Reflection on June

Dolphins

Our holiday discussions in dolphins have been fun. Holidays must be special for our children because many of them have been able to recall holidays they have been on and what they did on them. We read the book Schnitzel Von Krumm~ Forget Me Not many times , which inspired the children to recall holidays and many of them could really relate to the packing of the car and what we take on holiday.

We have also had a travel agents that we set up. The children have looked at and thought about holidays through the brochures and groups of us have had little day dreams and talked about all the places we would love to go and what we would like to do on holiday.

At the start of June, we were feeling like our garden needed something more and so talked to the children about what we would like in the garden. We made a shopping list and now have new chairs and tables to play on, a lovely Elk to hang our bags and hats on, a mirror to make sure the bags look right on our arms, but the best things have been our big gardening week where we planted hanging baskets, window baskets, planted sunflowers and tomatoes and other stuff.

Our strawberries that we planted a while ago have started to ripen one by one and we have had small strawberry morsels to nibble. Sometimes strawberries disappear too and no one seems to know where they have gone, except that there is sometimes a suspicious milling about the plants from the children when some red ones appear.

The absolute loveliest part of the garden, that the children really love is the little quiet corner that the children made with one of the team members. The preschool children drew pictures on an arch that was made and then we painted and varnished it and secured it to the fence and shed. Another teacher made us some lovely cushions and we bought a special mat to sit on. This has been used by all the children and the favourite things to take in are books, bags, play food and tea sets. It is so special to us, that we put it at the top of this blog entry.

Starfish

June was a stunning month and thank goodness, we have plenty of shade in our playground. The highlight for most of the children was the paddling pool. They absolutely loved getting in and splashing about with their friends and it was a wonderful way for the children to cool off and enjoy some big physical play on hot days without getting over hot.

On the creative side, we have been collaging butterflies and we made some gorgeous flower collages too. The team cut out flowers from old wall paper and the children selected them and collaged them onto paper. And we are currently working on a wild animal display and have been sticking and painting elephants, lions, tigers and giraffes.

We have also had a lot of tea times outside recently too. It is always so relaxing eating outside and the great thing is that it doesn’t interrupt our play like going inside does, so after tea we can just get on with what we were doing again.

Looking at and naming colours has been a big focus during June. We have had colour tables out where we have put a variety of the same coloured items on the table from all the different resources in the room and the children have really enjoyed investigating things that they are familiar with but grouped differently. Sometimes they tidy up the table and put away some of the items in the places they are really meant to be!

In Seahorses,

July held a month of fun with babies who know the ropes and assert themselves readily into activities of their choice and are confident to try new things. Our babies are old hats at nursery now and so they have explored with surefootedness (and sure knees).

We have introduced into the space new pictures of animals for the children to look at. They are around the walls and the children have enjoyed wondering at them. We have also extending the exploration into images of sea creatures, including starfish, seahorses (of course) and fish.

The children have also done some art work on shapes that resemble animal outlines. They have been doing simple mark making with crayons and running their fingers though coloured paint- cooling and enjoyable on a hot day

It has been incredibly hot and so we have done a lot of water play, allowing the children to wallow in water indoors and potter with containers and different utensils and cloths to enjoy the different ways to move water around...lots of splashing! They have also loved playing with bubbles as the staff blow them for them and they jig about on their bottoms- too excited to move along to get them. We have smart babies- they know there is always more to come when they have all popped so why chase!

And of course Fathers day could not be forgotten. We painted little book marks for our Dads.

plans

What are we doing in Dolphins for June?
We have explored all sorts of vehicles and gone on to discuss a range of different reasons to use different types of transport, including going on holiday, which many of our children and families have been doing recently. We have looked at postcards sent to us by staff and children and have started to talk about where we are going on holiday and what we do on holiday. We plan to explore this further this month.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this interest will be:
Making post cards and posting them in the nursery post box.
Making some beach pictures using sand.
Reading books about going on holiday.
Setting up a travel agents.
Talking about what types of clothes we need to take for holidays.
Making packing lists for holiday suitcases.
Making tie dyed tops that we can buy on our holiday beach

What you could do to support your children at home:
If you are planning a holiday, talk to your child about it too. Talk about how you are going to get there, why you chose to go there, what will be there, who else will be there, what you will need to pack, if you need passports, tickets, etc.
Read some stories about holidays. At nursery we are going to be reading:
Schnitzel Von- Crumb~ Forget me Not, by Linley Dodd.
If you go on holiday, post us a post card so we can talk about where you have gone.
Collect some travel catalogues and look through the pages and talk about places you would like to visit one day together.
Talk about some of the places you have been on holiday together. Look at some photos of your holidays.
Look at a map of the world and link holiday destinations to the map and where you live. Use the link to talk about why you need to go on a boat, plane, car or train to get there.



What are we doing in Seahorses for June?
The seahorses children are loving learning about animals and listening to the team make animal noises for the different animals, pointing at animals, singing songs with animals like ‘Old MacDonald’, reading books with animals in them, so we plan to keeping this going for June or until the interest moves into another direction.

What are we doing at the nursery to support this:
Provide plenty of books with animals in them.
Name animals and make the noises that go with them.
Old MacDonald had a farm will join the room with a variety of animals.
Make some artwork on the shapes of familiar pets such and dogs and cats.
Provide lots of opportunity with the small world animals.
Put the animals in the sand, water, slime for some extended exploration.

What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?
Go to the library and get some books out on animals, including some with real life pictures.
If you have pets at home, bring photos of them into the nursery so the children can relate to their pet and have a nice sense of home in the nursery.
Sing Old MacDonald had a Farm. While the babies won’t sing along with you, you should get a wriggle and smiles of enjoyment because they love hearing you sing. Some of them may hum or make noises with you.
Make sure you name animals when you see them. Children often pick up dog and cat (or variations of them) when they are learning to talk. Dog spotting on walks is also often a favourite activity for older babies.
Buy or borrow some little small world animals for them to play with and investigate. Play with them; naming, making noises or moving them.
If you work part time and have a child friendly dog, you could bring it into the nursery for the children to look at on one of your days off.


What are we doing in Starfish for June?
During June, we will be having a focus on colours.
Some of our starfish children are starting to name colours. Some of them have an understanding of the differences in colour, the names of colours and can point to colours that are the same. Others are just starting to say the names of some colours and notice that the same item can come in many colours.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:
Introducing colours into our circle times; talking about the colours of lego- red, blue green yellow.
Painting with red, blue, green and yellow with increased opportunities to talk about the colours they are using.
Additional opportunities for building with Mobilo, Links, Duplo, Mega Blocks while talking about and matching up colours.
Talking about the colours of animals and different patches of animals.
An increased focus on colours through everyday conversations with the children.
Having ‘colour’ days. E.g. red day. Where children can wear a certain colour, the water play will be coloured, play dough will be coloured.
Baking with icing of certain colours.

Some ideas to support your children at home:
Go to the library and get out a book on colours
Talk about colours in your everyday conversations.
Watch vehicles go past and talk about the colours of the cars, buses, etc.
Name the colours of your children’s clothes as they get ready.
Do some painting at home and talk about colours.
Take a walk around your garden or go to a park and talk about the colours of the flowers, trees, plants, etc.

Whats been happening in May?

A little bit of everything has been going on over the last month and a bit.

We had Upsy Daisy visit the nursery at the end of April and in May, Tigger came to see us for our Teddy Bears picnic. Our sister nursery at St Mary’s also came and had a teddy bears picnic with us, played on the Bouncy Castle, had their faces painted and shared some time together. It was busy, but very fun.

In Dolphins, the main group focus for the month of May has been vehicles, following on from the previous month looking at the emergency services. The children have really been enjoying playing with all sorts of vehicles as we have moved them round the nursery, putting them in sand, water, the art tables, making vehicles of our own, reading books and looking at pictures of vehicles.

The children have been putting together a variety of boxes and chairs to make buses and trains and to go on imaginary journeys with their friends. They have also painted boxes to decorate the trains.

The older dolphins have had lots of discussions about why we travel on the different sorts of transport we do, shared with each other information about how we personally travel to nursery, how we travel to friends places, grandparents and family who live overseas. We have also played a game listening to noises that the different types of transport make and guessing what they are.

The lovely May weather and odd heat wave has also excited us into talking a lot about beaches, painting summery things, such as flowers and lady birds and a lot of play outside under the gazebos.

Many of us have started going on holidays and so we have enjoyed sharing stories of those and discussing the anticipation of our next holiday, or the types of things we can do if we have a holiday at home.

In the starfish room the children have really enjoyed the different shapes that they have been playing with of transport images, making vehicle collages and naming types of transport and playing with them in the paint, sand, water, etc. Some of the older children have learned the names of different vehicle types too.

Starfish children have also been reading books about transport, singing songs about them and making their own trains out of furniture to go on journeys together. They have also made motorbikes out of egg cartons.

As the sun has been out and we have been enjoying it so much, we have all learned that to play in the sun we need our hats on. The children are very particular about this and if you go outside into their garden without your hat on- expect a child to remind you of your responsibilities!!

Another big feature of our month has been hanging saris on the line and playing under them as they blow in the wind. The children have loved watching the colours of the fabric as they twist and turn and flap. It made the play ground feel really special.

In the Seahorses room we have been talking about animals a lot. Naming and looking at images of animals that we see in our everyday environment- on the street or at home and friends and families places. Lots of pointing at animals in books and pictures, singing about animals- ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’, etc.

We have introduced the animals into the water and sand and we have been playing hiding games where we hide the animals in boxes so the babies can knock them over and find them.

Some of the babies are becoming quite mobile and are enjoying being able to cruise around the room and pull themselves up on the equipment and chasing the beads around the bead frame, the play cooker and furniture.

We have also been experimenting with using the musical instruments to sing with. The team sing songs to the children and the children interject words and hum where they feel enthused and join in with the musical instruments- shaking shakers and ringing bells.

Many of the children are also really enjoying taking themselves into the story corner at present to have some quiet reading time. They often have their favourite books that they go back to time and time again.