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.

Plans for May to June

What are we doing in Dolphins May to June?

From May to June we will be focussing on living things.

 

The children are really interested in living things and this has carried on from our interest in animals and growing, introduction of the caterpillars and the guinea pigs and the development of our garden bed.

 

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

KUW-Show curiosity and interest in the features of objects and living things. PSED- Show care and concern for others, for living things and the environment. PSRN- Show an interest in shape and space by playing with shapes or making. CLL Build up vocabulary that reflects the breadth of their experiences. PD Engage in activities requiring hand–eye coordination. Use one-handed tools and equipment. CD Use language and other forms of communication to share the things they create, or to indicate personal satisfaction or frustration.

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

 

·      Christine H will be looking at growing things for eating with the children. She will be bringing in some interesting fruits for the children to explore the properties of, talk about how they are grown and where and taste them. She will also be growing cress with the children to make sandwiches out of.

 

·      Laura J, with the children will continue to track the development of the caterpillars as they make their way from their cocoons to life as a butterfly. She will also be making some butterfly prints with the children

 

·      Cristina will be helping the children to make some books where they are able to sequence lifecycles of frogs, butterflies, hens and people.

·      Laura Z will be researching Guinea Pigs with the children and putting together a large scale book to use in the book corner with images of Guinea pigs and interesting facts about them.

·      Jenny will be continuing the development of the gardening patch with the children from the flower bed to a vegetable garden- planting and growing vegetables that we can eat.

·      Laura W will be organising an excursion for some of the children to an allotment to look at growing plants for food and raising chickens. She will also be setting up a lot of messy play to explore and role play gardening and the sensory experience of gardening.

·      Rachel will be preparing a range of images of gardening to laminate and decorate the outdoor area with and also use as discussion cards with children to support language

 What you could do to support your children at home:

·      Set up a little gardening patch at home. Even if it is just on pots, the pride children get from growing is huge and it really supports the concept of caring for living things.

 

·      Take your child to a garden centre. Look at all the plants and talk about what they are, what they need to help them grow. Look at the seeds, seedling, full trees and talk about the differences.

 

What are we doing in Sea Turtles May to June?

Spring time is carrying on, partly because April to May has been so rainy, much of our plans slowed down and were replaced with puddle play, but also because the children just love exploring spring, colours, flowers, animals, insects and fruit and so we’d like to spend some time exploring these in more depth.

 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:

·      Manjit will be setting up some flowers in bloom collages for the children using tissue, straw and paint. Also some sand collages using coloured sand, glue and tissue.

·      Ella will be setting up some stamping activities using fruit and vegetables to look at the shapes they make.

·      Chloe will be talking about fruits and vegetables in circle times using flash cards and different fruits and vegetables. She will also be setting up some collages using seeds and pips.

·      Sarah G will be setting up some garden play for the children to role play gardening using soil, flowers, seeds, trowels and watering cans. She will also be providing opportunities for children to look at the shapes, colours and smells of a variety of unusual  and usual fruit and then try them.

·      Sara will be using magazine cut outs of a range of fruit and vegetables for the children to look at and talk about and then collage for display.

·      Rachel E will be helping the children to plant bean sprouts and tracking their growth through photographs.

·      Sarah Louise will be focussing on using Handa’s Surprise with the children to talk about fruits, colours and animals.

Some ideas to support your children at home:

• Buy some unusual fruits like lychees, dragon fruit, passion fruit, guava, figs and have a session trying them with your child.

• With colours remember to name the colours of things you are talking about or playing with. E.g. red rose, black cat, green apple. It helps them to start to connect the joining of words together and understand the concepts of colours and differentiation

 

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.

What are we doing in Dolphins this month?

From April to May we will be focussing on gardening and growing with a little bit of care for the environment splashed in too.

It is spring and so once the daffodils retreat we will be jumping into the spring gardening. The children have absolutely loved monitoring the growth of the daffodils they planted as bulbs in winter and were really excited by the proud daffodils once they bloomed. They also have loved preparing our proposed flower bed and are ready and excited to get gardening!

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

KUW-Care for the environment, observing environmental change, learning that they can be responsible to making change. PSED- Feeling good about and responsible for living things . PSRN- Watching growth, increases in size, counting, sorting, classifying. CLL learning new names for plants and processes. Being able to articulate processes. PD Gross motor skills in lifting, moving and seedlings. CD Designing the garden layout.

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

·         Jenny will be working with the children in designing the new flower garden and planting.

·         Cristina will be growing hyacinths with the children and other sprouts to look at plants and roots growing.

·         Laura W will be cultivating seedlings for sunflowers with the children.

·         Rachel will be doing some collages with the children using images of flower petals.

·         Christine H will be dissecting flowers with the children and talking about all of the different parts of flowers.

·         Laura Z will be showing the children how to make butterfly prints.

·         Laura J will be setting up the butterfly tent and supporting the growth and development of the  butterflies with the children.

What you could do to support your children at home:

·         If you are a gardener and have seedlings that you have too many of, send them in with your child to add to our garden.

·         Take your child for a spring walk. A great place to visit is the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park as it is full of flowers and spring action on the pond.

·         Observe and talk about all of the changes on the trees and in gardens.

·         For the older Dolphins, see if you can get them to remember what happened last spring and if the can predict what will happen next.

What are we doing in Sea Turtles April to May?

With so much pointing at leaves growing, flowers opening and picking up all the bud shells from the ground, we have been inspired to explore Spring. So this month, we will be exploring colours through spring blooming. Also new life through gardening and looking at baby animals.

 The activities this month will be based around the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) areas of learning:
KUW- Observing and understanding the changes in the environment.  PSED- having care for living things; gentle touching and watching. PSRN- Thinking about size and shape, big and small. Increases in size. CLL Leaning new language to accompany discoveries PD Fine motor skills for planting, Gross motor skills in lifting and preparing. CD- expressing themselves through arts and crafts, singing and dramatic play.

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

       ·      Ella will be helping the children to grow cress heads.

·      Sarah Louise will be helping the children to make and grow cress heads by sprouting cress through panty hose heads.

·      Ella will be taking a small group of children to the library to take out some books on colour, spring and baby animals.

·      Manjit will helping the children to make some snails through craft.

·      Sara will be growing some bean sprouts with the children.

·      Sara will be working with the children to make a rainbow display of colours.

·      The children will be making some cupcakes with different coloured icing with the children.

·      The children will be making some flower collages with magazine cuts outs.

·      Sarah Louise will be setting up a natural materials sensory basket for the children to explore spring.

·      Chloe will be helping the children to make some crafts representing squirrels and birds.

Some ideas to support your children at home:

·         Take your child for a spring walk. A great place to visit is the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park as it is full of flowers and spring action on the pond.

·         Petting zoos are wonderful at this time of year too as they have loads of baby animals.

·         If you have a local pond with baby birds, visit them regularly and comment on them growing.

·         Name the colours in what you see. ‘What a lovely yellow daffodil.

Fun times in March

March had amazing weather wise and so pretty much throughout the nursery a messy play festival took place as hands were once again prepared to explore cold materials and spend long periods wallowing in puddles of slime, clay, water, Gelli and paint without getting cold. Spring always brings about happy feelings in children and adults and coupling that to relaxing with silky sensory experiences is nothing short of relaxing and beautiful and a great way to start the bright middle of the year.

The Sea Turtles started the year interested in dens and this is an interest that is certainly continuing. One of the particularly fun dens was the little den around the sand pit that we made. They loved this and it made the sandpit an exciting new space for children to stay in for a long time digging, making moulds, driving vehicles through as well.

We have also been hanging and draping all sorts of fabrics, table cloths and saris from fences and gazebos to create little intimate spaces to play in. They make the children feel differently about areas and equipment they are familiar with and give them little places to play with their friends with a feeling of privacy, yet being still with the group.

Musical instruments and playing music with pots, pans, blocks has been explored well this month too in Sea Turtles. The children have been banging out supporting beats to tunes and just enjoying the loud sounds and noises they can make by themselves, with a friend and together in a group. They have also been enjoying playing the instruments along to nursery rhymes and songs being performed on the ipad.

The sensory area has been filled with new cushions and fabrics, furs, lights and so on. All of the children love the space and what was originally set up as a baby safe zone, has the babies fleeing from it and wanting to watch the big children in the active room and the big children retreating to it when they need a little time out. It is not quite what we planned for, but it is working beautifully and creating balance across the rooms as the children choose their zone according to their mood.

With the better weather, we have been able to set up a lot of lovely activities in the outdoors that we have been enjoying indoors throughout winter. Just being in a different space has encouraged the children to join in and want to spend longer working at the activities. So, we have been bringing outside all of the activities for some new life and variety, including the indoor climbing equipment. It is amazing how just a different set up can inspire new ways of exploring what they have mastered in another context.

And then there has been the focus on emotions. Big emphasis on being kind and caring, happy and sad, excited and angry has been carried out through creative and circle time activities especially. Watching the children look at images of sad faces and then pulling sad faces, then laughing has been very funny for of us- children and adults. It has been really sweet watching their understanding of face parts and putting them on paper to make faces. Some of our biggest toddlers have even been able to say ‘happy face’ or ‘sad face’ with their collages and then pull the face to show us.

The Dolphins carried on their focus on animals with the big finale being an excursion with a few children to the local pet shop to buy some Guinea Pigs. Once they were back at the nursery with all the kit the children prepared the Guinea Pigs new home, offered names for them and enjoyed the novelty of their new friends.

We’ve had them for a couple of weeks now and although we have had some moments where we have feared for the little pigs hearts to hold out, the children have increasingly cared for them, held them gently and are really starting show a sense of care and appreciation that they are like giants to the guinea pigs and so need to be quiet and careful around them. They enjoyed the naming ceremony as we put all their contributions into a hat and drew names for them. Originally Kip and Butterfly, but we had to rename them to Kip and Silky as the Sea Turtles refused to accept that one was called Butterfly when it quite obviously was not one!

The older children in Dolphins have really started to enjoy group games of Tag, Hide and Seek, What’s the Time Mr Wolf and Crocodile. They are increasingly understanding the objectives of the games, strategies for winning and noting patterns in other children’s actions and then being able to predict their actions and decide what they will do. They have such fun working it all out and it is so fun watching them.

Animal art has been expressed through collaging with animals prints, making animal masks and animal book marks. The Animal Boogie has been boogied along to as well. We have always had the book, but now have the interactive version on the ipad that the children love to sing-a-long and dance to.

Pre-schoolers chose their favourite animals that they wanted to research and worked on making little information books about them. They also did a lot of information gathering and research on the ipads about the differences between pets and wild animals and the different foods they eat and homes they live in.

Our daffodils seemed like they were the last in London to bloom and the children daily looked in our planters and commented on all the locations that they were blooming in their gardens, the parks and along the streets. When they finally did bloom, the children were so excited and pleased that they showed every adult and child who walked through the door that they were there. 

With the daffodils sprouting, the flowers growing on the fence, the buds falling into our playground (and annoying us!), it is the annual Dolphins excitement about change. It is wonderful when they start bringing in stories about ducking and goslings, talking about the flowers in their gardens and noticing all the changes in their environment. With the Dolphins children, the sense of wonder is also in seeing them remember events associated with the nicer weather from last year and being able to remember planting  the bulbs months earlier and knowing which ones they planted and tracking the changes. 

We had a little further development of the flower garden in the car park this month. The Sea Turtles came to help too by scooping up the dirt and taking it out of the bed. The ground is full of dead soil, rocks and old chunks of concrete so we have had little teams of children scooping it up so we can replace it with something a flower might grow in!