plans for April

What are we doing in Dolphins for April?
Lots of requests for the book called Emergency have been given for circle time and increase in the use of the fire and police dress ups with some of the children has also been seen. So we have planned a focus on the emergency services, what they do and what emergency means.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this concept will be:
• Going on an excursion to the library to get some books out on the emergency services.
• Adding into our daily library books on emergency services.
• Having discussions with the children about what emergency means and what to do in an emergency.
• Focussing on Fire Officers, Police Officers and Ambulance Paramedics and what they do.
• Extending the children’s home corner and turning it into a fire engine.
• Make dress ups for the children to reflect their chosen emergency service.
• Playing the emergency services matching game to focus on the uniforms of each service.
• We have requested the Fire Station and Police to come and visit the nursery to talk about what they do, wear, drive and how to keep safe. Hopefully they will visit.

What you could do to support your children at home:
• Talk to your children about the emergency services and what to do in an emergency.
• Teach your child their home address and what to do if they are lost.
• On a day out, notice and draw your child’s attention to Police, Fire and Ambulance Officers and vehicles, talk about what you know about those services and find out what they know too.
• If you are in your car and a siren is behind you, talk to your child about why you needed to pull over.
• Put your chairs together at home and make a fire engine, police car or ambulance and role play going out in them. Make some paper hats to wear if you don’t have the dress ups to get in role.
• Take a trip to the library and look for some books about the emergency services.


What are we doing in Starfish for April?
Our Starfish children really seem to be enjoying playing with the train and small cars at the moment and sometimes spend the whole day going back to them. So, we are planning on really supporting this interest and extending the opportunities throughout the days and curriculum.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:
• Focussing on naming the different types of trains and vehicles.
• Making space rockets, cars and buses with the children.
• Involving vehicles in the art work by including transport shapes, using vehicles to roll paint, etc.
• Including flash cards, books, stories, photos of different types of transport in small groups work and individually.
• Dramatic play- setting up buses, trains etc with the furniture and going for imaginary trips.
• Going for a picnic in the training centre garden and watching the traffic go by- counting, naming colours, types of vehicles, etc.

Some ideas to support your children at home:
• Set yourself up a little spot safely by a road and spot the different types of vehicles. Even count them- they might not understand the counting, but getting used to hearing numbers and the association helps set the scene for understanding.
• Go to the library and collect some books or just read them while you are there about transport and vehicles.
• Don’t forget to sing at home their favourite songs like ‘The Wheels on the Bus’, ‘Down by the Station Early in the Morning’ and any other vehicles songs that you might sing at home or know yourself that you could teach your toddler.
• Maybe it’s a good time to invest in a little train track? Girls and boys both love them.
• If you’re a car bound family, maybe take a little trip on a bus or a train. Or go to the train station to watch the trains go by.

What are we doing in Seahorses for April?
April sees a big focus on building the babies’ confidence to explore. We have a number of new babies who have started with us and as they have become more settled and relaxed, the confidence to move in the space and explore the environment has grown too. The team will be supporting the babies in feeling that they can go to, select and potter through the environment and start to gain a sense of belonging and control over their exploration and chosen activities.

What we are doing at the nursery to support this:
• Giving the babies an opportunity to explore a wide range of activities that are both available as part of the continuous curriculum and those that are put out as specific enhanced curriculum.
• Focussing on what activities are interesting certain children and learning more about their personalities and what they tend to gravitate to at nursery, then supporting the interest further by making their favoured toys easy to find and accessible to them.
• Introducing new children to messy play activities: water, corn four and water mix, paint, etc.
• Giving them lots of support in going outside and talking them through getting dressed for the outdoors and referring to the clothes they put on on the clothing display.
• Drawing their attention to the environment and allowing them to become familiar with it- the flowers, trees, toys, people.

What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?
• Make some links between the activities we do at nursery and recreate some of them at home. Water play out of a low edged basin on the kitchen floor with some bubbles and food colouring is a fun and inexpensive activity to do with them.
• Collect, clean and make safe some of your recycling and before it goes out, let them have a rustle through it- children love playing with it and you can feel virtuous by reusing before recycling.
• In the seahorses we have wooden, tin, plastic, fabric, etc, treasure baskets for the children to explore. They are made of a range of items found in homes, so for ideas ask the team to give you a look through and set up your own treasure baskets at home with similar items.

reflection on March

Dolphins
The children spent a lot of time in March garden planning. Children contributed to some drawn plans about how they wanted the Dolphins’ garden area to be and the types of things that they wanted in the garden.

To get going, we have started out propagating little seedlings with the preschool group. We are now gathering resources, wood, etc. so we can make planter boxes for the outdoor area to transfer the plants into. After the Easter holidays, when all the children and regular teachers are back, we will be re-bedding the window boxes and hanging baskets, planter boxes and planting our gardens.

Beyond green plants was also a very green St Patrick’s day that was celebrated with children dressed in green, painting in green, playing in green water and even making green cupcakes.

March was also largely dominated by Easter. We made collage Easter Eggs, sang Easter songs, made Hot Crossed buns, Easter nests and Easter cards.

Starfish
Starfish had a very multicultural month, starting off with St Patrick’s Day by dressing in green, painting clover, clover collages and making salt dough shamrocks. For Iranian New Year, the Starfish made goldfish out of sand and gold paint and for Hungarian ‘Name Day’ the Starfish children celebrated all the children and staff names. For Mother’s Day, we made fridge magnets and artwork for our children to take home for their mothers.

Loads of time was spent outside in March, until the rain came down in the last week. So we had lots of opportunities to bring the indoors out, by setting up our art activities outside and cosy reading corners. But also lots of great opportunity to really practice our gross motor skills, stretch our legs and practice climbing and manoeuvring our way round obstacle courses.

We went on a walk to the local library this month too which was great fun. The children enjoyed rummaging through the library book s and borrowing some books to read at the nursery.

Seahorses
March was a very busy month for Seahorses with an increase in children settling. It was all hands on deck for getting to know new children and supporting the children in getting used to the room and the toys and different faces.

The older babies have spent a lot of time doing art work as they have become familiar with the feel and process of playing with wet, coloured and messy substances. Knowing the staff well also helps them to trust and feel good about taking risks and trying something new.

Our new babies have enjoyed playing with the different treasure baskets and exploring through them. The wooden treasure, metal treasure and plastic treasure have been well explored as have the small people and musical instruments.

The team have been doing lots of singing with the children and the children listening without contributing their voices just yet.....but it won’t take them long!

Easter Bonnet Parade
All of the groups joined in the Easter Bonnet Parade the Monday before Easter. It was very unfortunate that the rain poured down on the day meaning that we had to bring the parade into the Dolphins indoors, but none the less children enjoyed parading their hats for each other and some of the parents.