results by making tally marks or ticking the birds on the sheet.  We submitted our results to the RSPB and were awarded a lovely certificate for taking part.

 

The children enjoyed celebrating Pancake day.  We decided to make banana pancakes and enjoyed them for snack.  The children were encouraged to think about some healthy snacks we could make.  The most popular vote was smoothies so we made some banana smoothies too!

The children have had lots of fun this month exploring coins, letters, shapes and rhymes.  We have also been learning about the planets in our solar system and making them with paper mache and balloons.  Some of the children have also enjoyed painting mud faces outside on the fence.

We had lots of festive fun in the month of December

Christmas jumper day was loved by everyone with some kids enjoying the festivities by  wearing their Christmas clothes throughout the month of December.

Thank you to all our families who were able to join us during Christmas Market week for some hot chocolate, Christmas songs and Chrismtas arts and crafts. We thank you all so much for your contribution towards the Christmas crafts. The children had all been working hard to practise the songs and create their crafts and were very excited to share this.

The children read the story of Christmas and have been taking turns of acting out the characters in the story.

During the month of January we have been learning about birds in preparation for the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch.  The children have enjoyed stories and rhymes about birds and have been involved in making bird feeders for the nursery garden.  We are looking forward to taking part in the bird watch to see what kinds of birds we can see and count!

The children have also been practising their gymnastic skills this month.  They have been learning how to make different shapes with their bodies and doing some great balancing!

November

During the month of November we have been practising our tooth brushing during nurture time. The children are really good at keeping their toothbrushes safe and free from germs by holding them safely away from each other and off the floor. While brushing their teeth Miss Ramsay and Mrs Reynolds sing a song and use the egg timer so the children know when 2 minutes is over and tooth brushing is finished.

We had a visit from one of our parents who is a firefighter.  He told us all about his job and how he helps people.  The children enjoyed looking at all the equipment and seeing Mr Fleming dress up as a firefighter!

The children have been very busy in the block area where they have shown fantastic imagination and creativity while building a variety of models.  Some of the children have been developing their observation and literacy skills by drawing their models.   We have been learning about the shapes and properties of the blocks .  We have also learned some new shapes including a cylinder and a cube!  The children have had fun rolling the cylinders and creating patterns with the cubes.  We have also been comparing the size and weight of the blocks during our play and measuring ourselves against some of our really big models.

The children have been busy preparing crafts for the upcoming Christmas market.  Here they are creating their Christmas stars.  The children used strands of wool to decorate the stars which developed their fine motor skills as they wound the wool around the stars.

 

 

A big warm welcome to everyone in the Blue Group! All the children have been settling in well and investigating what there is to play and learn with at Cross Arthurlie Nursery.
At group time each afternoon we have been learning our friend’s names through playing games. We have been learning how to identify our own names at group time using our wooden slice, which we also pick in the morning as we enter nursery and place in a basket to indicate our feelings.

The children have been having lots of fun in the home corner where they have been busy baking and cooking lots of ‘play dough’ food.  Our numeracy skills have been developing as we have been counting our currant buns, sausages and counting cookies.  The children have also been developing their fine motor skills and pencil control while writing orders and making their own recipe books.

The children were excited to welcome their family members to stay and play at nursery.  They had lots of fun showing everyone around and taking part in lots of fun learning experiences together.

Since coming back in August we have been developing our self-help skills when getting ready to go outside to play. We are able to identify our belongings and have been practising putting our wellies and suits on. Go Blue Group!

We have had the opportunity to explore all areas of learning through our play outdoors including the mud kitchen, construction area, water play, sand and physical activity such as basketball and climbing.