Christmas at our place

December 2009 in Seahorses, Starfish and Dolphins

Well, it's Christmas eve and we have had a wonderful December of singing, celebrating, decorating, making, creating and..... SNOW! Even if Christmas day is not white for all of us, the last week or so has given us all lots of opportunity to play in some snow and raise the levels of excitement and Christmas feeling. In short, we have had a really good time.

Enjoy our picture gallery of some of the things we have been doing in December...

One of our Dolphins children stares at the Christmas tree in the snow. That big white blob in the sky is not a moon. It is a snow ball that missed the photographer by a whisker!

A Christmas display in the Dolphins room. All the children contributed to either their own or the big Christmas tree.

The Christmas collage table in Dolphins.

Dolphins all added paper and glue at different stages to create our papier mache Santa. We never really knew what it would turn out like, but the Boogie Nights Santa came as a bit of a surprise!

Starfish painted and decorated their own Santa Claus, putting the eyes, paint and glitter in the places they wanted. All unique and all perfect.

Starfish decorated a little Christmas tree. All having a turn at putting on the pieces they wanted to see on the tree.

Rudolf was made by the children painting the different parts of the body and the team putting it together. Rudolf has been one of their favourite contributions to the room- as well as singing Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer. Children made their own snow flakes for Rudolf too.

Some more art in Starfish. Christmas tree collages and Angel's hanging. If you couldn't tell it they were Angels, look again through toddler eyes.

Seahorses collection of Christmas trees, snow flakes, stars and a calendar for next year. All the children made 2010 calendars for their parents.

What's happening at Working Mums?

This friday (11th) is our Carols by Candlelight evening for our families.

Children, staff (and game parents) will be dressing up and singing Christmas carols in the garden around the decorated Christmas tree and Christmas lights. Mulled wine, mini mince pies and bratwurst in rolls will help to fuel the event that will be accompanied by Stephen on piano- our musical cover team member.

The songs that we will be singing will be:

• We wish you a Merry Christmas


• O Christmas Tree!


• Deck the halls with boughs of holly


• Ding dong merrily on high


• Christmas Pudding


• The twelve days of Christmas


• Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer


• Five tubby snowmen


• When Santa Got Stuck Up the Chimney


• Here we go round the Christmas tree


• Jingle Bells


• We wish you a Merry Christmas (yes-again!)

There are too many words to put up here, but go and take a look at the Christmas song website link on the right to learn the words and hear the tunes. Some of the words we have modified a little to make sense to the children and you will be given a copy on the night.

Happy Carol-ing!!!

What are we doing in Dolphins for December?
During December, with the Christmas season upon us we will be having a focus on Christmas, Hanukah and we will also be talking a lot about darkness and the environment in the darkness- including playing in the dark, the bright lights, decoration and festivities.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this concept will be:
Reading stories about Christmas and Hanukah.
Learning Christmas carols and songs.
Making Christmas cards and presents for our families.
Talking about darkness and why the outside has become so dark.
Talking about how to keep ourselves safe in the dark, e.g. wearing bright colours, lights on our bikes.
Decorating the nursery including Christmas trees.
Discussions about what we are doing for the holidays; who we will be visiting, how we will travel there, etc.
Wrapping presents and making our own decorations.
Reflecting on the year with the children and remembering events, talking about favourite parts of the year and what they would like to do again.

What you could do to support your children at home:
Help your child to wrap their own presents they are giving people.
Make your own Christmas cards with them.
If you are writing a Christmas letter, ask them to contribute by telling you the best thing about the year.
Go for a night walk to look at the lights and decorations.
Go to a local school Christmas fair and for older children talk about the kinds of things the school children might be doing Christmas.
Go shopping for and decorate a Christmas tree.
Take your child shopping for a special Christmas tree decoration that they can put on the tree.
Save your wrapping and cards for plenty of post Christmas collage- it is a time consuming and perfect mid winter indoor activity.

What are we doing in Starfish for December?
This month we will be having a focus on tidying up and taking care of things. We have some new starfish in the room who are learning the ropes and being exposed to a new range of toys to play with. They are learning how to play with them, where they go and how to explore with care and consideration for others and the environment.
Of course, December is a month of many festivals, including Christmas and Hanukah and so we will be also thinking about and doing many activities based on the festivals.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:
Making a game out of tidying up and having group times involving children putting objects away in the right places.
Using lots of shape sorters and puzzles to emphasize putting pieces in certain places. Supported role play in the home corner to focus on putting things away and tidying up.
Reinforcing, role modelling and reminding children about where things go and the need to tidy up.
Circle story time in the book corner with getting children to take turns at putting books away.
Using and emphasising language such as precious, careful, special.
And for Christmas??? Glitter, tinsel, sticking, wrapping, etc, etc, etc.

Some ideas to support your children at home:
Have a ‘tidy up time’ before meals, bed, or going out and encourage your child to tidy up.
Chose some music to play while tidying up to indicate tidying up time and make it a fun event. (Mission Impossible has a great pace and will give you some humour to go with it).
Play ‘Where does it go?’ You chose an item and get them to show you where it goes. Make it a fun and light hearted game.
Talk a lot to your child about caring for toys and looking after things. Especially books. Show how to handle them with care and how important it is.
Use words like ‘precious’ when referring to special things that extra care is needed for. Precious is a special and less used word as well, so it emphasises that there is something important about taking care.

What are we doing in Seahorses for December?
During December we will be continuing our focus on weather and clothing as the children are really enjoying it and the dressing up and fun with it has made for a really positive approach to our cold weather.
December will also see the glitter spread as the children take part in numerous activities associated with Christmas, including lots of messy, creative and vibrant Christmas and Hanukah activities.

What are we doing at the nursery to support this:
Making Christmas and Hanukah decorations, cards and presents.
Wrapping and unwrapping present activities.
Scrunching and playing in wrapping paper
Decorative art to dress up our room for Santa
Christmas party for the children
Santa will be visiting.
Singing Christmas songs and listening to Christmas music.
Exploring the Christmas treasure basket.

What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?
Set up a little treasure basket of decorations to go under the Christmas tree that your child is allowed to play with to reduce the Christmas tree destruction. Plastic balls are great because they can roll them around, tinsel is fun to drape around and they are all no breakable.
Save all your Christmas wrapping for your baby to play with. They love the noise and texture and throwing it round.
Wrap up and go for a wander round a Christmas market. They might not be ready for skating, but babies love watching skaters whizz around the rink and they love all the lights.
Do some lounge dancing to some Christmas music. Turn the lights down and dance round the glowing Christmas tree. Babies love dim rooms with sparkling lights.

Dolphin’s reflection on the month of November
November saw our home corner transform into a supermarket with children loving the change and spending lots of time role playing shopping, stocking and exchanging. Playing the customer and playing the shop keeper, as well as babies and dogs! Filling baskets and exchanging money and also lots of discussions have taken place about the different jobs in a supermarket- cashier, baker, deli assistant, stocking shelves, etc. The shopping game has also been really enjoyed by the children too. It is like the memory game, but includes a shopping list.
Some of the older children have been able to talk concepts such as running out of food at home and ordering more from Tesco or ‘going shopping’ to replace food used.
The general scene in the main play room has been children wandering round with handbags and shopping baskets as they moved between all the other activities with their shopping, taking breaks to do a puzzle or play on the computer with their shopping at their side and then cruising back to the supermarket when they have finished what else they are doing.
Painting in the garden has also been a feature of the month with children painting the area and even the teachers! One of the teachers dressed up in a disposable boiler suit and allowed the children to do a splatter painting of her. Very messy, but very fun.
It is hard to keep Christmas at bay at the end of November, so the children started a winter display that involved lots of planned and spontaneous artwork. As well as the white winter scene, most of the children contributed a collective papier-mâché Santa making process that resulted in our own model Santa.
We have also made some decorations for the room out of CDs and shapes we made from painted and glittered baked play dough mixture.
Even though pink day is technically in October, we did it in November due to a busier October and had just as much fun! Children and staff who remembered came dressed in pink to raise money for cancer research.
Our tea making has been a well enjoyed event as always. This month we have made sausage rolls (from scratch!), vegetable pizzas, apple and raisin loaf, we prepared beans on toast, a loaf of bread and bread rolls.

Starfish reflection on November
It has been a busy little month in Starfish with some changes too. We said goodbye to some of our friends as they moved to the next age group and welcomed some new friends too. To help our new children settle in, we have done lots of name calling and gentle supporting in circle times, using it as a good time to get to know the new members of our group.

Sometimes when children are new, the changes can spark up some new emotions, so we have talked a lot and used pictures to support our discussions about being happy and sad, joining in the fun times and giving lots of cuddles when sad moments pop in too.

The children have loved playing with the miniature people recently as well, imitating life and activities. They have also continued to be really interested in the home corner, role playing what they see in life and taking care of each other and their babies. They have also been taking the plates and toy food out to have picnics on the floor, feeding themselves and feeding each other.

Art is always a big feature in Starfish and this month has been no exception. As the children have been so interested in lady birds this season with so many of them visiting our garden, we extended the interest into our room as the ladybirds disappeared from our garden. We made some ladybird pictures by painting our paper red and collaging black spots onto our red painted paper.

We also painted a sheet of paper to make our gold fish bowl and created our own goldfish art to go in it. And, we have made parrots, stamped up clouds, grass, sky, aeroplanes and made mobiles from painted and glittered salt dough and CDs. To stamp we have used stickle bricks, lego blocks and sponges.
This month we have made pizza, vegetable, cheese and sausage pasties, banana cake and prepared some beans on toast together.

Seahorses reflection on the month of November

Over the month of November in Seahorses, the group had a big focus on warm winter clothing. This involved not only placing an emphasis on getting children dressed up and ready for playing outdoors in the cold weather, but really making a point of naming the items of clothing and using lots of language such as; warm, snug, hat on, gloves on, coat on, boots on, etc.
The language and encouragement was also to make the layering up a positive experience and to support children viewing the extra time it takes to get ready to go outside as a fun time as well and just as much part of the enjoyment in the outdoor play experience.

To further support the thinking of extra clothing, the seahorses had a range of dress ups for the children to role play and practice dressing themselves and to make it another fun part of the day. They used play hats, bags, purses, scarves and material treasure to wrap around themselves and drape on each other. This has been a really fun activity that was revisited regularly by the children.

Aside from the weather and associated activities, the children got really interested in the spinning toys; watching them whiz and whirl. These were especially helpful for our new children starting as they are instantly engaging.

With the new children, a lot of focus was placed on getting to know each other. So, lots of naming and eye contact was role modelled for the babies as well as singing and circle times involving actions with the children bodies, naming body parts and each other.

And the walkers and crawlers have become more confident and outgoing in their roaming of the environment, enabling them to make certain choices in their activities.