What are we doing in Dolphins in September?

September and early October is a big time of change for us at the nursery and particularly in Dolphin’s where we have seen our special pre-schoolers head off to their schools and a new rising group of pre-schoolers itching to take their places. It’s a social reshuffle and with that brings the need for a strong focus on our four rules in Dolphins; Be Kind, Inside Voices, Tidy Up and Walk Inside. They underpin a calm environment and a platform to build respectful friendships. This month, we will particularly be looking at working together and making new friendships.

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

Prime areas:
PSED: Making new friendships. PD: Working in partnership with others to tackle pair and group games, such as large scale construction, obstacle courses. C&L Working on ‘using words’ to express needs, wants and ideas.
Specific areas:
L: Referring to the rules and making the link between the written rule and the images. M: Working in partnerships to solve problems; puzzles, measuring, etc. UW: Being aware of how things change, growing up and moving on to new challenges and environments.  EA&D: Collaborating with peers on joint creative projects such as dance, junk modelling, and large scale art.

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

·         Large scale junk modelling. Marie-Claire will be supporting the children in making some large scale models out of cardboard boxes, recycled materials, etc.

·         Parachute games. Matt will be supporting the children to use the parachute in collaborative ways to reach a joint goal.

·         Playdough hearts for friendship. Christine H will be making salt dough hearts with the children to hand out to special friends and people who help them.

·         Team work. Shilpi will be focussing on team games with the children that require listening, responding and working together; passing balls, statues, hide and seek, etc.

·         Creating a ‘sharing book’. Laura Z will be working with the children to make a book on sharing. She will invite examples from children of good sharing, working together and friendships to share with the group.

·         Preschool circle times. Manjit and Jenny will be having ‘active circle times’ in preschool using parachutes, building things together, and working on a joint project that requires participation from everyone. Puppetry, picture cards, books all representing feelings, friendships and working together will introduce preschool for the year.

What you could do to support your children at home:

·       Talk to your children about the importance of friendships, working together and helping people to get a task done. Talk about your own friendships and why they are good friendships.

·       Take some books out of the library on friendships and feelings. Talk through feelings and how they can impact on friendships.

·       Remind your children to ‘use their words’. When children start to get physical in expressing their frustrations, we ask them to ‘stop’ and then to ‘use their words’. Then we give them words to use in the different situations. Keep this up at home. The more they are reminded, the closer they get to automatically doing it.

·       Reinforce our nursery rules at home. They apply everywhere and the more they are embedded, the more effective they are for supporting lifelong learning. Our nursery rules are at the top.

What are we doing in Sea Turtles in September?

The children had a lot of fun exploring colour in August and a lot of the colours were linked back to the fruits they were eating. Fruit is great fun to explore. They are an explosion of colour, interest, smell and taste. They link so many senses together and we are going to explore those senses this month to continue the interest in colour, reinforce the learning and explore through all their senses.

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

Prime areas:

PSED: Using play fruit in context and role playing with peers.  PD: Exploring the will to try new textures and tastes. C&L The understanding of words in context- to represent colour, fruit, etc.

Specific areas:

M: Beginning to organise and categorise objects. UW: Explore objects by linking together different approaches: shaking, feeling, tasting, pulling, looking, turning and poking.  EA&D Experimenting with colours, marks, media and materials.

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

·         Exploring more unusual fruits. Sarah G will be introducing more unusual fruit to the children to try, such as lychees, dragon fruit, Sharon fruit, including fruits we don’t always think of as fruits, such as raw courgette, unusual tomatoes and peppers.

·         Fruit printing. Alice will be decorating shapes of fruits by printing paint onto the shapes using the type of fruit that corresponds. E.g. stamping an apple shape with apple prints.

·         Jelly fruit. Cristina will be helping the children to make some jelly fruit salad. They will take part in adding the fruits to the jelly mix and then re-discovering them when they eat it.

·         Fruit collages. Latoya will be helping the children to make collages of different fruits by sticking a range of different materials of the same colour onto the right coloured fruit.

·         Fruit images. Laura will be displaying a variety of different images of fruits and their names around the environment to support the links between an object, its name and the familiarity of seeing a printed word with it.

·         Trip to the library. Sarah G will be organising a trip to the local library to collect some books about fruits and colours.

·         Sensory fruit. Alice will be setting up an activity for the children to explore some very fragrant and / or textured fruits. Smelling them, squeezing them, dissecting them and tasting them.

Some ideas to support your children at home:

·         Take a trip to a green grocer or a market. Point out the different fruit (and veg). Name them, describe them, talk about them, try them. Always talk. They might not be holding up their end of the conversation yet, but they are taking it all in and it lays the foundation for communication and language development.

·         Buy some interesting fruits. Take the time to sit down with them and eat them together. Talk about the smell, colour, texture, shape, size, bumps and anything interesting.

·         Point out fruits, colours and different qualities from picture on posters on the street, books, magazines, etc.