April to May

April to May was a complete washout. Rain every day scuppering our plans for gardening and excursions to the garden centre! The squirrels seem to spend the weekends stealing our planter moss to make their nests somewhere else- hopefully the anti-cat spray will work on them too! (It is non-toxic and safe for children in case you were wondering). So we are a bit behind, but not giving up.

We have been able to establish our little garden in the car park and the children in both Dolphins and Sea Turtles have loved it and visit it daily to check it is okay and talk about how the plants are going to grow and what we will be doing next in our gardening mission.

A lot of gardening has also gone on in doors, particularly in Sea Turtles. They have been planting cress, lentils and tomatoes. Even an apple seed found at snack time has been planted and to everyone’s amazement, it is sprouting! The cress has been used to make some grass for a small world farm and the children enjoyed touching it, smelling it and investigating the stringy properties of it.

Sea Turtles also have a new exploration tank that they have introduced to the room for children to put their natural discoveries into. It has had lady birds, snails, slugs and spiders in it facing big eyes of fascinated children peering through the glass. They have fed them leaves, mud, oranges, grass and all sorts of things the children have found and insist they need!

Sea Turtles also introduced  some silk worms into the room that are pretty uninspiring now, but over the next month will fatten up and start to move through the interesting cocoon stage and emerging as silk worm moths. But for now we just have to feed them and clean them and watch them. 

We have been loving playing with the Guinea Pigs, Kip and Silky. We sit in a circle and let them run between us and some of us even have the confidence to hold them in our knees and stroke them.

 Lots of craft activities have gone on during the month too, with rain cloud collages, stamping, slime play in various consistencies, icing cupcakes, etc. One of the loveliest activities was the collage using paint, glue, pasta, tissue paper, tinsel and cellophane that was arranged as a sensory activity with lots of globing, then left to dry. A celophane cover was put over it and displayed for children to touch and feel the different textures through scrunchy plastic. They go up to it every day and chatter with their friends about it together as the touch and feel and squeeze the various parts of it.

The kite flying was good too. With all the wind we have had we made some kites for the children and teachers to fly. The children are fascinated by them and so we have decided to buy some kites for the nursery to have kite flying days in the car park.
And, we have also been doing some hard dry texture exploration with little trays of sand, rocks, macaroni, straws and glitter- great fun. The little ones absolutely love having the chance to really sit and ponder the textures and shapes of different items. Roaming our toy insects about in lumpy sludge has been a lot of fun too.

In dolphins the biggest buzz was setting out the garden in the car park. They took different groups of children to help clear up, get rubble out of the bed and watch the teachers chip away at that great concrete deposit that got in the way! Then they enjoyed choosing a plant to put in and fill round and they totally loved deciding how Nessie was going to be positioned. Next step, the veg patch….

Dolphins have also had a bit of a messy month. The children have been really keen on the messy sensory play activities and so we have had gloop, slime, mud, Gelli, finger painting, etc. for the children to smooth their fingers around and relax wallowing in soft and lovely relaxing play.

Caterpillars and butterflies have been enjoyed as we set up the butterfly tent and grew tiny caterpillars to great big fat caterpillars, then watched them spin their cocoons. They have just started to make their way out and we now have a tent full of painted lady butterflies that we are feeding oranges to and getting them ready to be released.
To extend our butterfly lifecylce work we have been making caterpillars and butterflies in art and the children have produced some beautiful art in different ways.

We loved flowers this month too. Some of the children have participated by adding tissue and coloured paper to a bigger group project. Some have drawn individual pictures of flowers- and they’re gorgeous- and then the children have carried this on in adding little flowers as decorations to a range of personal pictures and constructions.

We’ve also had a lot of fun playing in the rain. There has been no choice really!  Jenny has had some great times with the children catching rain in cups and measuring how much they have collected with them. Then there was the episode that descended into a water fight as the children started tossing water at Jenny who couldn’t stop laughing to tell them to stop.