What are we doing in Starfish for March?Starfish see many new friends who have moved in from the Seahorses this month. While all the faces are familiar and the staff are well known by the children already, there are changes to routine and an increasing move towards building children’s self confidence, self esteem, positive behaviour, self control and self care. We will be supporting children in learning about the new expectations in a new environment and gently guiding them to taking responsibility for their own actions.
Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:
• Supporting children to learn the routine which is a little bit more structured than in babies.
• Supporting children in washing their hands before eating, sitting at the table with their peers to eating, helping to put out cups, helping to collect water, laundry, etc from the Dolphins end of the nursery.
• Spending special time with individual children to help support the building of healthy relationships with those who care for them.
• Circle times including lots of action songs and games to focus on name recognition, acknowledging and welcoming each other.
• Turn taking activities to further support getting along and respecting one another, e.g. turn taking with throwing games, waiting for the slide, etc.
• Focussing on ‘tidy up time’ and encouraging children to put toys back in the right places and tidying up as they go.
Some ideas to support your children at home:
• To support the move to the new room, remember to talk a lot about nursery at home. Use staff names regularly and children’s names as well, especially those you know they play with or talk about.
• Encouraging toddlers to wipe their own faces and hands- they can start the process while you polish it!
• Take them to the park and talk about waiting for their turn to use the swings. Watch and talk about others waiting and taking their turn.
• Have a ‘tidy up time’ at home and encourage the practice of not moving on to the next game, routine, etc until they have tidied up after themselves.
• Have specific places for things to go so that your child knows what is expected of them in tidying up.
• Play games involving turns. Even rolling a ball between you and them involves ‘your turn’ and ‘my turn.’
• Allow your child to have a go at getting their jacket, shoes and clothes on. Again, you can finish or support their efforts. It might take a bit longer, but it is worth it to give them the opportunity to start to learn to look after themselves and feel good about their own contribution to their own well being.
What are we doing in Seahorses for March?
There are some changes coming in with our oldest Seahorses children moving on to the Starfish room and a lovely new group of new babies joining us. We will be focussing on settling new babies and welcoming them into our home.
What are we doing at the nursery to support this:
• Making a display of children’s pets so that they can feel that important and familiar parts of their home can give them comfort at the nursery as well.
• Asking parents to bring in pictures of the babies families so that they can see them during the nursery day.
• Lots of use of names so that the babies can become familiar with who is in the room with them and start to become aware of their peers.
• Introducing children to explore sensory activities like feeling paint, corn flour and water, water play, etc that they may not have had a lot of experience of at home, but that is and will become very important parts of their nursery experience.
• Introducing the new babies to a range of other activities to encourage the impulse to explore.
What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?
• Use the names of the staff and the other children in the group when you are at home to keep the links between nursery and home active.
• Sing songs with your baby and use the names of people s/he is familiar with at nursery.
• Talk a lot about nursery while you are at home in a positive and relaxed tone to demonstrate that it is a special place in their lives and that you acknowledge what is important to them beyond your home and family.
• You could even try to extend some of the activities we do at nursery into your home if you are game enough. Finger painting (with non-toxic paint of course), corn flour and water are great at home too. Just as a team member for a recipe if you are keen to create a bit of mess and explore.
What are we doing in Dolphins for March?After some cold but lovely sunny weather, the children are loving being outside and have noticed the daffodils coming out. So, we are planning on welcoming spring with developing the outdoor area and encouraging the children who use the area to largely contribute to this process. We will also be celebrating Mothers Day and Easter.
Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this concept will be:
• Setting up a cosy reading corner in the garden to allow children to have chill out time in the garden with some books or space for a relaxing chat with their friends.
• Making a growing and gardening area to plant, nurture and grow our own plants to enjoy and eat!
• Reintroduction of water play and messy play outside on warmer days.
• Discussions about the start of spring and what other things it brings, like Easter and Mothers day.
• Making Easter, Mothers day and spring arts and crafts.
• Observations and discussions on the changes in the environment during the start of spring.
• Making hot crossed buns and talking about Easter and what it means.
What you could do to support your children at home:
• Take them on a walk through a park, the common, Kew gardens, etc and look at and talk about all the changes taking place. What can you see now that you didn’t see in the heart of winter?
• Get some books out on spring and talk about what it looks like in other parts of the world.
• Do some spring arts and crafts at home.
• Set up a place for them to garden at home if you can. Plant some plants. If it is not possible at your home, go to a garden centre with them and buy a watering can. Find a place where you can fill it with water and go watering with them.
• The Easter bonnet parade is coming up on the 19th March. Make an Easter bonnet with them and remember the best bonnets are the ones where they are the designer and you are the support team!
• Make hot crossed buns with your child or even their own Easter eggs.
• Paint Easter eggs and/ or make your own Easter decorations.
