Week beginning 18.07.22 – Nature Week 🌲

This week at Oakburn was nature week 🌲 🕷 🐞
on Tuesday it was a hot day so the perfect day for a water slide. The children took turns sliding down the wet soapy slide – as did the adults! We even had a water fight too.

On Wednesday it was wildlife day.
We were lucky enough to have Katie (carols daughter) bring in some of her bugs and insects. The children had so much fun investigating and handling the creepy crawlies.


Thursday was Camp fire/den building day. The children were involved in building the camp fire. They collected wood and twigs and Hannah talked us through how to light it. We discussed how to keep safe around the fire and we knew not to cross the big circle around the fire and to stay on our seats. We toasted marshmallows. They were very tasty.  🔥

Friday was mudslide day. It may have been a bit cooler but that didn’t stop the children getting covered in mud!

Indoors 


The children have also been looking at The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and there have been some fab discussions about different animals that we may find in the woods.
🌳

One of our aims as a centre is to transition as much of our indoor learning to the outdoors. Anything that can be taught inside can be learned outside. However, with nature week taking over this week the children decided to bring the outdoors indoors. We started by collecting natural resources from the outdoors and brought them into the home corner to decorate and create an indoor fire pit! The children then chopped up some fruit and veg and they cooked it over the “fire”. This allowed for an abundance of learning that stretches from gathering skills to fine motor knife skills to harnessing their imaginations. The children have done so well and got really involved with nature week!

Nature week has been a big hit within the Acorn Room and we have had lots of exciting experiences set up for the children 🪵🌿!

The children enjoyed a bug hunt in the tuff tray hunting for the large bugs before a visit form Katie the bug specialist 🐞🕷! We had an indoor campfire which we had group time around and sang our favourite songs 🔥🎸! On Friday we even made an indoor mudslide for our people to slide down 🛝.


hope you all have a lovely weekend. Next week is All around the world 🌎

15th July 2022 – Imagination week

This week at Oakburn Nursery was Imagination week!

On Monday it was pyjama day! It was such good fun coming to nursery dressed in our night wear!😴

We had a very special surprise waiting for us when we arrived..A brand new garden resource had been erected over the weekend..A teepee!⛺️

To tie in with pyjama day we put a cosy blanket, books and teddies inside and read bedtime stories!🐻📚I think the teepee is going to be a firm favourite with many of our children!

On Tuesday it was music and movie day!

Outdoors we played musical instruments and made our own music using pots, pans and spoons!😆👏🙌It was quite loud!

In the art area we drew our favourite movie characters! We discussed the movies they were in and why they were our favourite. The children showed great turn taking skills listening to each other and sharing their opinions.



On Wednesday it was our teddy bears picnic. The children all brought in their favourite teddy and we set up a picnic spot in the courtyard and in the garden. The children enjoyed pancakes and jam to share with our teddies!



On Thursday it was bake off day.
we had children baking in 6 different areas of the nursery and here are the entries…

1. The Garden

the children dressed up as little bakers and made a chocolate orange cake mixture following a recipe. Using their numeracy skills, they correctly measured the right amount of each ingredient and after the mixture was made the children scooped it into whole orange peels and then they were cooked on our fire pit outside! This emphasises our outdoors natural approach to activities as well as using our imaginations to make cakes in an interesting way.

 
2 – Baking area

In the baking area the children helped make a yummy Victoria sponge. Again children used their numeracy skills carefully measuring and spooning out the correct ingredients.



3 – 2-3 room

in the 2-3 room we made fruit muffins. The children enjoyed pouring the mixture into the cup cases and using the wooden spoons to do lots of mixing, developing their fine motor skills.


4 – construction area

in the construction area We created a cake tower using homemade vanilla, chocolate and berry cakes that we made together. We used icing to stick all of the pieces together and created our cake structure, showing our great engineering skills.


5 – The garden pt 2

The children loved making mud pies in the garden using mud, dried pasta and anything else they could find! We then decorated our mud pies using bright coloured materials

6 – Malleable area

In the malleable area we explored baking in different ways using different textures and ingredients. The children mixed, stirred, moulded and rolled the play dough to make fabulous play dough cupcakes.

we hope you voted in our Oakburn bake off competition!

On Friday we finished the week by having a games week. The children got plenty of opportunities to develop their gross motor skills by taking part in games such as what’s the time mr wolf, ball games and parachute games.
We finished with a big game of hide and seek around the nursery  even the adults joined in too.

hope you all have a lovely long weekend and we will see you all on Tuesday 19th 😃.

8th July 2022

Construction area

This week in the construction area we have been learning the names of each different blocks. We did activities such as matching the blocks to the correct shape drawn on the tuff tray and tracing around them showing our mark making skills. The children also got their hands messy using cement to stick all our blocks together. It was lots of fun.

Outdoors

Over the past few weeks we have been looking at our resources and seeing which ones needed a good clean!💧💦💧💦The children decided the mud kitchen at the bottom of the garden should have a good scrub!

Armed with soapy water, scourers and brushes we set to work! Lots of gross motor skills at play here, including using our arm muscles to move the brushes and scourers around! It was hard work! The children were fantastic! I observed a real desire to persevere and get the job done!🙌👏🌳

We discussed the importance of looking after our equipment and resources and how we all had a right to play with things that were in good condition and cared for!❤️Thank you to everyone who helped make our mud kitchen sparkle…..before it got covered in mud again!… 😆Which is of course the whole point of a mud kitchen!🙌

‘Animal World’ is coming on a treat, however some of our resources got broken, so we replaced them! We have some lovely new additions, including frogs, snails and gnomes!🐌🐸🐌🐸🐌We love having a small world area outdoors! Lots of opportunities to role play, discover, be curious and use our imaginations!🌳🤩

We are developing a sensory area in our outdoor space!🌳😍The children asked for things they could twist, squish and pop! Look at all of our new resources!🙌By playing with these we are developing our fine motor skills, exploring the sense of touch and having access to equipment which encourages mindfulness and relaxation!❤️

We are continuing to develop our mark making area… We hope you like our homemade chalk boards!❤️Fine motor skills at the ready!🤩

Garden part 2.

The children have been busy planting seeds for our wild garden! The children used their gross motor skills to turn the soil using the spades before planting the seeds and watering them.

Garden part 3.
The children have been developing their fine motor skills chopping different vegetables using knives! We discussed how to use the knife safely and talked about what different things we could make using each vegetable. “Carrot soup” – AL.

Music area

We have been focusing on numbers this week in the music are we have been introducing numbers 0,1,2,3,4,5 😊. We have been exploring numbers and songs with numbers like one two three four five once I caught a fish 🐟 alive .

Baaa baa black sheep 🐑

Five current buns in the baker 👩‍🍳 shop .

We have introduced some environmental print using some vinyls and our number line piano 🎹

Woodwork area

We have been building our own fence! We started off by measuring big planks of wood and using our mark making skills to make lines where the wood needed to be cut. After we used the saw to carefully cut the wood into smaller parts. We discussed how to keep safe when using the saw. The children showed great gross motor skills sawing backwards and forwards.

Courtyard

In the courtyard we have been looking at The Tiger who came to Tea by Judith Kerr 🐯🫖 .  The children have enjoyed role playing with the tea set and characters from the book.

The children also tried some different flavoured teas 🫖. They enjoyed tasting  the different flavours and guessing which flavour each tea was 🍋🍑

Small world

In the small world area the children chose lots of different book to recreate the stories using small world resources re creating and interacting within the different characters each story portrays.

One focus I portrayed in the small world area was people who help us. Learning about what to do in an emergency situation and the number to dial. We spoke about what each emergency service job role contains and how important they are. We were even lucky enough to get a visit for our focus from the firemen!

 

Malleable Area

In the malleable and baking area over the last few weeks we have been developing our mark making skills and looking at healthy eating. The children have grown in confidence when identifying numbers and some are able to write out their age on different mark making resources.      The children have been talking about fruits and vegetables that are good for us and what they like to eat in their homes – bananas, strawberries and carrots are some of the favourites. We used some of these fruits to make smoothies and fruit salads, while cutting up the fruits the boys and girls practiced their fine motor skills and coordination along with keeping themselves safe while using the knife.

STEAM area

We have been super busy in the steam area recently. We went on a walk to Lennox park to collect some of the things we needed to make a terrarium. Whilst walking to the park we spoke about road safety and waiting for the green man. We needed sticks, soil, rocks, water from the river and moss.  We used little bags to collect all of the items and when we got back to the nursery we put all of the items into a tank. We then got magnifying glasses and had a look inside to see what we could see. We saw a worm, slug, spiders and some other little bugs 🐜

We have also been busy learning about how to keep our teeth clean. We spoke about how if we don’t brush our teeth plaque begins to build up causing our teeth to become yellow.  We used the big toothbrush and toothpaste, moving it in circulars motions to get all the dirty bits 🦷  🪥

Literacy area

In the home room we have been developing our fine motor skills through weaving. We used scissors to cut the wool and then carefully wrapped it around, over and under pieces of cardboard, creating some lovely patterns.
2

Acorn room

The children have been developing their fine motor skills using trays with flour, salt and rice. The children used their hands and fingers to make marks in the different trays. The children also chose to hide the mini beasts in the different trays for their peers/staff to find them.

In the courtyard we have been very busy exploring and learning different colours. We used many different materials and resources to explore and mix colours together to see what we can create and matching objects up to their matching colour 🎨!

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