Month: July 2023

The Village

This week the children have been enjoying sports week up in the village. On Monday we played lots of team games and ball games with each other and the parachute 🪂 ⚽️.

Then on Friday we transformed upstairs into a giant obstacle course allowing the children to use their gross motor skills, balance and problem solving to make their way from one corner of the village, right round and ending with the finale of a trip down the slide 🛝.

STEM

This week in the STEM area, the children have been looking at the engineering concept of bridges. Using a variety of blocks as the bases and rulers as the bridges, the children had to use their excellent problem solving skills, as well as, their fine motor skills to delicately place the ruler on the blocks without anything falling down. The children scaled this on their own by building a house-like structure and made a bridge with the rulers to combine them. Fantastic work everyone 😁

 

Art Area

This week in the art area the children made Salt paintings. Using PVA glue and glue spreaders the children marked out their picture and then sprinkled salt on top of the glue before shaking off the excess.  We then left the pictures to dry over night and painted them on the following day.

Gymnastics

As part of our dance/gymnastics day for sports week some children joined in a mini gymnastics class where they followed instructions and demonstrations to practice balancing and stretching. The children balanced standing up and on their bottoms. We practiced jumping and sang ‘knees get ready, knees get ready, knees get ready to jump’. We finished off by doing some forward rolls. Well done 🤸‍♀️

Block play

The block play area has supported children’s role play this week. A brick house was built by the third little pig, the wolf huffed and puffed and could not blow it down! The little pig put a fire on for when the wolf came down the chimney. I don’t think the wolf will be in a hurry to visit Oakburn again. Children went on a journey in their car “to see the dinosaurs” and a beautiful Unicorn Castle was created. It has been a great week with children using their language skills to collaborate, creating some large scale masterpieces which enhanced their role play.

Children used their numeracy skills to identify numbers and measure how far they had jumped. Builders used the measuring tapes to work out the length of bricks.

Malleable Area

This week in the malleable area we have been exploring clay. The children have been making clay bowls for us to use to store our beads and other small parts in. The children have done a fabulous job 👏Once the clay has fully set, the children will be able to paint and decorate them too!❤️

Mark making Area

In the mark making area we made our own paper using recycled paper, wool, glue and water. The children learned so much about recycling and the science behind making paper! ♻️

Acorn Room

A few of our acorns next steps was to develop their number and shape recognition. We incorporated this into active week. The children with support counted 0-10, L.F showed the children the numbers. The children then took turns to find the numbers and jump to them. A few children were able to identify numbers “5,3,2”. F.R lifted the number “2” and said “that’s my number”. We then carried out a shape jumping game the children jumped to see which shape they landed on “circle”, “square”, “triangle “. The children then explored our shape book, finding shapes under the flaps.

Mark Making

This week in the mark making and home corner it was festival week ✌🏼

The children strengthened their fine motor skills through sewing making wristbands for entry into our festival as well as face paints and glitter tattoos

 

Malleable Area

In the malleable area we have been making salt dough handprints. The children followed the recipe and took turns each adding and mixing in the ingredients. The children then printed their hands into the dough and enjoyed painting them all different colours.

Acorn Room

Our little acorns have been showing an interest in safari animals. The children took turns to get measured at our giraffe 🦒. The children copied as the EYW recognised their individual numbers “3” and “0”. This led to the children measuring the safari animals. L.F supported the children to recognising numbers on the measuring tape “5”. R.B and N.B sorted the animals into “big” and “small”. M.M measured her peer. We also had a very special visit from the ice cream van, we had an ice cream and then created our own play-dough ones.

Block Play

This week children had fun participating in the ‘Oak in the park festival’, taking part in various activities throughout the nursery. Block play supports creativity, imagination and symbolic representation, children can use the different types and sizes of blocks to support this. Children enjoyed role playing in the block play area where they built an ambulance and a camper van.

Children enjoyed using the large hollow blocks to support their gross motor development, building a box to jump off. Children used their numeracy skills to measure how far they could jump. Some children could jump over 150 centimetres.     Children enjoyed this, many of them taking several jumps to improve their distance.          

Children also built their own slides this week, some children even used the slide to practice their balance on different surfaces by walking down it.

It was a great week of play and learning in the block play area.

STEM

Keeping up the festival theme indoors, the STEM area focused on colours! Mixing shaving foam, conditioner, and paint, we created our own bright colours and practiced our mark making skills! Incorporating literacy and numeracy, the children used their fine motor skills to mark make marks that were important to them such as their name or their age! As the activity went on, the children discussed the senses that they used such as the colours they could see, the smells they could smell, the sound that the foam made when we squeezed it in our hands, as well as, the feeling of the foam. What a fantastic messy experience!

Art Area

This week in the art area the children have been making their own flags for Oakburn’s Festival, the children used a range of materials to glue on and developed their fine motor skills by drawing some fantastic pictures. The children then went out and sourced sticks from outdoors to use as their flag pole.

Outdoors / Courtyard

As it’s festival week the courtyard and garden have been doing lots of prep for our festival. At the start of the week the children had to use their problem solving skills to set up tents, working together.
The children dressed up in their festival outfits and later in the week we had marshmallows and hotdogs on the bbq. They were super yummy !!

Fine motor area

The children explored all the different textures using both sticks and their fingers to make and form patterns in the trays. This activity allowed the children to strengthen their fine motor skills.

The Village

Our new sensory wall up in the village is now complete. The children have enjoyed help make the sensory bags and stick on lots of resources to create our wonderful touchy-feely sensory wall.

We have also created a wind wall where all items move when the wind blows. The children have loved watching all of the windmills blow and butterflies bounce in breeze. We now plan to create sensory floor tiles the children can explore with their feet.

Please come and have a look next time you are in the centre. 🥰

Small world area

This week in the small world area we have been exploring butterflies. We explored a butterflies life cycle by looking after our very own caterpillars. The children observed the caterpillars create there chrysalis and watched them hatch turning into beautiful butterflies. The children took amazing care of our butterflies helped to set them free in the garden.

STEM area

Magic bubbles! Using a secret recipe, the children made fantastic bubbles in the STEM area! The bubbles were so strong that the children were able to hold them and even put their hands through them without the bubbles popping which sparked some amazing and fanatical discussions about what the bubbles were made from! 🌈 This idea came from one of the children so we researched how to make it happen and delved right into it! We really want the children to guide their own learning and this is a great example of that! Keep these ideas coming everyone 💡

2-3 room

Spark- N.B said “I go to the doctors”. L.F then set up the dollies and dr kits. The children were able to identify the body parts they were making better “nose”, “head”.  The children developed early friendships as they role played together N.B “ you check my heart”. We then carried out a science experiment of watching the germs run away.

Outdoors

This week in the garden. The children have been making lots of delicious muddy dishes. We have been working with the natural resources. We can find around the garden to make food that we usually eat at home and out at restaurants. Lots of fun in this garden this week.🍽️🍵😋

Block Play

This week in the block play area the children were very creative. Some children used images of famous landmarks to create masterpieces including the leaning tower of Pisa and the Angel of the North. Other children used their imagination to build castles and a city. Children have been learning about symmetry throughout the nursery this week and built some beautiful symmetrical structures. Children continue to develop their gross motor skills making obstacle courses to walk, balance and jump from.