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.

 

During the month of October we have had the opportunity to practise our numeracy skills during group time and within our play throughout the nursery. We have been playing in the playdough with the buttons and Numicon to create patterns and practise our counting. There has been the chance for children to participate in various games, which have had a focus on numeracy but this also required the children to use their turn taking skills.

At group time we were using the Geoboards and elastic bands to create shapes. Mrs Reynolds had shape flashcards which she was holding up for the children to recognise and then encouraging them to create the shape on their board.

The coloured bears have been a favourite resource for sorting colour, counting and ordering in size.

Outdoors we have noticed the leaves changing colour and falling from the trees.  We decided to make a collaborative piece of art using autumn colours.  The children had fun painting and printing.

Some of the children were interested in fire and lava.  They helped create a papier mache volcano and  experimented with ingredients to make the volcano erupt.  We added leaves and dinosaurs to create a dinosaur land.  The children enjoyed engaging in imaginary small world play.  They added water to one of the trays to make a pool for the dinosaurs and enjoyed guessing which dinosaurs would float and which would sink.  They also enjoyed sorting the dinosaurs by colour, size and type.

During the last week of October we have been celebrating Hallowe’en and all things spooky and gloopy.  We have been rolling pumpkins down guttering filled with paint to see what we could create on paper. Apple printing was a huge hit. We noticed that  when the apple is cut in half and printed it looks like a pumpkin.

We have been practising counting our spooky ghosts.  Some of them hid and we had to guess which ones were missing!

Happy Hallowe’en!!

We had a visit from one of our dads who is a police officer.  He told us all about his job and how he helps to keep people safe.  The children got to handle some of his equipment and most exciting of all… got to see inside his police van!

 

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.