Plans for June to July

What are we doing in Dolphins June to July?

From June to July we will be focussing on story telling.

Many of the children are loving storytelling, acting, puppetry, etc. It started on some of those torrential rain days in early June when we were stuck inside and needed some extra inspiration for group work. They did some great acting and now story telling is all go.

The activities this month will be based around the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) areas of learning:

KUW-Gain an awareness of the cultures and beliefs of others. PSED- Show increasing confidence in new situations.. PSRN- Show an interest in shape and space by playing with shapes or making. CLL Use intonation, rhythm and phrasing to make their meaning clear to others. join in with repeated refrains and anticipate key events and phrases in rhymes and stories. Listen to stories with increasing attention and recall. Describe  ain story settings, events and principal characters. Listen to others in one-to one or small groups when conversation interests them.. PD Combine and repeat a range of movements.CD Capture experiences and  responses with music, dance, paint and other materials or words.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this will be:

·      Christine H will be talking with children about their favourite books and suggesting they bring them in to read and talk about why they are their favourite stories.

·      Cristina will be making finger puppets with the children of their favourite story characters to act out some stories in the little theatres we have made.

·      Laura J will be adapting the story of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ to a sign language story and telling it to the children through signs, then getting them to join in.

·      Laura Z will we working on ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ through sign as well, introducing drama and story retelling.

·      Rachel G will be setting up a home book all about our meerkat, where the children can take home the nursery meerkat and tell a story about her adventures with the children.

·      Jenny will be continuing working through acting out stories with the preschool children and presenting them to the rest of the Dolphins children and teachers.

·      We’ll also be having lots of discussions about the different ways of storytelling; theatre, dance, puppet show, movies, tv shows, song, telling stories with books and straight from your head.

What you could do to support your children at home:

·      Talk with your child about different ways that stories can be told.

·      Take them to a children’s theatre show locally to experience story telling through theatre.

·      Talk about their favourite story and bring it to nursery to share with the children and teachers.

What are we doing in Sea Turtles June to July?

Many children are starting to take their summer holidays, meaning new experiences for them beyond their daily lives. Imagery of summer fun is interesting them as they share with others images of tents, beaches, ice-creams, and images that they have been experiencing or that are new to think about.

 The activities this month will be based around the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) areas of learning:

KUW- Developing curiosity in the environment.  PSED- developing a strong exploratory impulse, exploring the environment with interest. PSRN- developing interest in classifying and organising items with intent. CLL Using language to accompany feelings, experiences and thoughts. PD being to use tools and materials for a particular purpose. CD-seeking to make sense of what they can see, hear, feel, touch and smell.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:

·      Sara will be collecting and displaying images of summer holiday icons and activities.

·      Sarah G will be looking at images of ice-creams and helping the children to make their own through arts and crafts.

·      Sarah G will also being setting up tents and dens with camping equipment to role play camping.

·      Laura W will be setting up a range of sensory activities to imitate the sense and textures the children feel in the summer time, such as sandy water.

·      Chloe will be setting up a ‘going on holiday’ role play activity with the children where they can pretend to travel and arrive at a new destination.

·      Sarah-Louise will be creating some art with the children about summer scenes, including sunshine, sand, animals.

·      Ella will be making some post cards with the children with images of holiday destinations.

·      Sarah Louise and Chloe will be making a holiday board with images of holiday destinations from catalogues and magazines.

Some ideas to support your children at home:

·         When you go on holiday, write a post card with your toddler and then post it to nursery. We’ll make a display of all the postcards we’ve collected from you.

·         Remember to name all of the new things they come across and don’t forget to use language that describes texture, colour, shape, number.

·         Bring something back from your holiday and bring it into the nursery for the day so we can talk about it with the children and give your child a special proud moment. 

Reflection of May to June 2012

Well, we started with a lovely brief heat wave at the end of May and the start to June went back to water! But we soldiered on with the activities we love to do outside, even if it was a little wetter and a lot muddier.

Sea Turtles had plenty of soil play, pretend gardening and planting, but also small world digging and excavation. Soil, trucks, cars, spades and watering cans made for some great muddy tracks and bogs.

Despite the lack of sunshine, we have still had a lot of flowers growing and we have had endless discussions about flowers and plants, fruits and vegetables and what we need to do to help them to grow. The flowers and plants didn’t need any extra watering, but they got it! Children love it and it makes us feel summery and productive and brings meaning to what we have been talking and reading about.

We have also made summery collages and art work of flowers using scrunched up tissue paper and paint. And, we have also made a lovely colour board using sand, paint and glue on black paper. The children loved doing that and it is always fun discovering colours with toddlers.

Fruits and vegetables have been a big feature this month too. The children have been sampling all sorts of fruits and naming them through the real objects and through photographs. Also puppet shows where the characters eat and talk about the fruits. The children made some pretty fruit platters too, by collaging fruit cut outs from magazines onto paper plates and then talked about what they had and what they liked.

And then we had some great little cultural activities too. Seaman’s Day, which we learned from one of our parents, is an Icelandic festival of the sea. So we made little fish medals to wear, which were so pretty and the children were very proud of them.

And then there was the jubilee tea party and all the events surrounding that!

In Dolphins we have also loved the outdoors as if it was sunny every day. Our children are definitely sick of us making sure they have jackets and cardigans on, especially when it’s is sunny one minute with cold breezes and then dumping rain on us the next, but in terms of what we have been able to do outside, you’d never know we were battling a poor excuse for summer.

We released the butterflies at the end of May after probably waiting too long to release them on a warm day. The warm day never came and we had to let them go. We had a butterfly day, where the children did butterfly art and had their faces painted as butterflies. There were enough butterflies for most of the Dolphins children to courageously put their hands into the butterfly tent and take them out on their hands. The butterflies were not as daring though. They flopped about and fell to the ground. The children were highly amused by that and we re-caught them to put them on the trees and they fell off and flapped about some more.

The other fun in the outdoors has been dens. Den are always loved in summer (and any time really) because they provide the outdoor experience with some cosy shelter. We’ve also brought a lot of the dress up clothes outside too and so dressing up and experiencing all sorts of dramatic play in and out of the dens and around the garden has been wonderful. Thanks to the children, we have been able to see the garden as a village, shopping centre, park, homes, their personal gardens and much more as the children have set up their world using the real space to invent the imaginary. To watch their activity and listen to their conversations in 'their world' is nothing short of totally magic.  

Having the guinea pigs in the run outside has been fun too. The children just love them and it is so nice to be able to go up to the run, lean over and give them a stroke. Kip and Silky love it too and are so much more active and receptive to the children in the garden, and of course, they become part of the imaginary scenarios too. 

And again, a messy month. Loads of messy play, junk modelling, painting and creating. The children get very mucky often, and the concentration involved in all the works that create mess is wonderful. Their imagination both in what they can create through materials and the pretend world is inspiring.

The Queens  jubilee

The favourite part of the end of May, beginning of June was or course The Queens Jubilee. In both the Sea Turtles and Dolphins there were loads of activities going on with bunting, flags, paper chains, etc, sticking, etc. Children love excitement and particularly in Dolphins, they adored get ready for the party and have a little celebration together. The children who were in on the day of the Jubilee Tea Party had so much fun getting set up for the event.

The wonderful part of the Queens Jubilee was that the children felt the whole world was celebrating with them. The decorations were everywhere in and out of the nursery and every child had a common interest.