Toot! Toot! and off the Starfish go...

The Starfish children finished making their train and had some good times playing in it. They love to get into boxes and feel enclosed while checking out what the other children are doing in their carriages.

The next big project is making a jungle with the children. The children will be doing all the greenery for the jungle by stamping shades of green paint with sponges. They also have loads of shredded paper and shapes of animals to stick in the jungle where they choose.

This week we had some really torrential rain and getting outside for the morning was impossible, so the teachers set up our bouncy castle inside for the children and we played our Brazilian Cafe Club CD loud for the children to bounce to. They had an amazing time. There where squeals of laughter bouncing around the castle from toddlers who found the challenge of staying up right and on feet in such wobbly circumstances hilarious.

The Starfish children also had a turn playing with the hamster, Hamlin. They loved to watch him as he whizzed around the room in his special ball. Some of the children were most interested in the cage he lives in with all its ramps, ladders, tunnels and boxes. The others were more interested in him as he washes his whiskers. Some of them held Hamlin and were incredibly careful with him.

Seahorses in the sand, water and bubbles...

Seahorses have had a wonderful messy couple of weeks with extra opportunities for sand and water play scooping up bubbles with spoons and cups. The babies loved to get messy and relax in the different sensations. They also had paint brishes in the water to watch the water change colour and move it about.

Our babies have really begun to enjoy their little singing time and love to watch and listen to the teachers singing songs like The Wheels on The Bus (a firm favourite). They sit and happily listen, or get up and dance about the space.

Mark making has also been a big feature with the babies taking opportunities to hold and use pencils and crayons. It is amazing how they pick up the cause and effect of using the pencils to make marks and changing colours as they feel the need.

A really fun part of this week has been playing with Hamlin the hamster that one of our teachers brought in. He is a really calm and happy little hamster who doesn’t mind being handled at all. He also loves to run around the room in his little ball and the babies watch in utter fascination.

The Starfish group invited us to join them when they set up the bouncy castle inside on a heavy rain day. They had Brazilian music playing in the background and the babies really enjoyed being able to roll about on the soft uneven surface.

Planting...growing....watching...
and making in Dolphins

Over the last two weeks we have had a busy little time in Dolphins. Our trip to Homebase gardening area has really inspired some green fingers and the children have helped plant the hanging baskets around the outdoor play area, they have planted the tomatoes and strawberries and one of the parents even brought us in tomato and courgette plants.

The children planted their own peas and beans from seeds and they have sprouted already. So the children have been doing drawings of them to compile together to make a ‘gallery of shoots’.
We also got a new painting easel that has been in good use every day. The children can paint whatever they choose but we have also been talking about looking at things we like and then trying to paint them. We have had some pictures displayed at the top of the easel like flowers for the children to try to copy or interpret and paint.

Some of the children have been examining orchids and talking about the different parts of the plant and then having a go at drawing them.

Some of us went on a trip to our local park, where we collected sticks, leaves, dried pods and other natural materials to bring back to the nursery to collage with. We were lucky when we were there because there was a man cutting down a tree with a chain saw. It was very noisy, but very fun to watch. When the children got back to nursery they told the children who didn’t go on the trip all about it at our discussion time before lunch.

We have started to get really interested in modelling and so the teachers have given us lots of extra opportunities to play with clay and play dough. We have been making 3D sculptures, masks, boats and robots.

We had a mucky week in Seahorses- we usually do!

The children had a wonderful time running their hands through corn flour finger play (slime). It has an amazing viscosity and feels soft and liquidly, then hard and stiff depending on how you touch it and what you do with it. Here is a recipe if you want to have a go at home.

Corn flour slime

You will need:

A bowl
Corn flour made from corn (i.e. not wheaten corn flour) – The amount will depend on how much slime you want. A 300 g packet of corn flour will make about two cups of slime.
Food colouring
A large spoon

What to do:
1. Put the corn flour in the bowl and while stirring, add water a little at a time until all the corn flour is wet.
2. Add a few drops of food colouring to the mixture.
3. Keep adding water and stirring until a thick slime forms.
4. Make a fist and punch the surface of the slime - the slime will feel hard. Do the same thing, but very slowly and your hand will emerge from the bowl covered in wet, sloppy slime.

We also had some fun with painting using rollers and string. Take a look at our pictures.

Hello! from Starfish

The big song in Starfish this week has got to be the Hello Song. It is sung everyday to welcome the children and they love it! Every visitor who goes through the room has at least one Starfish child calling out 'Hello' to them and the children sing the song happily as they play singing ‘Hello’ to anything from a bus to a friend!

We replanted our radishes this week, in the hopes that these ones will survive and we will be able to sample our produce very soon. We are very carefully checking them, and watering them. So soon, we will know if our last crop were a bad packet or we just don’t have green fingers!

The children have enjoyed making a train this week. We collected old boxes from our supplies orders and cut them to size and put shaped windows in them. The children have decorated them with paint and stuck numbers on them. We have not used it yet because we are waiting for it to dry but we are looking forward to that fun next week.

We have also made some beautiful underwater collages. The children loved painting, sticking and putting glitter on them. Take a look at our lovely work!

Farewell Butterflies!

On Monday morning this week the Dolphin children came into the nursery and discovered our first butterfly had come out of its cocoon. Then another came out and another until all of the butterflies had hatched from their cocoons.

The children have been so excited watching the butterflies come out to dry their wings in the butterfly tent. We gave the butterflies some flowers and some orange to feed from until all of the butterflies had emerged, then on Thursday, we set them free.

Some of the children put their hands into the butterfly tent to wait for a butterfly to land on their hand so they could carefully pull it out and set the butterfly free. They felt tickly. We watched the butterflies fly away and waved them off calling out ‘Bye bye butterfly!’ It was a really exciting experience, if not a little sad to see them all go after watching them some intently for the last three weeks. We have been learning lots of new language with the butterflies and these are some of the more tricky new words we have learned; chrysalis, exoskeleton, proboscis.

Our Trip to Homebase

On Monday we took a trip to Homebase with eight of our Dolphin children and two teachers. We caught a bus from just outside the nursery and got off just outside of Homebase.

The purpose of the trip was to choose some plants for our hanging baskets in the Dolphin nursery garden. The children will be creating mini gardens that will be both decorative and useful, and will allow us to learn about living things and growing.

While we were there the children were able to look at, touch and choose some flowers, plants and seeds. The children noticed the colours, shapes and smell of the different plants and flowers.
We also watched a man watering the plants. We talked together about how the plants need sunlight and water to grow. We also talked about how some plants provide us with food, like lemons and strawberries.

The children chose the plants that they thought would look nice in the garden and that they would like to grow to eat. They chose; tomatoes, beans, peas and strawberries for growing and eating. Then they chose confiners, ornamental grasses, marigolds, dahlias, petunias and dianthus for decoration.

One of the children had a particular favourite place in Homebase, which was the sprinkler section. So, he showed the children how to get to the sprinkler section and was very proud when they got there. He showed the children and teachers how all the hoses and the attachments go together to make the sprinklers work.

Another child was concerned that we would not have enough money for our purchases so he offered the 30p he had in his pocket to help out if needed.
When the children had made all of their selections, they took them to the till and took turns at loading them on the checkout desk. Then one of the children handed over the money and then took the change and receipt before handing it to a teacher.

When we left Homebase the children were surprised to find the nursery manager there with her car. They were very relieved because they were worrying about how they were going to get all of the plants back to the nursery!

We had a wonder time with lots of discussion and learning. These are some of the words that we used a lot during our trip:

Flowers, trees, plants, pots, gnomes, soft, tickly, spiky, colourful, smells, nice, pretty.

Our Starfish children's week


The starfish children planted some radishes about a month ago. They had never been thriving, despite the children and the staff thinning them, watering them and caring for them according to the instructions. But, this week, they had to be declared dead and were pulled out by the children with sad faces. The good news is that the pansies which were also planted at the same time are still growing- no sign of flowers- but the leaves are green and fresh and so the team and the children are still watching them, talking about them and hoping for the day they flower!

Roller painting has been successful fun this week. The children had a good time putting paint to paper with rollers. The challenge was sharing the paint trays and keeping them within reach of everyone when the urge to take it for themselves is overwhelming for a toddler. We also out up some new displays. One of them showed our birthdays with new photos of all the children in the room. The children have really enjoyed looking and pointing to the photos. Some of our children know all of each other’s names and enjoy pointing to the photos and the children and saying them.

We have also been doing a lot of signing and have a new Makaton signs display up in our room to support the team in their signing with the children. Most of the children can confidently sign 'no' and 'sleep'. And many of them are signing 'please' and 'thank you', but not always getting the meaning quite right.

Seahorses have also been painting. Take a look at the pictures that they have produced. They really enjoyed smearing the paint around their paper (and the tables, chairs, their ears and rubbing their hands together with glee. (Thank goodness for aprons with sleeves!) We have some new easy accesses furniture in the Seahorses room too which has meant that we have been able to really support the babies in putting toys away after they have used them. With encouragement, they enjoy tidying up. Who said tidying can’t be fun? We have also had a lot more outside time this week as the weather has become much warmer and dryer for the babies to be able to take time and enjoy playing in the open air.





In Dolphins,
much of the week; discussions and activities revolved around our caterpillars which had turned into their cocoons. Once they were in their cocoons, we needed to take them out of their pots and put them into the butterfly tent.

When they first went into the cocoons, we could see the caterpillars wriggling inside the cocoons making the cocoons jump about. It was very strange and exciting for some, but a bit scary for others.
They are all inside the butterfly tent now, so we have to wait for three weeks before we can see them come out as butterflies. It is a long time to wait, but we are filling the time in with activities. We have read all sorts of butterfly books, drawn loads of pictures, made caterpillars and many of us contributed to a display of the lifecycle of a butterfly.

April to May at Working Mums- Mortlake

What are we doing in Dolphins this month?

From April to May we will be having an enhanced focus on how things grow and change.
Spring has inspired conversations about flowers, trees and leaves, weather, and nature. We introduced some painted Lady caterpillars into the nursery to watch the process of them changing into butterflies and this has inspired the children to talk about all sorts of lifecycles from people, trees, animals, frogs, etc.
Dolphins are two to three year olds and our preschoolers


Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this concept will be:
Reading books about bugs, plants, insects and nature.
A trip to the library to get books about on lifecycles
A trip to Homebase or Sheen garden centre to collect materials for planting in our flower boxes.
Outings to the park to take photos of nature.
Clay modelling of bugs, plants, caterpillars.
Butterfly prints
Junk modelling caterpillars
Daily conversations about the development of our painted lady butterflies and then finally setting them free!


What you could do to support your children at home:
Take them on a bug hunt, talk about the bugs you saw, then draw pictures of them.
Go for a walk and count how many houses have gardens.
Set up a special gardening patch for your child.
Go to the library and get some books out about natures.
Read the Hungry Caterpillar (again!)
Look for tadpoles in ponds
Go to Kew Gardens
Show your child pictures of you when you were a baby, child, teenager and talk to them about growing up.


What are we doing in Starfish this month?

From April to May we will be having a focus on signing.
This is the age of significant communication building. The children understand a lot more than they can communicate to us in words and sometimes this is frustrating for the children. We are planning a focus on Makaton signing with the children. Signing does not replace language development, it supports language development and communication.

Starfish are our toddler group.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will be:
Making a display of Makaton signs for parents to learn and staff to use as support for signing to children.
Encouraging children to sign as a way of communication with staff and each other.
Introducing children to Makaton symbols and using them to help support children in anticipating the routines of the group.
Supporting children in developing confidence in learning new skills and communication techniques through the symbols and signs by making them a part of our everyday activities.


What you could do to support your children at home:
Take a look at our display and learn some symbols and signs.
Take a book out on baby signing and start using them with your children.
Ask a team member for a sheet of symbols to take away and use.
Learn and sing songs with your child that involve signing (you know loads already; ‘Where is Thumbkin?’ ‘Two little dicky birds sitting on a wall, etc’.
Take a look at the Makaton website;

http://www.makaton.org/about/about.htm

What are we doing in Seahorses this month?
From April to May we will be having a focus on self help skills.
We have just introduced some new furniture to the room which will enable the babies to have better opportunities for exploring the ‘continuous curriculum’, making decisions for their own learning and allowing them to re-explore toys over and over until they have satisfied their curiosity fully.

Seahorses are our babies.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this concept will be:
Placing photographs of the items that are in the new baskets and containers on them so children know what to find hidden away.
Encouraging children to pull out baskets and explore what is in them.
Role model placing the resources back into the baskets when they have finished with them.
Emphasise language such as ‘Where is it?’, ‘What’s in here?’, ‘What have you found’, ’Where does it go?’
What you could do to support your children at home:
Role model and encourage your babies to put their toys away when they have finished with them.
Involve them in the tidying up experience, rather than clearing it away after they have gone to bed.
Take your own pictures of their toys and put them on the toy box to show what goes in there.
Encourage the tidying up routine at other places you visit. E.g. the Doctors surgery, library, friend’s houses.
Emphasise language such as ‘Where is it?’, ‘What’s in here?’, ‘What have you found’, ’Where does it go?’

What you could do to support your children at home:
Role model and encourage your babies to put their toys away when they have finished with them.
Involve them in the tidying up experience, rather than clearing it away after they have gone to bed.
Take your own pictures of their toys and put them on the toy box to show what goes in there.
Encourage the tidying up routine at other places you visit. E.g. the Doctors surgery, library, friend’s houses.
Emphasise language such as ‘Where is it?’, ‘What’s in here?’, ‘What have you found’, ’Where does it go?’