What are we doing in Dolphins this month?

During September we will be having a focus on ourselves.
We have some new starters who have come through from Starfish and some new children to the nursery. To support the reshuffle of ages and friendships, we will be having a focus on who we are; names, faces, friends, what we look like, special things about us, and so on. It’s a good time to boost our children’s understanding of themselves to support good relationships with each other.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this concept will be:
Drawing ourselves, around our bodies, foot prints, hand prints, etc.
Talking about our traits; eye colour, hair colour, styles, clothes, etc.
Reading stories about other children and comparing them to us.
Talking about preferences; in activities, food, clothes, games, pets, songs, etc.
Talking about our families, homes, where grandparents live, etc.
Introducing our new self registration board.
Telling and writing stories about themselves.
Comparing their lives to the lives of children in other countries.

What you could do to support your children at home:
Talk to your child about who they are- who makes up their family? Where do their extended family members live? Who do they look like? Which family members share certain traits like hair colour?
Look at photos of family members and talk about the relationships between them.
Talk to your child about what makes them special. How do you feel about them? How do they feel about you? Who are their friends? What sorts of things do they like to do? What makes them happy? What makes them sad?
Draw pictures with them of themselves, family members, pets, home, etc.
Write a little story together to go with pictures or without pictures. E.g. My name is........... I live at................with...................... In the weekend we like to....................... and so on.

What are we doing in Starfish this month?

During September, we will be having a focus on fruit and vegatables.
Through the extra focus on singling out and naming colours that we have been doing with the children, a lot of play fruit and vegetables were used to name and compare colours. As a result, the children have become really interested in talking about fruit and vegetables, comparing play ones to real ones and using the fruit and vegetables in their role play. So, this month, we will be basing many of our additional activities around them.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:
Talking about, including and naming fruit and vegetables as we play.
Naming pictures through flash cards.
Painting, collage, art activities involving fruit and vegetables
Making pizza with the children and talking about the vegetables we include.
Baking including fruit, e.g. fruit muffins, banana bread.
Talking about the vegetables and fruit in our snacks, dinners, teas.
Looking at a variety of real fruit and vegetables and comparing them to the play versions.

Some ideas to support your children at home:
Buy a cheap bag of plastic fruit and veg and play with your children.
Go through the fruit and vegetables in your home and name them.
Do some cooking at home involving fruit and veg with your child.
Take a wander to your local green grocer and get your child to choose what fruit and veg they are interested in and then get them to help prepare it at home.
Take a trip to a ‘pick your own’ orchard and have fun picking fruit (apples are still good for picking)

What are we doing in Seahorses this month?

During the month of September we are having a focus on creating a multi level and wide environment where the babies are reminded that they can access activities on shelves, table tops and by moving through space to access toys of interest. The baby age group has grown into a much more physically able group and challenges are being placed around the room to get them thinking and moving beyond the immediate space.

Some of the additional activities all the babies will be involved with this month are:

Soft play in the outdoor area to encourage moving over obstacles.
The wobble cushion in the playroom to encourage awareness that not all objects are stable and require different approaches.
Puzzles, posting boxes, activity stations, books and toys on the tables to encourage children to move themselves across the room to get what they want and explore in an upright position.
Geometric soft play inside to create an obstacle for children to move around to get what they want.

What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?

While the weather lasts; set up some toys in the garden in different places to encourage them to move to get them.
Place different toys in different locations at home to encourage them to search for them.
Play ‘Where’s the..?’ Hide a familiar toy and go hunting for it saying and gesturing ‘Where’s the...?’
Take a trip to a soft play area and let your children move over the soft play climbing equipment. (E.g. Cafe Au Play)
Take your child to open spaces like commons and parks to get a sense of space and what’s on the other side of the space.

August in Dolphins

For such a quiet month with so many children on holiday and some of our school leavers already left, it was an incredibly busy month.

We introduced a new menu for the children which left Tuesday’s and Friday’s tea menu up to the children! So, every week the children will be making tea for their rooms on those days. We’ve started with great success and so far have made fruit scones, cheese twists, garlic bread, pizza, pineapple and banana bread and fruit loaf. All recipes have gone well and been delicious to eat. The children have taken such pride in eating what they have made and the discussions at the dinner table have been fantastic as they all discuss who contributed what to the making.

We worked a lot on 'using words' for conflict resolution with the children this month and working together co-operatively. In discussion, we talked about how we like to be treated and how we need to treat our friends. We also played a lot of games to promote turn taking, collaborating and remembering friends. For example, the children really enjoyed ‘Who’s under the blanket?’, where all the children walk around the room, then ‘Stop, Drop and Curl in a ball’. One of them is then hidden under the blanket and the children have to guess who is missing from the group. This is a great game for remembering who is at nursery and looking out for friends. We have also played parachute games where the children have to co-ordinate their movements to juggle balls on the parachute and get it to float up and down. The children worked together on board games such as Incy Wincy Spider, snakes and ladders and large puzzles too where they need to take turns, share, and be considerate of others in making their moves.

Lots of the children have been on fun summer holidays and some have even sent us postcards. We have enjoyed talking about who is missing from nursery and hearing what they have been doing on holiday from their postcards. And, it's been fun welcoming them when they get back. Even our friends who are on holiday are very much a part of the nursery as we talk about what they might be doing on holiday and what new things have happened at nursery that we need to tell them about when we return.

We had a lot of fun preparing for this year’s nursery summer barbecue, ‘Working Mums- on- Sea’. It was really exciting talking about how our Mums and Dads were coming for a barbecue dinner with us. To help decorate the garden and car park and make it feel more like a seaside we spent the week making art for our seaside art gallery. We made some really lovely wet on wet paintings which we framed for families to take home. We also made loads of seagulls, beach balls and underwater creatures to decorate the fence and remind us that we were ‘on sea!’

Some reorganisation also took place in the creative area by the staff to recreate the ‘Help Yourself’ trolley into a ‘Help Yourself’ corner by creating a special little zone for children to make things of their choice in. Just changing the location and making it more like a little cave has inspired lots of children to the table to potter away for long periods of time either by themselves or with a friend. The children have even started to decorate the walls around it as they have made things, so we are planning on putting up a pin board there so the children have a proper space to display their own creations.

Starfish in the August sunshine

Starfish combined a lot of preparation for our barbecue with their art activities this month. The team cut out shapes of sea creatures for the children to paint, draw on, stick on and decorate how they chose. The children have had lots of opportunities to cut using safety scissors as well and have really enjoyed it. We have made a lovely display of some of the art works which has also inspired plenty of discussion about sunshine, weather, water and so on.

Gardening was also a feature this month, however, sadly (due to weather and circumstances beyond our control?!) our flowers have died, so the children very sensitively helped to dispatch the remains to a better place. ‘Oh-dear!

However, we have been able to take a few trips to the park this month and have been on some flower collecting journeys as well as car spotting excursions. Car spotting was a great way to talk about colours which we have placed an extra focus on this month. Most of the children are really interested in colours at the moment, so there has been a huge amount of colour spotting and naming. Our oldest Starfish children have really got to grips with some different colours and differentiating the same object by colour. They get such a thrill out of getting it right.

Washing and tidying has been a big favourite this month too. There has been lots of help on hand to tidy up and wipe down tables. They have also enjoyed their little group excursions to the Dolphin’s area where they put on the washing for the room. Jobs and 'helping' make them feel really proud. We have just got some new toy brooms in the room too and they don’t get dropped for a second before another little tidier has picked one up to start sweeping again.

We are at the end of the summer time now and it is going to be so sad to be putting our sun hats away. What started off as a difficult task having the children keep them on, has now turned into a ritual every time the children go out. They are very particular about having a hat on and readying themselves to be sun blocked. If one of them loses a hat, they will either frantically search for it themselves or a friend will be swooping up behind them informing them that their hat has come off! ‘Hat on!’ is a very much used line in Starfish.

August with the Seahorses

The Seahorses have spent a lot of time outside this month, helped by the good weather and little cosy corner that we have set up for them. The cosy corner is a great way to get our babies started outside because it is a softer, quieter space that they can retreat to, start off in, and then move on from when they are ready.

They love spending time outside with the Starfish toddlers, trying to keep up and watching what they can do to build ideas for their own next moves. Many of the babies have become much more mobile and have enjoyed time with the ride on zebra and cars.

An interest in puzzles has grown this month with many of the older babies starting to look at puzzles and think about how the pieces fit in. Because many of them are able to pull themselves up either supported or unsupported, there has been an increase of activities put on tables to encourage playing upright and exploring things that are above them and adjusting their height to explore various levels of activities.

We always do a lot of singing in the room because it is a relaxing and fun thing to do with the babies- for them and the team. Recently they have really begun to understand the songs and shown recognition through smiling acknowledgement and jigging away on their bottoms to familiar tunes.

An interest in telephones has also emerged. The babies put the phones to their ears , smile and burble away as if chatting to each other. A clear understanding and interpretation of modern day life that they see all the time is being shown and role played on a regular basis.

Artwork this month was based a lot around the summer and seaside. The staff have given the children pictures of summer items to look at such as beaches, buckets, spades, etc and then given the children the resources to paint and create- maybe they are recreating and maybe they are just doing their own thing. Either way, they are have been having a wonderful time feeling and applying paint and colour.

As well as all the additional things going on, the babies have explored, pottered, interacted with each other and formed some lovely little friendships. There is a very (familiar with each other) little group in the baby room who have a good time together and show real delight in acknowledging those who come in on their day and who they have formed bonds with.