August plans

What are we doing in Dolphins for August?
Since the preschooler trip to the zoo and their concert, many of the children have been talking about animals, birds, insects, etc. as well as referring to the different stages of creatures, including reading about the different stages of animals and insects lives. We plan to continue this focus and also look more closely at some of the lifecycles of different animals/ species.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this interest will be:
Going to the library to get some books out about lifecycles to learn more from.
Introduce words associated with different species. E.g. spawn, metamorphosis, hatching, etc. and known words for different things. E.g. changing, growing, etc.
We plan to find some tadpoles to grow and then let put out once they have changed into a frog.
Going on an insect hunt out in the wider environment to spot and count insects and animals.
Arts and crafts associated with animals and creatures.
Learn some new animal songs.
Talk about our pets and how we look after them.

What you could do to support your children at home:
Go on an animal/ insect or bird spotting trip with your children. See how many different butterflies you can spot. Take a reference book with you and refer to the pictures of the birds.
Richmond Park has creature spotting guides in the RSPB shop where you can use the cards to spot different creatures in the park.
Take your child to a petting zoo for a day trip.
Go to the library and take some books out lifecycles. Also animals of the world that are unfamiliar are fascinating for children.

What are we doing in Starfish for August?
Our biggest starfish have moved through into Dolphins and been replaced with some new friends from the Seahorses room. To really support the communication in the rooms between the children with each other and the teachers, we will be supporting language through a focus on Makaton signing. Makaton is used in Starfish to support communication and is ongoing once the children have the hang of it as well.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will be:
Updating our display of Makaton signs for parents to learn and staff to use as support for signing to children.
Encouraging children to sign as a way of communication with staff and each other.
Introducing children to Makaton symbols and using them to help support children in anticipating the routines of the group.
Supporting children in developing confidence in learning new skills and communication techniques through the symbols and signs by making them a part of our everyday activities.
Placing makaton signs around the room for children to see recognise and use to support their understanding of what is expected/ requested.
Lots of action songs and signing throughout the days activities.

What you could do to support your children at home:
If you do or have done baby signing with your baby, let the staff know.
Take a look at our display and learn some symbols and signs.
Take a book out on baby signing and start using them with your children.
Ask a team member for a sheet of symbols to take away and use.
Learn and sing songs with your child that involve signing (you know loads already; ‘Where is Thumbkin?’ ‘Two little dicky birds sitting on a wall, etc’.
Take a look at the Makaton website;

http://www.makaton.org/about/about.htm


What are we doing in Seahorses for August?
The children have had such fun playing with fruit and vegetable toys and sampling the different fruits. We are going to continue exploring them while supporting all of our new babies into our room by providing lots of spaces for quiet cosy play with little cosy corners and spaces for quiet reflection. This month is about calmness, stability and lots of love and cuddles for all our babies and especially our new friends.

What are we doing at the nursery to support this:
Lots of group activities such as singing, stories, water play, messy play, soft play, etc, that promotes children being together and feeling comfortable in the space with their peers.
A lot of name usage to reinforce children’s names and give them a sense of belonging.
Focussing on children spending time with staff and each other looking at things that are unique to them; facial features, clothing, hands, feet.
Taking photos of the children to display in the room to give the children a good sense of belonging and to start to recognise themselves as part of the nursery.
Talk about the children’s family members during the day. Name the people who are important to them.
Lots of repetition of the names of the fruit and veg.
Role play shopping by putting the fruit and veg toys in shopping baskets and wandering round the room.
Combining the food with tea sets to role play cooking.

What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?
Talk about the other children and team members to your children when you leave and are at home. Use their names to reflect on their day and when going to nursery.
For new children, parents can help by demonstrating excitement at coming to nursery and role modelling a sense of confidence and excitement in the changes in the daily routines of their lives.
Remember and talk about the nursery when you are not here. Even though you only come in at the start and end of the days, the day for the children forms a large part of their life and special times.
Bring into nursery photos of your family. It is nice for children to look at them during their day.

July reflection

Dolphins

It has been a bit of a Mexican Fiesta in dolphins during July and especially the end of the month as we gear up for our summer barbecue- Mexican Beach Party.

We have made..... Aztec temples out of boxes, glue and paint and also built lots of temples with the large wood blocks and lego, we’ve made a fantastic piñata to have a crack at during the barbecue, we have made Mexican fans, flags, paper chains, and we have even turned our hand at lino cutting Mexican patterns and pictures. Colour, paint, glue, boxes and paper have been prolific this month!

We have also learned our manners and greetings in Spanish, and a new Spanish song called 'Dale, Dale La Pinata'- this is to sing when we try to get the sweets from the piñata. We have been listening to some Mexican music as well.

And then, beyond ‘little Mexico’, we have been on some excursions to the library, the park and our school leavers went on a fantastic excursion to the London Zoo. They walked from the nursery, to Mortlake station, transferred at Waterloo to the underground to Camden, walked to the bus stop, to the Zoo, around the Zoo and back again. They are amazing! No complaints, no giving up, just wonderful excited children (and very exhausted teachers) arrived back at the end of the day.

There was still a bit of energy left for the school leavers concert the next week, where the school leavers performed for their parents a little play from the 'Dear Zoo' book and some songs as well, then were graduated with their leaving certificates.

Starfish

Starfish have had a fun month with all sorts of activities. We have been on a number of little excursions to our local park where we had a walk in the grass, play in the play ground and had a picnic tea too.

We have also had loads art activities going on as we prepare for our Mexican Barbecue. We’ve been stamping, using paintbrushes and sponges to apply paint and lots of sticking. We have made cacti, Aztec suns, maracas, mosaics, Mexican flags and sombreros.

Our cosy corner arch has been set up with lots of different materials everyday and we have been playing with dress ups under the arch as well as trying different fabrics on, experimenting with different clothes, textures and how we feel in them.

Lots of very special circle times have also been going on too. We have a lot of new sensory and tactile toys and so we have been playing with them , watching them change and trying them out on our skin and putting them on our teachers as well.

We also had a continued focus on colours and our art work for the Mexican barbecue gave us loads of opportunities to talk about colour. Many of us are getting the hang of differentiating through colour and enjoying pointing colours out, guessing what they are and the claps for getting it right!

Seahorses

The Seahorses have been doing lots of additional activities around fruit in July. They have been trying all sorts of different fruits during their tea times; peaches, grapes, apricots and strawberries. Summer is such a great time to try all the lovely flavoursome fruits around.

We have also been doing a lot of playing with the play fruits and vegetables- putting them in pots and pans and hiding them with lids, passing them back and forth to each other and listening to the names of them, absorbing and storing the learning to surprise you with when we get older and can get the words out.

We have been doing a lot of art work on fruit shapes too as well as some great communal pieces of artwork using brushes, sponges and reading a lot of books with pictures of fruit and vegetables.

A highlight of the month has been setting up lots of little cosy corners for the babies with different cushions, textured mats, things that dangle from the ceiling, like ribbons, canopies, etc.

And, we have also welcomed in three new babies to our group. They have all settled in perfectly and it is like they have always been with us!

What's happening in July?

What are we doing in Dolphins for July?
Our Mexican Beach Party summer barbecue is coming up at the start of August and so to help the children to understand what is special to Mexico and to make some preparations and decorations for the barbecue, we will be having a focus on Mexico.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this interest will be:
Making some Mexican stamps with lino cuts.
Making Mexican food.
Reading Frida, by Jonah Winter and trying out some of her art ideas.
Making Ojo de dios (god’s eye) decorations.
Laura Zurita will be teaching the children the song Dale Dale la piñata. (The song to accompany the Pinata game).
Making paper chains out of Mexican colours.
Making Mexican paper decorations.
Learning some basic Spanish words including por favor, gracias.
Listening to some Mexican music.

What you could do to support your children at home:
Make some simple Mexican food with your children. Let them assemble the different parts together to eat. E.g. tacos, nachos, tortillas, etc.
Read some stories about Mexico.
Look at some images of Mexico on the internet or some videos of Mexican children’s songs on YouTube.
Talk about where Mexico is and people you know who come from Mexico (Laura Z is one they know from Nursery).
Make an Ojo de Dios at home.
Find your child a Mexican outfit for the barbecue.

What are we doing in Starfish for July?
During July, we will be continuing our focus on colours.
It was initiated by the older ones last month, but now all the children have been enjoying and fascinated by our colour tables and finding other objects of similar colours. We will be continuing this for the month of July, with an emphasis on red, blue, green and yellow. We will also be preparing for our nursery Mexican Beach Party family barbecue and this will involve a lot of arts and crafts with plenty of colour.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:
Continuing colours in our circle times; talking about the colours and finding colours in the room.
Continuing painting with a range of colour combinations with continued opportunities to talk about the colours they are using.
Continued opportunities for building with Mobilo, Links, Duplo, Mega Blocks while talking about and matching up colours.
Talking about the colours of animals and different patches of animals.
A continued focus on colours through everyday conversations with the children.
Having ‘colour’ days. E.g. red day. Where children can wear a certain colour, the water play will be coloured, play dough will be coloured.
Baking with icing of certain colours.

Some ideas to support your children at home:
Continue to support their interest in colours at home.
Go to the library and get out a book on colours
Talk about colours in your everyday conversations.
Watch vehicles go past and talk about the colours of the cars, buses, etc.
Name the colours of your children’s clothes as they get ready.
Do some painting at home and talk about colours.
Take a walk around your garden or go to a park and talk about the colours of the flowers, trees, plants, etc.


What are we doing in Seahorses for July?

All our babies are on proper meals and finger food now and so we are planning on having an additional focus on fruits and vegetables to support their knowledge of fruit and vegetables; what they look like, what they are called and to explore flavours and textures of a range of fruit and veg.

What are we doing at the nursery to support this:
Introducing some new fruit and vegetable toys for play.
Introducing some more books containing fruit and vegetables.
Preparing fruit and some vegetables in front of the babies at tea time so they can see, for example, the apple whole and then prepared for them to eat.
Displaying images of fruits and vegetables around the room.
Lots of repetition of the names of the fruit and veg.
Role play shopping by putting the fruit and veg toys in shopping baskets and wandering round the room.
Combining the food with tea sets to role play cooking.

What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?
Go to the library and get some books out on fruit and vegetable and read them together.
Buy or borrow a set of play fruit and vegetables for them to play with and explore.
When you go shopping, point out and name the fruit and vegetables (babies absorb loads of language, even if they are not talking much yet).
Let them watch while you are preparing fruit and veg and talk about what you are doing, naming the fruit and veg as you go.
Buy some different fruits and vegetables and give them an opportunity to try something new.
Talk to the staff about what their favourite fruit and veg are. They may have strong preferences and it might be helpful to balance out what you give them at home.

Reflection on June

Dolphins

Our holiday discussions in dolphins have been fun. Holidays must be special for our children because many of them have been able to recall holidays they have been on and what they did on them. We read the book Schnitzel Von Krumm~ Forget Me Not many times , which inspired the children to recall holidays and many of them could really relate to the packing of the car and what we take on holiday.

We have also had a travel agents that we set up. The children have looked at and thought about holidays through the brochures and groups of us have had little day dreams and talked about all the places we would love to go and what we would like to do on holiday.

At the start of June, we were feeling like our garden needed something more and so talked to the children about what we would like in the garden. We made a shopping list and now have new chairs and tables to play on, a lovely Elk to hang our bags and hats on, a mirror to make sure the bags look right on our arms, but the best things have been our big gardening week where we planted hanging baskets, window baskets, planted sunflowers and tomatoes and other stuff.

Our strawberries that we planted a while ago have started to ripen one by one and we have had small strawberry morsels to nibble. Sometimes strawberries disappear too and no one seems to know where they have gone, except that there is sometimes a suspicious milling about the plants from the children when some red ones appear.

The absolute loveliest part of the garden, that the children really love is the little quiet corner that the children made with one of the team members. The preschool children drew pictures on an arch that was made and then we painted and varnished it and secured it to the fence and shed. Another teacher made us some lovely cushions and we bought a special mat to sit on. This has been used by all the children and the favourite things to take in are books, bags, play food and tea sets. It is so special to us, that we put it at the top of this blog entry.

Starfish

June was a stunning month and thank goodness, we have plenty of shade in our playground. The highlight for most of the children was the paddling pool. They absolutely loved getting in and splashing about with their friends and it was a wonderful way for the children to cool off and enjoy some big physical play on hot days without getting over hot.

On the creative side, we have been collaging butterflies and we made some gorgeous flower collages too. The team cut out flowers from old wall paper and the children selected them and collaged them onto paper. And we are currently working on a wild animal display and have been sticking and painting elephants, lions, tigers and giraffes.

We have also had a lot of tea times outside recently too. It is always so relaxing eating outside and the great thing is that it doesn’t interrupt our play like going inside does, so after tea we can just get on with what we were doing again.

Looking at and naming colours has been a big focus during June. We have had colour tables out where we have put a variety of the same coloured items on the table from all the different resources in the room and the children have really enjoyed investigating things that they are familiar with but grouped differently. Sometimes they tidy up the table and put away some of the items in the places they are really meant to be!

In Seahorses,

July held a month of fun with babies who know the ropes and assert themselves readily into activities of their choice and are confident to try new things. Our babies are old hats at nursery now and so they have explored with surefootedness (and sure knees).

We have introduced into the space new pictures of animals for the children to look at. They are around the walls and the children have enjoyed wondering at them. We have also extending the exploration into images of sea creatures, including starfish, seahorses (of course) and fish.

The children have also done some art work on shapes that resemble animal outlines. They have been doing simple mark making with crayons and running their fingers though coloured paint- cooling and enjoyable on a hot day

It has been incredibly hot and so we have done a lot of water play, allowing the children to wallow in water indoors and potter with containers and different utensils and cloths to enjoy the different ways to move water around...lots of splashing! They have also loved playing with bubbles as the staff blow them for them and they jig about on their bottoms- too excited to move along to get them. We have smart babies- they know there is always more to come when they have all popped so why chase!

And of course Fathers day could not be forgotten. We painted little book marks for our Dads.

plans

What are we doing in Dolphins for June?
We have explored all sorts of vehicles and gone on to discuss a range of different reasons to use different types of transport, including going on holiday, which many of our children and families have been doing recently. We have looked at postcards sent to us by staff and children and have started to talk about where we are going on holiday and what we do on holiday. We plan to explore this further this month.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this interest will be:
Making post cards and posting them in the nursery post box.
Making some beach pictures using sand.
Reading books about going on holiday.
Setting up a travel agents.
Talking about what types of clothes we need to take for holidays.
Making packing lists for holiday suitcases.
Making tie dyed tops that we can buy on our holiday beach

What you could do to support your children at home:
If you are planning a holiday, talk to your child about it too. Talk about how you are going to get there, why you chose to go there, what will be there, who else will be there, what you will need to pack, if you need passports, tickets, etc.
Read some stories about holidays. At nursery we are going to be reading:
Schnitzel Von- Crumb~ Forget me Not, by Linley Dodd.
If you go on holiday, post us a post card so we can talk about where you have gone.
Collect some travel catalogues and look through the pages and talk about places you would like to visit one day together.
Talk about some of the places you have been on holiday together. Look at some photos of your holidays.
Look at a map of the world and link holiday destinations to the map and where you live. Use the link to talk about why you need to go on a boat, plane, car or train to get there.



What are we doing in Seahorses for June?
The seahorses children are loving learning about animals and listening to the team make animal noises for the different animals, pointing at animals, singing songs with animals like ‘Old MacDonald’, reading books with animals in them, so we plan to keeping this going for June or until the interest moves into another direction.

What are we doing at the nursery to support this:
Provide plenty of books with animals in them.
Name animals and make the noises that go with them.
Old MacDonald had a farm will join the room with a variety of animals.
Make some artwork on the shapes of familiar pets such and dogs and cats.
Provide lots of opportunity with the small world animals.
Put the animals in the sand, water, slime for some extended exploration.

What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?
Go to the library and get some books out on animals, including some with real life pictures.
If you have pets at home, bring photos of them into the nursery so the children can relate to their pet and have a nice sense of home in the nursery.
Sing Old MacDonald had a Farm. While the babies won’t sing along with you, you should get a wriggle and smiles of enjoyment because they love hearing you sing. Some of them may hum or make noises with you.
Make sure you name animals when you see them. Children often pick up dog and cat (or variations of them) when they are learning to talk. Dog spotting on walks is also often a favourite activity for older babies.
Buy or borrow some little small world animals for them to play with and investigate. Play with them; naming, making noises or moving them.
If you work part time and have a child friendly dog, you could bring it into the nursery for the children to look at on one of your days off.


What are we doing in Starfish for June?
During June, we will be having a focus on colours.
Some of our starfish children are starting to name colours. Some of them have an understanding of the differences in colour, the names of colours and can point to colours that are the same. Others are just starting to say the names of some colours and notice that the same item can come in many colours.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:
Introducing colours into our circle times; talking about the colours of lego- red, blue green yellow.
Painting with red, blue, green and yellow with increased opportunities to talk about the colours they are using.
Additional opportunities for building with Mobilo, Links, Duplo, Mega Blocks while talking about and matching up colours.
Talking about the colours of animals and different patches of animals.
An increased focus on colours through everyday conversations with the children.
Having ‘colour’ days. E.g. red day. Where children can wear a certain colour, the water play will be coloured, play dough will be coloured.
Baking with icing of certain colours.

Some ideas to support your children at home:
Go to the library and get out a book on colours
Talk about colours in your everyday conversations.
Watch vehicles go past and talk about the colours of the cars, buses, etc.
Name the colours of your children’s clothes as they get ready.
Do some painting at home and talk about colours.
Take a walk around your garden or go to a park and talk about the colours of the flowers, trees, plants, etc.

Whats been happening in May?

A little bit of everything has been going on over the last month and a bit.

We had Upsy Daisy visit the nursery at the end of April and in May, Tigger came to see us for our Teddy Bears picnic. Our sister nursery at St Mary’s also came and had a teddy bears picnic with us, played on the Bouncy Castle, had their faces painted and shared some time together. It was busy, but very fun.

In Dolphins, the main group focus for the month of May has been vehicles, following on from the previous month looking at the emergency services. The children have really been enjoying playing with all sorts of vehicles as we have moved them round the nursery, putting them in sand, water, the art tables, making vehicles of our own, reading books and looking at pictures of vehicles.

The children have been putting together a variety of boxes and chairs to make buses and trains and to go on imaginary journeys with their friends. They have also painted boxes to decorate the trains.

The older dolphins have had lots of discussions about why we travel on the different sorts of transport we do, shared with each other information about how we personally travel to nursery, how we travel to friends places, grandparents and family who live overseas. We have also played a game listening to noises that the different types of transport make and guessing what they are.

The lovely May weather and odd heat wave has also excited us into talking a lot about beaches, painting summery things, such as flowers and lady birds and a lot of play outside under the gazebos.

Many of us have started going on holidays and so we have enjoyed sharing stories of those and discussing the anticipation of our next holiday, or the types of things we can do if we have a holiday at home.

In the starfish room the children have really enjoyed the different shapes that they have been playing with of transport images, making vehicle collages and naming types of transport and playing with them in the paint, sand, water, etc. Some of the older children have learned the names of different vehicle types too.

Starfish children have also been reading books about transport, singing songs about them and making their own trains out of furniture to go on journeys together. They have also made motorbikes out of egg cartons.

As the sun has been out and we have been enjoying it so much, we have all learned that to play in the sun we need our hats on. The children are very particular about this and if you go outside into their garden without your hat on- expect a child to remind you of your responsibilities!!

Another big feature of our month has been hanging saris on the line and playing under them as they blow in the wind. The children have loved watching the colours of the fabric as they twist and turn and flap. It made the play ground feel really special.

In the Seahorses room we have been talking about animals a lot. Naming and looking at images of animals that we see in our everyday environment- on the street or at home and friends and families places. Lots of pointing at animals in books and pictures, singing about animals- ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’, etc.

We have introduced the animals into the water and sand and we have been playing hiding games where we hide the animals in boxes so the babies can knock them over and find them.

Some of the babies are becoming quite mobile and are enjoying being able to cruise around the room and pull themselves up on the equipment and chasing the beads around the bead frame, the play cooker and furniture.

We have also been experimenting with using the musical instruments to sing with. The team sing songs to the children and the children interject words and hum where they feel enthused and join in with the musical instruments- shaking shakers and ringing bells.

Many of the children are also really enjoying taking themselves into the story corner at present to have some quiet reading time. They often have their favourite books that they go back to time and time again.

May 2010

What are we doing in Dolphins for May?

The interest in emergency services has spread into all sorts of vehicles and talking about what different vehicles are for and why we use them. Planes are a big part of this because we take them for holidays and for many of us, to visit family. Buses lots of the children look at and wish they took them more and boats seem to be a fascination lots of children wich they could go on!

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this will be:
• Discussing the types of transport we use and what we use it for.
• Creating more vehicles and extending on the junk modelling vehicles we have been doing.
• Games involving vehicles- counting them, matching them.
• Learning a new song about a Big Red Bus.
• Visiting the train station and maybe even taking a trip on a train.
• Aeroplane spotting and counting.
• Reading books about vehicles.
• Taking a safe trip near a road to count and classify the vehicles we see.

What you could do to support your children at home:
• Set yourself up a little spot safely by a road and spot the different types of vehicles. Name the colours, type and numbers of them.
• Go for some little trips on buses and the trains. Make it an event like going to Richmond on the train or bus to have a treat in a cafe.
• Find a spot in a park or in your garden if you have one and lie back and count the planes that go overhead. Classify them into big, small, noisy, quiet, up high, down lower.
• Recall and talk about times you have travelled on different vehicles and why you went on them.
• Go to the library and get some books out on vehicles.
• Spend some quality time playing with your toy vehicles at home.

What are we doing in Starfish for May?

Our Starfish children have loved talking about vehicles over the last month and their enthusiasm in them has not slowed, in fact it has grown, so we are continuing to investigate cars, bikes, buses, planes, scooters and trains as well as all the other activities going on.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:
• Focussing on matching noises with the vehicles and naming pictures.
• Making bikes and aeroplanes.
• Reading stories involving vehicles.
• Introducing new books with vehicles in them.
• Talking about bikes or scooters they have at home.
• Using boxes to make trains to play in.
• Lining up the chairs to make bus journeys.
• Taking another picnic to spot some interesting vehicles on the road.

Some ideas to support your children at home:
• Children love ride on toys and if you don’t want to buy one, you could borrow one from friends or the toy library. The advantage also is that it is not yet another big toy to clutter your place- you have to give it back.
• Point out and talk about the vehicles on the way to nursery either from your car or their buggy.
• Take some time out and sit down with a car between you and your child and push it back and forth between you- toddlers can keep this game going for ages.
• Go for a ride on a train or bus.
• If you are in the county side, point out some big vehicles on farms.
• Line up your furniture and go for a train ride with them.
• And don’t forget to keep the wheels on the bus going!
• Share with the starfish a photo of your child on a scooter, bike or vehicle of some sort for us to make a little display of them.

What are we doing in Seahorses for May?

The seahorses are a pretty content little group at the moment and have really started to show a great sense of belonging in their space. They know where thing are, what their place in the room is and which staff they have really taken a shine to. Some of them have started to show an interest in animals, so we are planning on providing lots of opportunity to learn a little more about animals.

What are we doing at the nursery to support this:
• Provide plenty of books with animals in them.
• Name animals and make the noises that go with them.
• Old MacDonald had a farm will join the room with a variety of animals.
• Make some artwork on the shapes of familiar pets such and dogs and cats.
• Provide lots of opportunity with the small world animals.
• Put the animals in the sand, water, slime for some extended exploration.

What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?
• Go to the library and get some books out on animals, including some with real life pictures.
• If you have pets at home, bring photos of them into the nursery so the children can relate to their pet and have a nice sense of home in the nursery.
• Sing Old MacDonald had a Farm. While the babies won’t sing along with you, you should get a wriggle and smiles of enjoyment because they love hearing you sing. Some of them may hum or make noises with you.
• Make sure you name animals when you see them. Children often pick up dog and cat (or variations of them) when they are learning to talk. Dog spotting on walks is also often a favourite activity for older babies.
• Buy or borrow some little small world animals for them to play with and investigate. Play with them; naming, making noises or moving them.
• If you work part time and have a child friendly dog, you could bring it into the nursery for the children to look at on one of your days off.