Wow it’s wonderful to be back at nursery! What a lot of happy faces we’ve seen this week 🙂

This week we have settled back into the routines, the environment and the spaces around us through exploring, building, creating, sharing, listening and talking.

Some of us used big blocks to build boats, recalling previous learning from last year and re-visiting some themes while others created hotels which recreated some real life experiences from our recent holidays. Many of us were very engaged in creating pictures by drawing, mark making, gluing, sticking, snipping and cutting this week too. Some of us shared what our pictures were about and told short stories about them while some of us engaged quietly in the creative process. It is important for us to have time and space to both talk and listen and to also silently absorb and engage.

There was much mark making outdoors too as we used chunky chalk to create shapes, letters, fish, car tracks and imaginative designs. We used natural resources to build a circle obstacle course and we found many interesting natural treasures as we dug in the sand. Some of us cleaned sand off the objects and used them symbolically in our play.  As we played together we developed our listening skills and awareness of others around us. Vehicle drivers and pedestrians followed rules about stopping, looking and listening at the zebra crossing. Playing together like this is very important for us as talking and listening are the basis of much of our learning, in particular becoming literate.

It was absolutely amazing to welcome Kate Hookham to the setting on Wednesday. Kate is a specialist in Forest Schools and Outdoor Learning and we were very lucky to have her input and expertise for the day. It was brilliant to learn about different ways to use outdoor resources safely in our play. We learned how to make fire and were excellent at following and understanding the safety rules. We were also eager to get involved in using hammers, wood and cloth to create some beautiful nature pictures. We’ll be taking forwards a lot of what we learned about fire, den building and outdoor play and look forward to sharing this with you all!