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.

plans for April

What are we doing in Dolphins for April?
Lots of requests for the book called Emergency have been given for circle time and increase in the use of the fire and police dress ups with some of the children has also been seen. So we have planned a focus on the emergency services, what they do and what emergency means.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this concept will be:
• Going on an excursion to the library to get some books out on the emergency services.
• Adding into our daily library books on emergency services.
• Having discussions with the children about what emergency means and what to do in an emergency.
• Focussing on Fire Officers, Police Officers and Ambulance Paramedics and what they do.
• Extending the children’s home corner and turning it into a fire engine.
• Make dress ups for the children to reflect their chosen emergency service.
• Playing the emergency services matching game to focus on the uniforms of each service.
• We have requested the Fire Station and Police to come and visit the nursery to talk about what they do, wear, drive and how to keep safe. Hopefully they will visit.

What you could do to support your children at home:
• Talk to your children about the emergency services and what to do in an emergency.
• Teach your child their home address and what to do if they are lost.
• On a day out, notice and draw your child’s attention to Police, Fire and Ambulance Officers and vehicles, talk about what you know about those services and find out what they know too.
• If you are in your car and a siren is behind you, talk to your child about why you needed to pull over.
• Put your chairs together at home and make a fire engine, police car or ambulance and role play going out in them. Make some paper hats to wear if you don’t have the dress ups to get in role.
• Take a trip to the library and look for some books about the emergency services.


What are we doing in Starfish for April?
Our Starfish children really seem to be enjoying playing with the train and small cars at the moment and sometimes spend the whole day going back to them. So, we are planning on really supporting this interest and extending the opportunities throughout the days and curriculum.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:
• Focussing on naming the different types of trains and vehicles.
• Making space rockets, cars and buses with the children.
• Involving vehicles in the art work by including transport shapes, using vehicles to roll paint, etc.
• Including flash cards, books, stories, photos of different types of transport in small groups work and individually.
• Dramatic play- setting up buses, trains etc with the furniture and going for imaginary trips.
• Going for a picnic in the training centre garden and watching the traffic go by- counting, naming colours, types of vehicles, etc.

Some ideas to support your children at home:
• Set yourself up a little spot safely by a road and spot the different types of vehicles. Even count them- they might not understand the counting, but getting used to hearing numbers and the association helps set the scene for understanding.
• Go to the library and collect some books or just read them while you are there about transport and vehicles.
• Don’t forget to sing at home their favourite songs like ‘The Wheels on the Bus’, ‘Down by the Station Early in the Morning’ and any other vehicles songs that you might sing at home or know yourself that you could teach your toddler.
• Maybe it’s a good time to invest in a little train track? Girls and boys both love them.
• If you’re a car bound family, maybe take a little trip on a bus or a train. Or go to the train station to watch the trains go by.

What are we doing in Seahorses for April?
April sees a big focus on building the babies’ confidence to explore. We have a number of new babies who have started with us and as they have become more settled and relaxed, the confidence to move in the space and explore the environment has grown too. The team will be supporting the babies in feeling that they can go to, select and potter through the environment and start to gain a sense of belonging and control over their exploration and chosen activities.

What we are doing at the nursery to support this:
• Giving the babies an opportunity to explore a wide range of activities that are both available as part of the continuous curriculum and those that are put out as specific enhanced curriculum.
• Focussing on what activities are interesting certain children and learning more about their personalities and what they tend to gravitate to at nursery, then supporting the interest further by making their favoured toys easy to find and accessible to them.
• Introducing new children to messy play activities: water, corn four and water mix, paint, etc.
• Giving them lots of support in going outside and talking them through getting dressed for the outdoors and referring to the clothes they put on on the clothing display.
• Drawing their attention to the environment and allowing them to become familiar with it- the flowers, trees, toys, people.

What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?
• Make some links between the activities we do at nursery and recreate some of them at home. Water play out of a low edged basin on the kitchen floor with some bubbles and food colouring is a fun and inexpensive activity to do with them.
• Collect, clean and make safe some of your recycling and before it goes out, let them have a rustle through it- children love playing with it and you can feel virtuous by reusing before recycling.
• In the seahorses we have wooden, tin, plastic, fabric, etc, treasure baskets for the children to explore. They are made of a range of items found in homes, so for ideas ask the team to give you a look through and set up your own treasure baskets at home with similar items.

reflection on March

Dolphins
The children spent a lot of time in March garden planning. Children contributed to some drawn plans about how they wanted the Dolphins’ garden area to be and the types of things that they wanted in the garden.

To get going, we have started out propagating little seedlings with the preschool group. We are now gathering resources, wood, etc. so we can make planter boxes for the outdoor area to transfer the plants into. After the Easter holidays, when all the children and regular teachers are back, we will be re-bedding the window boxes and hanging baskets, planter boxes and planting our gardens.

Beyond green plants was also a very green St Patrick’s day that was celebrated with children dressed in green, painting in green, playing in green water and even making green cupcakes.

March was also largely dominated by Easter. We made collage Easter Eggs, sang Easter songs, made Hot Crossed buns, Easter nests and Easter cards.

Starfish
Starfish had a very multicultural month, starting off with St Patrick’s Day by dressing in green, painting clover, clover collages and making salt dough shamrocks. For Iranian New Year, the Starfish made goldfish out of sand and gold paint and for Hungarian ‘Name Day’ the Starfish children celebrated all the children and staff names. For Mother’s Day, we made fridge magnets and artwork for our children to take home for their mothers.

Loads of time was spent outside in March, until the rain came down in the last week. So we had lots of opportunities to bring the indoors out, by setting up our art activities outside and cosy reading corners. But also lots of great opportunity to really practice our gross motor skills, stretch our legs and practice climbing and manoeuvring our way round obstacle courses.

We went on a walk to the local library this month too which was great fun. The children enjoyed rummaging through the library book s and borrowing some books to read at the nursery.

Seahorses
March was a very busy month for Seahorses with an increase in children settling. It was all hands on deck for getting to know new children and supporting the children in getting used to the room and the toys and different faces.

The older babies have spent a lot of time doing art work as they have become familiar with the feel and process of playing with wet, coloured and messy substances. Knowing the staff well also helps them to trust and feel good about taking risks and trying something new.

Our new babies have enjoyed playing with the different treasure baskets and exploring through them. The wooden treasure, metal treasure and plastic treasure have been well explored as have the small people and musical instruments.

The team have been doing lots of singing with the children and the children listening without contributing their voices just yet.....but it won’t take them long!

Easter Bonnet Parade
All of the groups joined in the Easter Bonnet Parade the Monday before Easter. It was very unfortunate that the rain poured down on the day meaning that we had to bring the parade into the Dolphins indoors, but none the less children enjoyed parading their hats for each other and some of the parents.

Room planning for March

What are we doing in Starfish for March?
Starfish see many new friends who have moved in from the Seahorses this month. While all the faces are familiar and the staff are well known by the children already, there are changes to routine and an increasing move towards building children’s self confidence, self esteem, positive behaviour, self control and self care. We will be supporting children in learning about the new expectations in a new environment and gently guiding them to taking responsibility for their own actions.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will involve:
• Supporting children to learn the routine which is a little bit more structured than in babies.
• Supporting children in washing their hands before eating, sitting at the table with their peers to eating, helping to put out cups, helping to collect water, laundry, etc from the Dolphins end of the nursery.
• Spending special time with individual children to help support the building of healthy relationships with those who care for them.
• Circle times including lots of action songs and games to focus on name recognition, acknowledging and welcoming each other.
• Turn taking activities to further support getting along and respecting one another, e.g. turn taking with throwing games, waiting for the slide, etc.
• Focussing on ‘tidy up time’ and encouraging children to put toys back in the right places and tidying up as they go.

Some ideas to support your children at home:
• To support the move to the new room, remember to talk a lot about nursery at home. Use staff names regularly and children’s names as well, especially those you know they play with or talk about.
• Encouraging toddlers to wipe their own faces and hands- they can start the process while you polish it!
• Take them to the park and talk about waiting for their turn to use the swings. Watch and talk about others waiting and taking their turn.
• Have a ‘tidy up time’ at home and encourage the practice of not moving on to the next game, routine, etc until they have tidied up after themselves.
• Have specific places for things to go so that your child knows what is expected of them in tidying up.
• Play games involving turns. Even rolling a ball between you and them involves ‘your turn’ and ‘my turn.’
• Allow your child to have a go at getting their jacket, shoes and clothes on. Again, you can finish or support their efforts. It might take a bit longer, but it is worth it to give them the opportunity to start to learn to look after themselves and feel good about their own contribution to their own well being.

What are we doing in Seahorses for March?
There are some changes coming in with our oldest Seahorses children moving on to the Starfish room and a lovely new group of new babies joining us. We will be focussing on settling new babies and welcoming them into our home.

What are we doing at the nursery to support this:
• Making a display of children’s pets so that they can feel that important and familiar parts of their home can give them comfort at the nursery as well.
• Asking parents to bring in pictures of the babies families so that they can see them during the nursery day.
• Lots of use of names so that the babies can become familiar with who is in the room with them and start to become aware of their peers.
• Introducing children to explore sensory activities like feeling paint, corn flour and water, water play, etc that they may not have had a lot of experience of at home, but that is and will become very important parts of their nursery experience.
• Introducing the new babies to a range of other activities to encourage the impulse to explore.

What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?
• Use the names of the staff and the other children in the group when you are at home to keep the links between nursery and home active.
• Sing songs with your baby and use the names of people s/he is familiar with at nursery.
• Talk a lot about nursery while you are at home in a positive and relaxed tone to demonstrate that it is a special place in their lives and that you acknowledge what is important to them beyond your home and family.
• You could even try to extend some of the activities we do at nursery into your home if you are game enough. Finger painting (with non-toxic paint of course), corn flour and water are great at home too. Just as a team member for a recipe if you are keen to create a bit of mess and explore.

What are we doing in Dolphins for March?
After some cold but lovely sunny weather, the children are loving being outside and have noticed the daffodils coming out. So, we are planning on welcoming spring with developing the outdoor area and encouraging the children who use the area to largely contribute to this process. We will also be celebrating Mothers Day and Easter.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support this concept will be:
• Setting up a cosy reading corner in the garden to allow children to have chill out time in the garden with some books or space for a relaxing chat with their friends.
• Making a growing and gardening area to plant, nurture and grow our own plants to enjoy and eat!
• Reintroduction of water play and messy play outside on warmer days.
• Discussions about the start of spring and what other things it brings, like Easter and Mothers day.
• Making Easter, Mothers day and spring arts and crafts.
• Observations and discussions on the changes in the environment during the start of spring.
• Making hot crossed buns and talking about Easter and what it means.

What you could do to support your children at home:
• Take them on a walk through a park, the common, Kew gardens, etc and look at and talk about all the changes taking place. What can you see now that you didn’t see in the heart of winter?
• Get some books out on spring and talk about what it looks like in other parts of the world.
• Do some spring arts and crafts at home.
• Set up a place for them to garden at home if you can. Plant some plants. If it is not possible at your home, go to a garden centre with them and buy a watering can. Find a place where you can fill it with water and go watering with them.
• The Easter bonnet parade is coming up on the 19th March. Make an Easter bonnet with them and remember the best bonnets are the ones where they are the designer and you are the support team!
• Make hot crossed buns with your child or even their own Easter eggs.
• Paint Easter eggs and/ or make your own Easter decorations.

February reflection

February was a very busy month. Aren't they all? But busier than our nursery has seen for some time with all rooms completely full and even our quiet little Fridays have become a humming day of lots of children and activities- it is really fun.

The closure of our East Sheen nursery saw many new children join us in the Dolphins group particularly, and at the end of a month of settling in for new children and the establish children getting used to new faces, it is really easy to say that the nursery is busy, has loads of activities going on, lots of children but is settled and a really special place to be.

Seahorses, our youngest group has had a lot of emerging talking going on from the babies. 'Hello!' and 'Hiya' are words that can be heard flying round the room regularly and loads of humming along to songs being sung and humming along to the tune they've remembered while they are playing. Favourites are The 'Hello Song', 'Row- Row- Row Your Boat' and ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’.

A bit of feet painting has been going on too. All the babies loved having their feet painted and stamping the prints on paper, but not all of them enjoyed having their feet wiped clean!


Pancake day was loved, who doesn't love a pancake? Hearts were painted for Valentine’s Day and yellow paintings were made to represent spring and encourage a bit of sun, light and spring spirits into the world around us.

Physical achievements have been enjoyed by families, the team and the children themselves as children who couldn't do so before, have learned to pull themselves up to standing, sit up, taking baby steps and a few of the clever babies have started to feed themselves as well.

With more children able to pull themselves up and stand, more activities have been put on the tables to encourage exploring upright. Many of those Seahorses are about to move through to the Starfish room and are getting ready by spending time in the starfish group to build confidence and feel happy in their future room. We wish them farewell, even though we'll still see them...just in the next room.

The starfish room has seen a rustle of paper, a splashing of paint and burst of colour over February.

Chinese New Year was a very big part of the month and all the children worked together to contribute to the making of a great big lion for the Chinese Year of the Lion. They also decorated tiger masks and participated in tiger activities including random roaring round the room! A lot of talk about orange, black and yellow also took place, helping the children to start to think about differentiating things through colour.

Red was also a big part of Chinese New Year too and the red splashed through into Valentine’s day as well; making cards, red painting and collaging in red too

Starfish also made a black and white display from children’s art contributions and talked about dark, night, cows and sheep too. We also did some Old MacDonald pictures while singing ‘Old MacDonald had a Farm’. Singing while creating is perfect fun.

The warmer weather is slow to welcome us, but there has been some nice sunny days and we have been getting back into the routine of lots of outings into the garden every day. We have even had afternoon tea outside in the garden on a picnic blanket which was great fun and a sign that the winter is (hopefully) behind us.

In Dolphins, Chinese New Year was also explored and the children had a lot of fun talking about it and what it means. One of our teachers is from Vietnam where Chinese New Year is also celebrated so she helped us learn more about it and also gave us some great experiences to enjoy. We all ate noodles with chopsticks. Some of the children were really very clever and were able to eat their noodles all by themselves using chopsticks and no, they do not eat with them at home! We also all made little red envelopes for good luck and inside them was a little chocolate. Children who didn’t want to decorate a red envelope were not forgotten, the children who enjoyed making them made extra to give to their friends who didn’t make them.

Pancake Day was also celebrated and some of the children made their own pancakes and also extras so that everyone could have some. Pancake day fell on one of the days that the children make their own tea so was perfect timing to allow the children to cater pancakes for the whole group.

All of dolphins have had some time making and contributing to collages and creations to do with space. The interest started from the preschool group and spread across the wider group as these things do. Children made rockets and a moon, talked about space, read about space and with the help of Jenny made a space rocket too. The preschool group have been going on moon walks as well (Walking like the they are on the moon) which is pretty fun and funny.

February

What are we doing in Seahorses this month?
For February, as well as supporting the children’s individual goals and interests, we will we be having a big focus on talking and learning the words for requests and items. We have many babblers and some of them are really making a big effort at saying some words so there will be a lot of group emphasis on talking and communicating needs as we prepare them for more independence in the next age group.

What are we doing at the nursery to support this:
Lots of using books to point at objects, animals and people and naming them.
Encouraging children’s use of words to request more or enough, hello and good bye, etc.
Naming equipment that is being used and ensuring the children know the names of what they are playing with even if they are not able to attempt to say the names.
Using basic Makaton sign language to help children request more, say yes, no, enough, etc. (Makaton is used a lot in the toddler room to express needs and support communication where vocabulary develops slower than understanding).
Focusing on using words clearly to explain what the children are doing, where they are going, who their friends are, etc.
Give loads of praise when we hear words being used to encourage the good feeling that success brings.

What could you do to support the children and reinforce what they have experienced at the nursery?
Use the appropriate words for actions and items as you are playing, getting ready, out and about. Even, really focussing on naming what they are eating so they learn the names of foods and can later related them to preferences.
Keep the words you use for things consistent within your house. i.e. all family members need to call a sofa a sofa, rather than sometimes a couch, sometimes a sofa or sometimes a settee, to avoid confusion.
Remember that everything you say is being stored in their minds even if it is not being used. Understanding words comes well before using words.
Give loads of praise when you hear words being used to encourage the good feeling that success brings.

What are we doing in Starfish this month?
During February, in addition to our individual plans for children, we will be focussing on Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day and Pancake Day. We will also be doing a lot of physical activities inside to burn our energy and increase our confidence in our bodies.

Some of the activities we will be doing this month will be:
Making cards for family members for Valentine’s Day and talking about the people in our lives who are special to us.
Using lots of red to represent love and good luck in Chinese New year.
Making spring rolls to try some food from another culture.
Making pancakes and eating them for Pancake Day.
Lots of sticking and contributing to a Tiger for Chinese New Year.
Making tiger masks.
Using lots of indoor climbing equipment and encouraging confidence and movement, even of the day they don’t get outside.

What you could do to support your children at home:

Go out for dinner as a family to a Chinese restaurant and give them some new things to try. They will probably surprise you on what they will eat.
Take them to China Town in London to see the festivities and decorations.
Take them to an indoor soft play place like ‘Cafe Au Play’ to let them run, climb, jump for a quality amount of time to burn off some winter stored energy.
Make some pancakes with them at home and eat them. Let them contribute by sprinkling on sugar or pouring on some syrup.

What are we doing in Dolphins this month?
February will see a number of focuses going on in the nursery in addition to the individual focuses. We have an interest that has emerged with some of the children on space and rockets and will be extending this by providing a number of supporting activities.
Other events that will influence our activities this month will be activities around Chinese New Year and Shrove Tuesday (pancake day).

Some of the activities we will be doing this month to support these interests and festivals will be:
Making pancakes with the children and eating them!
Talking about what pancake day is all about.
Making Li-xi (red envelopes for good luck) for Chinese New Year.
Making other decorations for Chinese New Year.
Eating noodles with chopsticks.
Reading books and having discussions about Chinese New Year; what it means and what happens.
Making rockets and other features of space.
Going on moon walks- pretending we are in outer space.
Reading books about space and stories that involve space concepts.

What you could do to support your children at home:
Make pancakes with them if it is not a nursery day.
Talk with them about why we have Pancake Day.
Take your child to China Town in London or the Chinese New Year parade if you are able.
Take your child to a Chinese restaurant and give them something new to eat and a new experience to try.
Share some fortune cookies with them.
Make some red envelopes at home, pop some chocolate in them and give them to families members for good luck.
While it is still dark early, take your child out at night and look at the stars and the moon and talk about how they are far away.
Go to the library and get some books out about space and maybe make some rocket cubby house at home.

January at Working Mums

Our unexpected start to a new year!

Wow, January was a really unexpected month. Not the month itself, but the events. We ended December with plans of building wood planter boxes with the children to put soil and bulbs in, planting bulbs in our hanging baskets and window boxes in determination to welcome spring with bursts of colour and a softer border for our for the outdoor areas. We still have these plans, but January threw us some curve balls delaying things.

For starters there was the snow and frozen ground, so we couldn't plant a thing in the soil and convincing the children that going outside for extended periods to build planter boxes was anything but possible. Even our hardy soldiers who are committed to their outdoor area smiled at us on some days like we were having a laugh by suggesting it was a good idea to go outside and play. So, we scrapped that idea and focused on enjoying and appreciating the snow while it lasted.

The only really cold days that successfully had children wanting to go outside were the snowy ones. We had some fantastic moments with the children throwing snow, making snow castles with sand buckets, dying the snow with food colouring and making snow mounds and shapes.

We thought the snow would lead off into discussions and special interests of snow sports as interests tend to get triggered by these things, but the children never really got into that either. As the snow melted away, the children returned their interest to the indoors and the different activities that we have added into the curriculum there. I guess the inside warmth is welcoming.

January also saw the very unexpected and sad closure of our nursery in East Sheen. This brought even more challenges to us as we had a sharp increase in numbers in the nursery and some new staff join us too. This focused the team intensely on settling in new children and team members and for the children, meant getting to know new faces and showing our new friends new ropes, such as where to clean their plates after dinner and how to stack them, where to help themselves to a drink of water, how to ask to go outside in winter, etc.

Dolphins

The dolphins group have been very busy in the arts and crafts department. This is always a strong area in the nursery and January saw lots of sticking and creating. The children had the opportunity to look at some pictures of mosaics and then create some of their own. Originally, the mosaics were just made as a mosaic making exercise, but then we started to see little mosaics creeping into some of the other art work children were doing and some lovely creative blends of craft started to take place as you can see in the photo of one of the nursery displays here.

We also did a lot of baking as usual for our Tuesday and Friday afternoon teas and making play dough, mixing paints, listening to and participating in our new stories from our story sacks, that include books and props so the children can all have a turn at taking part in the story.

Starfish

Starfish continued the planting idea with the children and since they couldn't get started on the bulbs, they started planting some cress in little egg and biscuit containers. They also made some clay pots to put their plants in, but sadly not all plans work out and they weren't ideal for planting so they became candle light holders instead!

Starfish have been doing a lot of toddler energy burning inside since the weather has not been as enticing outside, so the team brought in a lot of soft climbing equipment to allow the children to burn off some of their boundless energy. This is always really enjoyed and very much needed in the winter months.

Baking recently has included making; scones and jam, pizza, cherry shortbread, banana muffins, tomato and parmesan twists, spicy bread, potato wedges and beans and jam tarts. Most of the children offer to take part and enjoy making it. All of the children enjoy eating it.

Seahorses

The seahorses have had a few new children join them in January and so the focus has really been on settling them in through providing lots of interesting activities for them to explore and for the team to see what sparks their interest and continue to have available for them.

Favourite activities for the new children and established children have been playing with the bangles we have in all shapes and sizes to go over a wooden post. The babies love the bangles and the staff love having a play with them too!

Wooden treasure basket, which is a huge basket full of all sorts of familiar wooden items has also been well used this month by the babies gathering favourite items or searching through for something that grabs their attention.

Even though the weather has been tough, babies have still had some good times in the garden climbing on the slides and see-saw and playing with the balls, especially. The latter part of the month since the new matting has gone down, has made an even better environment to play in. It is not quite finished, but already it has made a big difference in appearance and providing a smooth surface for the children to play on.