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.
