Author: J Andrew

Week beginning 27.03.23

STEM area

This week in the STEM area we have been using our technology skills alongside testing out our new beebot mats. If that’s not enough we were also making them ourselves.

The children came up with some amazing ideas and on Tuesday we decided to make a robot and a rainbow beebot mat as these were the most popular ideas 🌈 🤖. The children showed excellent imagination and creativity and produced 2 fabulous mats. After they were finished they programmed the beebots to go round their mat touching the pictures they each drew.

Using the other numeracy and literacy mats the children practiced their numbers 0-20, shapes, colours and also spelling their names.

Home Corner

This week the children have been making the home corner into an ice cream shop 🍦. The children have been using real cones and sprinkles, as well as playdough for their ice cream! They have been showing good turntaking by having turns each to be the shopkeeper. This has also developed their awareness of money 💰

The children also made a cafe, again using playdough as well as real items to make tea and cakes 🧁they demonstrated good sharing and team work when making their cakes. We used real tea bags to make tea with different flavours and smells 🫖

Snack area

We have been making delicious smoothies this week in the baking area! The children have been very engaged with this activity and have been choosing different fruits and yogurt to use, we have been using our pouring and measuring skills. ❤️

Courtyard – Block play

Sometimes even our builders need a break and what better way to relax than by sitting on the sofa! 👷‍♀️👷‍♂️ So our busy builders decided to build one, how fantastic! Working as a team and using their amazing innovation, the children discussed their ideas and got to work. They discussed the size they wanted it to be, some of the features of a sofa such as arm rests, and how to make it more comfortable by adding pillows! What an impressive build 🛋

Expressive Area

YOU CHOOSE

using your imagination let’s create something!

At Oakburn we are an ECO Friendly centre and we love using recycled materials such as junk modelling. The children used tape and junk modelling to build and construct their own creation. “It’s a boat with wings!” The children worked their fine motor skills problem solving how to connect the materials together ✈️🚀🏎🚢🏥🛠

Easter toddle 🐣

A huge thank you to all who joined us on our sponsored Easter toddle yesterday. We were overwhelmed with the amazing turn out from parents, carers and families supporting us on our toddle and then joining us in our coffee morning afterwards.

The morning was a huge success with a special visit from our friend the Easter Bunny who left the children a special treat for finding eggs on their egg hunt and creating some amazing Easter Bonnets

 

Thank you again for all your support !

Jocelyn

Outdoors

No matter the weather we are always outside! Despite the rainy week we have had, the children have still found creative ways to have fun! This time, the children asked for bubbly puddles to splash in and with the ingredients they made them themselves! This created endless fun for them on a soaking wet day!

Discovery area

This week in the discovery area we have been engaging in activities related to different stories. We read the story ‘supertato’. The children had to use their fine motor skills to free the evil peas from the ice. The children have also been using potatoes to make their very own supertato! 🥔 The children used stick on eyes and drew mouths and noses on their Supertato. We then had a selection of different materials and the children chose which to use for their cape 🦸‍♂️ .

Acorn Room

This week in the acorn room we have been loving our story of the month, “The Gruffalo.”

Everyday the children have had the opportunity to explore a different sensory experience that has related to the story. We have had ‘Scrambled Snake’ to ‘Gruffalo Crumble’, each experience providing the children with a range of sensory and fine motor challenges and curiosity.

The children have also enjoyed using the story spoons to act out the story as we read it together 📖🥄promoting role play and language development throughout.

Fine motor area

This week the children have been talking about the letters from their names. In the fine motor area we had letters hidden under pasta, rice and flour. The children could then search for the letters to see if they could find any letters from their names. They had great fun finding the letters and then trying to write the letter they found in the rice and flour. This was developing their fine motor skills, mark making and also letter recognition skills.

Block play

The focus in the construction area this week has been houses from around the world! The children has been building a variety of different houses based on both real and imaginary! We have been building our own houses, Elsa’s Castle, and even a unicorn house! It’s been wonderful to observe the children working together, and on their own, designing freely and creating and recreating models.

Art area

Within the art Area the children have been learning about Vincent van gough and his artistry. The children used a variety of different materials, learned about colour palette and still life. The children love copying and recreating their own takes of different famous images.

 

STEM area

Beanstalk update

This week in the STEM area we have been looking after our beanstalks (cress seeds) the children have been watering them and ensuring they are kept on the bright windowsill.

At the end of the week we decided to use rulers and our numeracy skills to see how high our beanstalks were! We have 4, 5, 6 and even 7cm high ones! The children then practiced their positional language by comparing their beanstalks seeing which was “bigger and smaller”.

Courtyard – Block area

Ninja Warrior Oakburn! The children decided that this week the focus was constructing their own obstacle courses and making them as challenging as possible! From ramps to bridges, the children excellently navigated across the course showing amazing teamwork and turn-taking skills. As the week has went on, the children has created more challenging obstacles with demonstrates that they can scale their own learning! Amazing work ninjas!

Art area

The art area have been working their fine motor skills through the use of scissor play and playdough building. Using different materials the children became creative to build and construct their own designs using straw and sellotape 🏠

Small world

This week in small world we have been exploring different animals. We have been looking at different jungle animals and where they live. 🦒🐘🦧.

We have also been watching some videos about these animals, and seeing them in their natural environment 🐘

We have also been looking at farm animals 🐖🐄🐓 we have also used natural materials from the garden to explore different textures.

Outdoors

A lovely surprise snow day at Oakburn in March has went down a treat in the garden! The boys and girls watched as they threw the sun up in the air and seen all the sparkling snow fall down! They also observed as the snow melted throughout the day and turned into water ❄️💦

Acorn Room

We continued exploring our colours this week by reading the colour book and also finding different objects around the acorn room. The children were encouraged to find different items to match the colour such as red. For red the children found a fire engine which matched the colour red.

Cosy Corner

Courtyard – Gross motor skills

This week in the courtyard the children have been exploring colours.  We have participated in activities around finding and matching where the children use the coloured foam mats and search for an item around the nursery that matches that colour.

 

Courtyard – block play

Recently, in the block play area we have introduced our “work in progress” signs. This allows the children to take a break and come back later which can stretch the experience out further! It also allows for the children to showcase their amazing structures that they have built and let them remain untouched until they decide to take it down! This gives the control to the children to decide what they do with their own buildings. Excellent work everyone!

STEM area

For World Book Day we have been using some of our favourite stories for inspiration. We used the traditional tale of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ to junk model the giants castle. The children used their creativity, imagination and construction skills to design and build their castles with recycled paper and plastics.

We also decided to plant our very own beanstalks (cress seeds). The children followed 2 part instructions when planting the seeds. They picked 1 cup, 4 bits of cotton wool soaked in water and 2 pinches of cress seeds. We then picked the bright windowsill to put our seeds to grow and spoke all about what plants need to grow well.

The children have enjoyed monitoring the seeds progress each day and we hope to have ‘beanstalks’ that we can measure soon. 🌱 🌱🌱🌱

Woodwork Area

This week in woodwork the children were talking about fairies 🧚‍♀️. We decided to create fairy doors for the garden. The children have been very creative when making their doors. They have added some paint, glitter, beads and keys to their fairy doors 🚪.

Home Corner

This week in the home corner the children have been trying some new flavours, first they were making some flavour teas, the children mixed and had a taste of each one. This moved onto the children wanting to create their own flavours we done this through making smoothies that the children said were yummy. On world book day the children wanted to create their own tea party using some more fruit and making their own cake after they made it the children sat down and had a tea party together while they listened to the tiger who came to tea 🐯

Story Corner

World Book Day – this week we celebrated world book day by dressing up as our favourite characters, wearing cosy pyjamas and sharing our favourite stories with our friends.  All the children enjoyed discussing their favourite stories and characters and sharing their favourite parts of the book.  📚

Acorn Room

In the acorn room this week we have been focusing on our colours using playdough, paints and pens 🎨. On Thursday we tied this into ‘World book day’ by reading ‘Elmer’ by David Mckee. The children used the coloured squares and glue to stick them on toys elephants to make their very own Elmer. We had some very colourful Patchwork Elephants by the end of their wonderful creations 🐘🎨!

Art Area

It was world book day this week. In the art area we have been creating our own stories based on representational characters from famous books or the children enhanced their own creativity by using their imaginationations to create their own stories. The children used their fine motor skills to draw and write their own book.

Garden

This week in the garden we had stay and play with the parents and they were able to join in and help make a den for the boys and girls to play and we were able to build on this by making it into a house and pirate ships

Literacy / Fine motor area

This week we celebrated World book Day. In the fine motor area we read The Three Little Pigs book, the children were then able to make houses from straws, sticks and wooden bricks. The children could identify the best material to make the houses with and demonstrated by saying “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down” . Some of the children then used the story stones to be able to retell the story in their own words, while changing their voices for different characters. Developing their language skills through role play and their fine motor skills while making the houses.

Snack area

This week has been stay and play where we have had lots of our parents/families visit our nursery.  During this time in the baking area we have made cakes and spoke about ingredients.  We have used our measuring, pouring and scooping skills then later in the week we made delicious fruit smoothies!

Courtyard – block play

Building bridges, tunnels and friendships! This week the children have been exploring different ways to play the game “the floor is lava” when they discovered how to build bridges with the blocks so lots of people can get on at one time! This transitioned very well into obstacle course construction and the ideas continued to expand! Through teamwork, the children decided to construct a large tunnel which was completely made by themselves! This was amazing to see! The ideas are limitless and the children are really beginning to see that! Fantastic work builders! 🏗

Courtyard – Gross motor skills

This week in the courtyard we have been trying out our new bowling set, the children have been practicing their counting, shapes and patterns when trying out different ways to set the pins out.  They have showed great control and coordination when rolling the bowling balls 🎳

STEM area

This week in the STEM area we have been exploring science and the changing state of water. The children have been discovering that ice is frozen water and when ice melts it produces water again. We have also been using salt and hot water to speed up the melting process.

During the experiment our mini scientists have been discussing whether we think ice will melt with no help at room temperature and whether we thought our room was warmer or colder than a freezer.

When we melted our ice the children then used their creativity and imagination to make love potions using the water, glitter and sequins. 🧪❤️💕💗 The children enjoyed this so much the next day we continued making lots of magical potions 🧪 🌸 adding glitter and some rose petals.

🐛🐜 🔍 Magnifying Experiment 🔍 🐛 🐜

This week in the STEM area we have been exploring magnification. The children have had lots of opportunities to use magnifying glasses and also microscopes. We have magnified small pictures and practiced our positional language and direction skills by telling our friends how to find our favourite objects.

Later in the week children were keen to use the microscopes and magnifying glasses to look at bugs so we moved our STEM area outside and found lots of worms to take a closer look. This focused on the children’s senses and them describing what they saw. It was also an excellent opportunity for them to get outside and enjoy nature within our nursery garden.  🔍🐛🐜

Snack

PANCAKE DAY!

This week in the snack are we have been celebrating pancake day by making and trying pancakes. The children helped to cook the pancakes using the hot plate. The children developed their risk aware skills by being safe when cooking. We created banana and blueberry pancakes. The children had the option of lots of toppings!

The Garden

With the sun finally starting to come out, our little gardeners have been very busy! In our lovely allotment area, the children have decided to plant some blueberries and blackcurrants! And to help protect the young plants, we have built a fence out of twigs which we have collected from all around the garden 🪵🍃🍂🌹💐

Fine motor area

In the fine motor skills area we have been copying patterns using the foam shapes and laces. The children have been threading the foam shapes onto the laces following the pattern cards. This has been developing their fine motor skills, shape recognition skills as well as colour recognition and counting skills.

The children then created their own patterns  for their friends to copy.

Home Corner

The children have been exploring the kitchen area using real food. We have especially been enjoying pasta! Exploring the different textures and types of pasta. The children have been building on their fine motor skills by using the tongs and cutlery.

Acorn Room

This week in the acorn room all the children took part in making home made pancakes 🥞. They all took turns in mixing the ingredients together and then adding the pancake mix onto the pan.

We had the pancakes with a selection of fruit and sauces at snack time 🍓🍌