The closure of our East Sheen nursery saw many new children join us in the Dolphins group particularly, and at the end of a month of settling in for new children and the establish children getting used to new faces, it is really easy to say that the nursery is busy, has loads of activities going on, lots of children but is settled and a really special place to be.
Seahorses, our youngest group has had a lot of emerging talking going on from the babies. 'Hello!' and 'Hiya' are words that can be heard flying round the room regularly and loads of humming along to songs being sung and humming along to the tune they've remembered while they are playing. Favourites are The 'Hello Song', 'Row- Row- Row Your Boat' and ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’.
A bit of feet painting has been going on too. All the babies loved having their feet painted and stamping the prints on paper, but not all of them enjoyed having their feet wiped clean!
Pancake day was loved, who doesn't love a pancake? Hearts were painted for Valentine’s Day and yellow paintings were made to represent spring and encourage a bit of sun, light and spring spirits into the world around us.
Physical achievements have been enjoyed by families, the team and the children themselves as children who couldn't do so before, have learned to pull themselves up to standing, sit up, taking baby steps and a few of the clever babies have started to feed themselves as well.
With more children able to pull themselves up and stand, more activities have been put on the tables to encourage exploring upright. Many of those Seahorses are about to move through to the Starfish room and are getting ready by spending time in the starfish group to build confidence and feel happy in their future room. We wish them farewell, even though we'll still see them...just in the next room.
The starfish room has seen a rustle of paper, a splashing of paint and burst of colour over February.
Chinese New Year was a very big part of the month and all the children worked together to contribute to the making of a great big lion for the Chinese Year of the Lion. They also decorated tiger masks and participated in tiger activities including random roaring round the room! A lot of talk about orange, black and yellow also took place, helping the children to start to think about differentiating things through colour.
Red was also a big part of Chinese New Year too and the red splashed through into Valentine’s day as well; making cards, red painting and collaging in red too
Starfish also made a black and white display from children’s art contributions and talked about dark, night, cows and sheep too. We also did some Old MacDonald pictures while singing ‘Old MacDonald had a Farm’. Singing while creating is perfect fun.
The warmer weather is slow to welcome us, but there has been some nice sunny days and we have been getting back into the routine of lots of outings into the garden every day. We have even had afternoon tea outside in the garden on a picnic blanket which was great fun and a sign that the winter is (hopefully) behind us.
In Dolphins, Chinese New Year was also explored and the children had a lot of fun talking about it and what it means. One of our teachers is from Vietnam where Chinese New Year is also celebrated so she helped us learn more about it and also gave us some great experiences to enjoy. We all ate noodles with chopsticks. Some of the children were really very clever and were able to eat their noodles all by themselves using chopsticks and no, they do not eat with them at home! We also all made little red envelopes for good luck and inside them was a little chocolate. Children who didn’t want to decorate a red envelope were not forgotten, the children who enjoyed making them made extra to give to their friends who didn’t make them.
Pancake Day was also celebrated and some of the children made their own pancakes and also extras so that everyone could have some. Pancake day fell on one of the days that the children make their own tea so was perfect timing to allow the children to cater pancakes for the whole group.
All of dolphins have had some time making and contributing to collages and creations to do with space. The interest started from the preschool group and spread across the wider group as these things do. Children made rockets and a moon, talked about space, read about space and with the help of Jenny made a space rocket too. The preschool group have been going on moon walks as well (Walking like the they are on the moon) which is pretty fun and funny.
