Month: July 2021

The children had been so excited about the BBQ, that we continued to explore fire in the expressive area. The children painted a fire on a tuff tray, and discussed how to keep ourselves safe around a fire. The children made their own fire extinguishers, filled them up water, then sprayed out the fire! One child said “we’ve got to stand back” and “we’re gonna use it to spray the fire out”. There was lots of lovely sharing between the children as they took turns with the extinguishers. The children agreed that its best to leave putting out real fires to the nursery staff and fire fighters.

In the construction area this week we have been looking at American buildings and bridges. The children have been recreating the buildings using different blocks and have also been using their imagination to build their own buildings.

On Disney day the children designed their own Disney castle using pens and paper to trace around blocks and mark down their ideas.  We then used recycling materials to build our own castle.  

This week we have been discussing fire and how we can risk assess to use it safely. The children were going to be doing a BBQ on Wednesday so we wanted to prepare them for how we can keep ourselves safe.  We explored and discussed the importance of our emergency services particularly our fire service. We created a fire square and the children learned that we never enter the fire square as this will keep up safe.  We explored some words that linked with America as it was America week,  any of the children haven’t heard of s’mores before therefore we decided this would be a perfect treat for our BBQ.

We then had our American BBQ and what a day it was, the children have shown great awareness of risk by sitting safely around the fire. They also experienced some tasting we had veggie sausages, pastry and s’mores all cooked from the fire. one children has asked if we can revisit this which we look forward to doing in the near future. ☺️

This week at the expressive arts area , the children have been very busy for American week 🇺🇸🇺🇸.We made American flags , we used crepe paper to create our wonderful flags😄.We also spoke about the very important statue in America called the Statue of Liberty, we spoke about how the statue has a crown and is holding a torch 🔦, we decided it would be a fabulous idea 💡 if we made our very own crowns and touches, we made our crowns sparkle by adding some glitter. We made beautiful and colourful firework 💥pictures , using some black paper and chalk to make these. On Wednesday we had American BBQ 🌭🍔day we spoke about the Importance of fire 🔥 safety , and then created and designed our own BBQ plate , these turned out fantastic ⭐️ well done 👏 boys and girls for working soo hard to make American 🇺🇸 week such a great success.

🇺🇸Welcome to America week🇺🇸Week commencing 5/7/21🇺🇸

We have been exploring the colours of the American flag, red, white and blue. We used these colours in our play dough mixture and discovered that blue and red make purple and red and white make pink!💕

On Wednesday Stephanie was our fabulous BBQ Chef!👩🏻‍🍳The children were so excited 🍔🌭We thought it would be a good idea to make the play dough orange and yellow to match the colour of the flames of the fire.🔥What a brilliant suggestion! We added glitter to the dough for some extra special sparkle!

The water tray looked very inviting as it was filled with shaving foam and red, white and blue glitter.💦💧💦We used paintbrushes, lolly sticks and sponges to mark make and create patterns and shapes!🟡🟦🔻🔶♥️ We also froze Lego in ice and developed our fine motor skills by using tweezers to try to get the Lego out of the ice blocks! It was tricky!😁

On Thursday we held our Disney character day! We coloured white rice blue and red using paint and Disney characters were hidden in amongst the rice for the children to find👀

Friday was Crazy hair day!🤪We made red, white and blue glittery play dough and the children made crazy hair designs on silly face templates!😃

This week at the expressive area , we have been making musical 🎶 shakers, the boys and girls have helped to decorate the shakers that we will use for tidy up time.

The boys and girls wanted to make their own shakers to take home , we explored the different

textures of the rice 🍚 and pasta that we used to put into our bottles . We added paint to make beautiful coloured🌈shakers and finally decorated the bottles. We spoke about our favourite songs to sing at home 🏠, well done 👏 everyone who made a shaker this was fabulous .

In the water tray this week we have added some jungle animals 🦧🐊🐅the boys and girls loved exploring them, talking about what each animal sounds like . The most favourite thing in the water tray this week was the babies 👶the boys and girls fully embraced the role in washing there babies and making sure that they were sparkling clean 🧼 .

In the garden, we had bubbles which then sparked the interest of the bubble trouble book, we read and spoke about the book and a child said “ we have green bubbles too”. We then spoke about the size of the bubbles that we had small, medium and large and then the children were running around the garden trying to catch the bubbles. The children then were trying to use the bubbles themselves and let their friends catch them.

Following the interest from the bubbles, the children have been interested in washing the dirty cars with water and making their own bubbles with fairy liquid. We have being using various materials such as sponges, buckets, fairy liquid and coloured paint. We have been mixing the paint in the after to make it a foam coloured car wash also adding lots of fairy liquid to make it very soapy and bubbly. We were also transporting the water from the wheelbarrow to tuff tray adding in boats and also different cars. As we were choosing the cars and the boats we were speaking about the different colours that we had and the size of the cars and boats.

After using our tuff tray from the garden washing dirty toy cars and boats in the garden, the children wanted a real life experience of washing a real car, so then we had our very own Oakburn Carwash! The children had their own individual bucket and sponge filled with car soap, they had a great time, washing the dirty car. As we were out the front our our nursery the children had to risk asses the area and think about

How we could keep ourselves safe? What the dangers were.?  What we needed?

To keep safe the children said – Use our listen ears and looking eyes and be careful strangers could be there.

They said the dangers were- Making sure we only stay beside the car we are washing and don’t go on or near the road and stay with the grown ups.

The children said we need- sponges, soapy water, hi-vis vest, goggles and buckets.

Our little Acorns, have been very active and curious this week.

The children chose to engage in our “We are going on a bear hunt” book where they showed an interest in pointing at the bears body parts. We followed their interest and provided mirrors and an experience of point to your… This supported our little Acorns as they began to learn their body parts. We followed this on with a painting experience, the children were keen to paint there hands and feet. P.M- “paint nonies hands”.

We then supported their numeracy skills, creating spiders with peg legs.  The children counted their legs O.M- “1,2,3,4,5”.

One of our little Acorns was wearing a top that had mini beasts on it, they showed an interest in looking at their top and naming the bugs. We then got out a bug game, we caught the little bugs, developing their fine motor skills and naming them , promoting language.

Our little Acorns have been beginning to develop early friendships with their peers as they explore what our centre has to offer them. A child pointed at their friends and their Early Years Worker (EYW) named them.  With this we created photos of all the peers to support the children learn each other’s names.

We have created a self registration with this to allow the children to strive to develop their self help skills/independence.