Fun in Sea Turtles and Dolphins for December '13

Sea turtles

 This month we got right into the festivities the children have been involved with lots of music and movement, learning words and actions to new songs and enjoying the old ones. Dressing up has been a fun activity for the children and they have all taken to the Santa hats.

Making Christmas presents is always fun, lots of glitter & sparkles to make beautiful baubles for the tree and using salt dough to create Christmas shapes for them to paint.

Tinsel play has been different for the children; feeling new materials and exploring all the shiny objects. The children have also been enjoying lots of colouring with pencils, pens and chalk.

It’s been a good festive month for the children to enjoy.

Dolphins

This month we have had a fun filled festive month with lots of singing, dancing and making festive goodies along with talking and reading stories about other cultures and religions and what they do at this time of year.

The children have been busy making cards, Christmas pudding, stockings, trees and an array of other decorations. The children have really enjoyed singing to themselves and the rest of the group on the karaoke machine in preparation for our carols by candle light evening.

The children have also still shown a great interest in the building works next door and have been popping around to chat to Haydon and Dennis through the fence as they work and then role play at being Haydon and Dennis using a variety of materials such as Lego, wooden blocks and cardboard boxes to build their own nursery.

What we have been doing in November in Dolphins

We’ve had a very busy and fun filled month in Dolphins with lots of new things going on as we’ve settled into our temporary space.

After finding the demolition of our much loved nursery quite disturbing, once the delivery trucks of building equipment, the concrete mixers to watch, sawing to listen to and getting used to the idea that we will be getting a new refreshed nursery space in 2014, the children really got into the building spirit. Watching the goings on through the fence is great fun! And, we love to joke about the toilets in the garden!

The under 3’s have spent the month constructing a large model of the nursery as the building works continue, every day they are adding more pieces to the model and we will be continuing with the construction into next month as they are having so much fun with it!

The pre-schoolers have also enjoyed discussions about the building works and they’ve been doing lots of role playing, pretending to be ‘Hayden’ and ‘Dennis’ the builders!  They helped put together a photo album of the real construction site.

All the children have really enjoyed coming out of the rooms and playing in the large hall.  We’ve played the parachute game on several occasions, ‘move like a…..’ animal game, and our weekly dance sessions have been particularly fun in the larger space.

Towards the end of the month we’ve got into the Christmas spirit of things as some of you may have already heard, by practising our songs for our Carols by Candlelight evening!  Our bells have been jingling several times a day and we’ve even started making and putting up some decorations!

In November Sea Turtles kicked off festivals!!

We welcomed a big new pram. So after fitting it together, we have taken turns to go on walks and we have especially enjoyed our walks to the river. We have been spotting ducks and boats and collecting leaves on are way back to nursery.  We enjoy pointing and looking out for animals on our journey along the river, especially finding Mr Squirrel!

Festivals started off with looking at fireworks for Guy Fawkes. We explored a range of mark-marking activities and making bang sound effects to go with our marks.   Children have been experimenting with a range of sounds and words to communicate different sounds fireworks make and using lots of different media, such us chalk, pencils, glitter and paint to create the sparkle effect.

We welcomed the start of Christmas by making Christmas crackers and a Christmas tree together. We spread a lot of merry cheer with lots of glitter! We spoke about snow and started to make snow pictures and snowman. We have been playing a lot with shredded paper, to create a snow scene in sea-turtles and have a really great lot of fun throwing and exploring the texture, lightness and shagginess of lots of shredded paper.

We have also been making Christmas decorations for the Christmas tree out of salt-dough. We’ve creating many different shapes and the children are so interested in them and we can’t wait for them to dry so we can get painting.

We have been sharing pictures, songs, books, images and talking about different ways to celebrate Christmas. In our activities, we have been talking about sharing and turn-taking with our friends, as it’s the season of joy, care and being together! We have had a lot of fun By wrapping up presents and pretending to exchange Christmas gifts with each other.

The big musical fun this month has been the Christmas Carol practice. We have been practicing our Christmas carols and introducing actions and gestures to go with each of the songs. Sea Turtles favourite song at the moment is Christmas pudding, especially calling out ‘….Hot”’ and ‘sprinkle on the sugar!’.  We have been repeating the Christmas songs to model and build on the children’s language. Children have been picking up the songs and the beat of the music by exploring musical instruments and having a LOT OF FUN!