Seahorses Seahorses have had a very autumnal month with lots of painting, playing, singing and observing the autumn coming. They have particularly enjoyed exploring paint and paper textures, using their hands and using their paint brushes to paint the shapes of squirrels, hedgehogs and leaves with autumn colours.
The outside area has changed dramatically with all the leaves tumbling down and landing on the ground. The babies have had fun being surprised when one lands on or beside them, they have been picking them up and scrunching them and dipping them in puddles and making them stick on things, then clapping their hands for their accomplishments.
Music has been a very big feature of the month. With new babies more settled and relaxed we have been able to raise the volume in the room a little with singing sessions. The team sing songs and the children have been the supporting act with the percussion instruments. They love the ringing and singing and joining in with the words they know and humming and jigging along with the tunes they enjoy.
Books have also been explored along the topic of autumn and have been really useful and fun to watch the children as they make the connections between the pictures and what they have experienced in the play ground, especially after outside sessions of exploring leaves.
Apart form the autumn enjoyment, the children have also been very interested in the material treasure baskets. Perhaps it is due to the colder weather and the enjoyment of the feeling of different fabrics against their skin.
StarfishStarfish have focussed on emotions and expressing them this month and covered a range of activities to discuss and express happy, sad, angry and excited feelings.
During circle times the children and teachers have been role modelling cuddling, gentle touching and caring and how this makes us feel. Then through stories and flash cards they talked about how hurting each other and taking things off each other makes us feel sad, which isn’t very nice.
The children have done some lovely artwork making faces with eyes, mouths, hair- placing the pieces where they wanted them to go and creating some delightful faces.
A special trip that made everyone happy despite the wet weather was the trip to Kew Gardens. The teachers and children all caught the bus to Richmond and then another to Kew Gardens on foot, while the buggies were delivered to Kew for them to enjoy getting around the gardens by buggy.
Sadly, the day poured with rain so the children went into Creepers and Crawlers play area and had an amazing time playing and having their picnic lunch. The journey home was the wettest, but still the children and the staff enjoyed it and had fabulous time, returning with very happy, yet tired faces.
Art work is always a big part of Starfish. This month they have done artwork using a variety of different processes making and decorating animals using paint, glue, glitter, wool, finger prints, etc. And, they have also done some leaf artwork to extend the interests and excitement of watching and catching leaves as they fall al over the playground.
Dolphins
Dolphins explored ‘Community’ this month with a bit more depth. The children have been very interested in the community dress ups that we have, with the doctor, vet, construction and police outfits being well used and supporting lots of role modelling play. The police officer uniform is definitely a favourite and lent a lot of opportunity for turn taking and waiting! The biggest attraction on the police outfit was the radio and walkie-talkie that they can clip on and off and talk to their beat partner on!
Art work is always a big part of Starfish. This month they have done artwork using a variety of different processes making and decorating animals using paint, glue, glitter, wool, finger prints, etc. And, they have also done some leaf artwork to extend the interests and excitement of watching and catching leaves as they fall al over the playground.
DolphinsDolphins explored ‘Community’ this month with a bit more depth. The children have been very interested in the community dress ups that we have, with the doctor, vet, construction and police outfits being well used and supporting lots of role modelling play. The police officer uniform is definitely a favourite and lent a lot of opportunity for turn taking and waiting! The biggest attraction on the police outfit was the radio and walkie-talkie that they can clip on and off and talk to their beat partner on!
We also had a community health nurse come to the nursery to talk about health and hygiene with the children. The children really enjoyed her hand washing experiment. She put a special powder on their hands to make their hands dirty and then they looked at their hands under the UV light. She then asked them to thoroughly wash their hands like she’d shown them and then come back and look at their hands again under the light to see how well they had washed them. There was a lot of excitement about who did and didn’t do a proper job!
We bought a new climbing den in dolphins this month and the children have been completely excited by it. Again, lots of turn taking and waiting- which they are very good at now! They have loved hiding away in it, creating their little space rockets, homes, tree houses and other places they make believe it to be.
A big highlight of Dolphins in September was the excursion on a Friday to Garson’s PYO farm. After a mammoth one hour task of fitting different shaped and configured children’s car seats into two mini coaches, teachers and children set off to Esher to pick their own apples, buy and bring back to the nursery to make apple crumble with. We caught pockets of dryness amidst a very wet day and managed to collect loads of apples in little baskets along a very sodden orchard. It was a very tricky trip to organise, but so well worth it for the fun that we all had.
The children loved making the apple crumble as well and then finishing our day with warm apple crumble and custard at the end of a cold wet day was perfect.
