Dolphins, Seahorses and Starfish had a great month of insects and creepy crawlies exploration.
These are some of the activities they have done…
Laura Z in the Dolphins made some little puzzles for the children out of images of different types of insects and then cut them up to make puzzles out of them. The children pieced them all together to rebuild the images and guess the names of the insects. The children learned some new insects in the process such as a lady bird spider. And if you didn’t know what one was, here it is- they’re kind of cute don’t you think?
Laura Z. also made some bumble bees with the children. She made a model one and the children had all the pieces together to choose where they go and they made some fantastic attempts at some bees that really do look like bees!
She also set up a great insect collage table with foam pieces cutting up some pieces for the children to use, but also getting the children to use off cuts and their own cut up pieces to build their insect collages. This was great for all abilities and some children made amazingly advanced pictures like the caterpillar here and others made pieces that were a bit more rough around the edges and just as brilliant.
Carole read the favourite story for the month, The Troll, which involved pirates, treasure chests, maps and walking the plank!
Sarah also set up red and green ant making activities, caterpillar collages and water play filled with all sorts of insects in the water. The lovely thing about the Starfish is that they love getting really sticky with glue and slippery with the paint and just wallow in the joy of exploring the different sensations.
Manjit set up for the children a really neat little ‘bugs in the night’ small world activity. She used dark coloured sand, twigs, leaves and set the children to work moving and playing the little plastic bugs through the mini wilderness. So many different tectures to feel in this and some of the chldre really got into moving the bugs about and others really focussed on feeling the( different quality of this sand to our sand tray) sand in their fingers, the leaves and twigs.
She also set up a great little activity of making ‘snail trails’ on paper using string and silver paint. They trailed the strings around the paper leaving behind trails of silver paint like snail trails.
Manjit also helped the children make spiders using different materials to Sarah. She made them with black and brown fur, glued onto egg boxes with googly eyes.
For the smaller children Emily set up a butterfly making activity using glitter of different colours, lots of glue and mess on paper. It was fantastic and the children loved the flicking about of glitter, sticky hands on paper and everything getting caught on their hands including the glitter, the paper and them selves! The process was such fun and the end result was pretty gorgeous too.
With a lady bird colour concept, Emily also set up some fun sponge painting with red and black colours to dip round sponges into and onto paper. Of course it was a mess and the images to the uninformed eye and probably to the babies as well, were nothing like lady birds, but the point was an activity that was fantastic exploratory fun.
Beata made some lovely summery pictures with the babies of shapes of birds, butterflies, etc using sponges to absorb and stamp water colours onto yellow and blue paper. Lots of the babies really preferred to use their fingers- dipping them into the paint and smearing them about the paper, the table, their aprons and them!
She also made some fun giant flies with the babies. They were able to stamp black paint onto cut out fly shapes and then stick tissue paper about to make a kind of winged effect.
But other great spontaneous fun was the wonderful sum
mery weather that meant we got out the giant submarine paddling pool for the children to splash about in for the day. It was so much fun and really made us all feel we were on holiday at nursery! We’ve also been able to do excursions to Mortlake park to search for bugs, more gardening and may we add that the gardens in both the under two’s and over two’s play grounds are looking amazing with flowers! And we have even had some fantastic water play with flowers and glitter- how pretty is that!?
Dolphins edible garden is also looking just incredible. Our tomato plants are the biggest and most flowery and green tomato bud bursting that we have ever seen them. Our pumpkins are going strong and we are not quite sure how we are going to manage them because there is a long way to go till pumpkin harvest! And our strawberries, while not enough to feed us all, but mixed with a few bought in ones was a really special and satisfying event.
These are some of the activities they have done…
Laura Z in the Dolphins made some little puzzles for the children out of images of different types of insects and then cut them up to make puzzles out of them. The children pieced them all together to rebuild the images and guess the names of the insects. The children learned some new insects in the process such as a lady bird spider. And if you didn’t know what one was, here it is- they’re kind of cute don’t you think? 
Laura Z. also made some bumble bees with the children. She made a model one and the children had all the pieces together to choose where they go and they made some fantastic attempts at some bees that really do look like bees!
Christine H. introduced some new insects stampers that the Dolphins children drew around to make insects outlines. They then cut them out with scissors and decorated them. Generally, the children’s ability with scissors is very competent and they are regularly looking for things to cut around in magazines and tracing other items such as their hands to then cut out.
Laura W supported the Dolphins children to make some really gorgeous little spiders out of foam eggs, pipe cleaners, paint and buggy eyes. They are adorable and the children loved making them. Actually, as soon as the beady eyes come out of the collage cupboard they are pretty excited!
She also set up a great insect collage table with foam pieces cutting up some pieces for the children to use, but also getting the children to use off cuts and their own cut up pieces to build their insect collages. This was great for all abilities and some children made amazingly advanced pictures like the caterpillar here and others made pieces that were a bit more rough around the edges and just as brilliant. Rachel set up an insect stencil activity that all of the Dolphin children took
part in. Some of the children drew around stencils, cut them out carefully and created patterns in them. Others drew around them and left them as a collection of images on paper and coloured them and some just did lots of stencil prints with no colour. This was a lovely quiet activity with children coming and going as they did their but with lots of support to the especially young Dolphins to encourage them into the world of arts and crafts. The butterfly was by far the most popular stencil.
part in. Some of the children drew around stencils, cut them out carefully and created patterns in them. Others drew around them and left them as a collection of images on paper and coloured them and some just did lots of stencil prints with no colour. This was a lovely quiet activity with children coming and going as they did their but with lots of support to the especially young Dolphins to encourage them into the world of arts and crafts. The butterfly was by far the most popular stencil. Laura J did some dramatic play with the children outside by setting up dens for insects. She draped fabric about to made the dens and then got inside the dens with the children to pretend to be insects coming and going from their den to collect food and bring it back to their insect friends!
Throughout the month in Dolphins, while we were exploring all sorts of insects, pirates took over our nursery.
Throughout the month in Dolphins, while we were exploring all sorts of insects, pirates took over our nursery.
Lan made a collection of head scarfs with different themes on them and the pirates were by far the most popular….so Lan had to make a few more last minute to keep all our pirates happy. Every morning after breakfast our pirates grabbed their head scarfs and so the day began and soon we were making pirate ships, printing of treasure maps and hiding gold coins around the nursery to be found, reading stories about pirates and making all sorts of impromptu piratey type things!
Carole read the favourite story for the month, The Troll, which involved pirates, treasure chests, maps and walking the plank!
Seahorses and Starfish planned together this month and also followed an insect topic after all the bug collecting in our plants of the month before.
Sarah helped the starfish make some really groovy spider pictures by painting card spider bodies and gluing on straws for legs. The lovely thing about the children doing it and sticking the straws in all sorts of random positions is that somehow the spiders look even cuter!
Sarah also set up red and green ant making activities, caterpillar collages and water play filled with all sorts of insects in the water. The lovely thing about the Starfish is that they love getting really sticky with glue and slippery with the paint and just wallow in the joy of exploring the different sensations.
Manjit set up for the children a really neat little ‘bugs in the night’ small world activity. She used dark coloured sand, twigs, leaves and set the children to work moving and playing the little plastic bugs through the mini wilderness. So many different tectures to feel in this and some of the chldre really got into moving the bugs about and others really focussed on feeling the( different quality of this sand to our sand tray) sand in their fingers, the leaves and twigs.
She also set up a great little activity of making ‘snail trails’ on paper using string and silver paint. They trailed the strings around the paper leaving behind trails of silver paint like snail trails.
Manjit also helped the children make spiders using different materials to Sarah. She made them with black and brown fur, glued onto egg boxes with googly eyes.
For the smaller children Emily set up a butterfly making activity using glitter of different colours, lots of glue and mess on paper. It was fantastic and the children loved the flicking about of glitter, sticky hands on paper and everything getting caught on their hands including the glitter, the paper and them selves! The process was such fun and the end result was pretty gorgeous too.
With a lady bird colour concept, Emily also set up some fun sponge painting with red and black colours to dip round sponges into and onto paper. Of course it was a mess and the images to the uninformed eye and probably to the babies as well, were nothing like lady birds, but the point was an activity that was fantastic exploratory fun.
Beata made some lovely summery pictures with the babies of shapes of birds, butterflies, etc using sponges to absorb and stamp water colours onto yellow and blue paper. Lots of the babies really preferred to use their fingers- dipping them into the paint and smearing them about the paper, the table, their aprons and them! She also made some fun giant flies with the babies. They were able to stamp black paint onto cut out fly shapes and then stick tissue paper about to make a kind of winged effect.
But other great spontaneous fun was the wonderful sum
mery weather that meant we got out the giant submarine paddling pool for the children to splash about in for the day. It was so much fun and really made us all feel we were on holiday at nursery! We’ve also been able to do excursions to Mortlake park to search for bugs, more gardening and may we add that the gardens in both the under two’s and over two’s play grounds are looking amazing with flowers! And we have even had some fantastic water play with flowers and glitter- how pretty is that!?Dolphins edible garden is also looking just incredible. Our tomato plants are the biggest and most flowery and green tomato bud bursting that we have ever seen them. Our pumpkins are going strong and we are not quite sure how we are going to manage them because there is a long way to go till pumpkin harvest! And our strawberries, while not enough to feed us all, but mixed with a few bought in ones was a really special and satisfying event.
