What are we doing in Sea Turtles in October?

The leaves are falling around us thick and fast and the days are getting dimmer and windier. The children are loving picking up leaves and sticks that have fallen and there is so much beyond our nursery that can be tapped into as well.

 

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

Prime areas:

PSED: Exploring new environments, objects and changes whilst checking in with familiar adults.  PD: Picking up and manipulating objects using fine motor control. C&L: Selecting and collecting objects by name. learning new names.

Specific areas:

M: recognising big and small objects in meaningful contexts. UW: Looking for dropped objects from the environment.  EA&D Exploring and experimenting with a range of media through sensory exploration and using their whole body.

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

·         Tasting seasonal vegetables and fruits . Sarah G will be carrying on with tasting of new fruits from last month and extending it to all of the delicious seasonal vegetables out now.

·         Excursion to collect autumn fall. Laura and Sarah G will be organising excursions to the local park to collect autumn fall and bring it back to create seasonal sensory treasure baskets.

·         Autumn leaf art. Laura  will be  supporting the children in making some art using falling autumn leaves.

·         Sorting and matching autumn leaves. Laura will be setting up some sorting and matching activities with the older children to draw similarities in size and shape of autumn fall.

·         Making a tree out of autumn fall. Latoya will be working with the children collaboratively to create a tree out of bark, leaves, and sticks.

·         Hand printing in autumn colours. Cristina will be making an autumn tree using hands prints of the children for the leaves.

·         Threading and leaf matching. Cristina will be setting up some threading activities for the children to thread trees and leaves and also colour matching using leaves.

·         Conker rolling. Alice will be collecting conkers and making art with the children by dipping the conkers in paint and rolling them around on paper for effect.

Some ideas to support your children at home:

·         Take some time out and go collecting. Collect leaves, conkers, sticks, bark, pinecones, etc to create sensory baskets to explore. Sit down together and look at them, talk about them and play with them.

·         Label what you are exploring and extend and build on language; spikey, smooth, soft, sharp, rough, big, small, flat, long, brown, orange, red, green, leaf, conker, stick, bark, etc.

·         Find a leafy area and run through the leaves, kicking them up, throwing them, scattering them.

·         Cut a pumpkin and explore it together. What do the seeds feel like, where are they, what does the flesh feel like, what colour is it.

·         If you’re a member of Kew, don’t miss out on all the amazing pumpkin installations at the moment.

·         Be careful with babies and toddlers. Acorns and even small conkers are a choke hazard. They are soft and smooth and children love to put them in their mouths. Save these for children over three- there is plenty of time to explore them later.

What are we doing in Dolphins in October?

Well, it is going to be a big month for Dolphins this month.  We’ve got all the environmental changes that the children are getting excited about; bringing in autumn fall, constantly finding more and more leaves in our garden, our sunflowers and summer pots all starting to die. As the month goes on, we will be relocating whilst the nursery takes renovations to the Dolphins’ play spaces. So, we will mostly be looking at Autumn changes with a few changes for ourselves coming too…

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

Prime areas:

PSED: Noticing the change in weather and thinking about how to keep ourselves warm. PD: Taking steps and having a go at putting on jackets, shoes and warmer clothes to go outside. C&L Learning new songs about the season, new words to label what they learn, see and discover.

Specific areas:

L: Referring to books to discuss changes and link ideas with literature. M: Noticing colours, shapes and patterns in the environment. UW: Developing an understanding of change, processes, sequences from start to finish.  EA&D: Using natural materials to create art and using what we have observed to re-enact stories and ideas through dramatic play.

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

·         Leaf collections and prints. Christine H will be collecting leaves with the children and using them to make prints, compare, sort, order and discuss the qualities of them.

·         Natural materials collages with Manjit and Jenny, using acorns, conkers, twigs, leaves, and items brought in from home by the children.

·         Making Wigwams with leaf decorations. Matt will be making wigwams with the children and decorating them with leaves.

·         Harvesting. Shilpi will be bringing in and talking about harvesting and all of the fruits and vegetables that are available at present to eat- and trying them too.

·         Making hedgehogs. Marie-Claire will be talking about hedgehogs in the autumn with the children and making salt dough and pipe cleaner hedgehogs.

·         Autumn tree. Laura Z will be making a giant tree representing autumn using the children’s hand and finger prints, exploring the colours red, brown, orange, and yellow.

·         Talking about the change to our nursery. Su will be talking to the children about the changes to the nursery that will be happening soon. What will be different for us, how we will manage the change and charting the progress as we go.

What you could do to support your children at home:

·         Take some time out and go collecting. Collect leaves, conkers, acorns, sticks, bark, pinecones, etc. Sit down together and look at them, talk about them, compare, sort, order, match and play with them. What can you make with them? Acorn people? Stick men?

·         Remember to use a wide range of challenging language to describe the properties of the pieces and extend their word repertoire; spikey, jagged, rough, pocked, flecked, crisp, silky, brittle, flexible, etc.

·         Cut a pumpkin and explore it together. What do the seeds feel like, where are they, what does the flesh feel like, what colour is it, what does it smell like, what happens to it when you cook it? What are all the things that you could make with it?

·         If you’re a member of Kew, don’t miss out on all the amazing pumpkin installations at the moment.

·         What’s changed in the supermarkets recently? Count how many different types, colours shapes of squash you can find in the supermarket.

What are we doing in Dolphins in September?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What you could do to support your children at home:

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

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

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

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

What are we doing in Sea Turtles in September?

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

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

Prime areas:

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

Specific areas:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some ideas to support your children at home:

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

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

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

Colours and Countries for August!

What are we doing in Sea Turtles in August?

Due to a keen interest of colours shown by both the young babies and the older children in the Sea Turtles we will be exploring colours through a variety of activities throughout August.

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

 

Prime areas:
PSED: Use pointing with eye gaze to make requests and share interests.  PD: Making connections between their movements and the marks they make. C&L Select familiar objects by name and will go and find objects when asked or identify from a group.
Specific areas:
M: Notice simple patterns & Shapes in pictures and activities UW: Explore objects by linking together different approaches: shaking, feeling, tasting, pulling, looking, turning and poking. EA&D Notice and is interested in the effect of making movements which leaves marks.  

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

·         Exploring colour bags. Laura will create some colour bags with a variety of everyday items for the children to explore.

·         Colour Den. Sarah will be making dens with the children using a variety of different coloured materials.

·         Coloured towers. Alice will help the children to use the building bricks to make towers in certain colours and then ask the children to knock the towers down by colour.

·         Colour Collage. Emma will help the children to make colourful collages using different coloured strips of paper.

·         Coloured gloop. Cristina will help the children explore mixing colours through messy play.

·         Printing with colour. Latoya will help the children create colourful pictures by printing with blocks and a variety of colours.

Some ideas to support your children at home:

·         Colour is all around us, draw attention to different coloured objects while out for a walk or on your way to or from nursery (look at the green grass, what colour are the leaves, can you see the blue car).

·         Make your own colour exploring bags, collect different coloured items from around the house for the children to explore and name.

·         Visit the library and look at books about colour

·         Sing songs that involve reciting colours such as I can sing a rainbow & five little crayons

·         Go on a colour hunt, have a colour hunt inside or outside. Help your children to find items that are different colours (Let’s find something blue…. Now can you find me something green…..).

·         Have coloured themed bath nights, add a little bit of food colouring and toys to match the colouring to the water on bath night.

  

What are we doing in Dolphins in August?

The children enjoyed learning about Africa so much that we thought we would broaden the topic and look at other countries particularly those that the children have family from.

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

Prime areas:
PSED: Show interest in others and what they have to say. PD: Move in a variety of ways with pleasure and rhythm to music from around the world. C&L Learning words from another countries through greetings, counting and hearing different languages used in the music.
Specific areas:
L: enjoy rhymes and songs from around the world M: Notice shapes and patterns in flags and other items from different countries. UW: Learn more about the countries their family and friends come from. EA&D: Imitate Movement in response to a variety of music from different countries and cultures.

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

·         Learning new greetings. Jenny will help the children to extend their vocabulary by teaching them how to say hello and good bye in a variety of Languages. 

·         Baking. Manjit will be baking traditional snacks and cakes from different countries and cultures.

·         Where we come from. Marie-Claire with the children will be marking out on a map where they have family from and talking about those countries.

·         Pattern Making. Matt will be looking at patterns, shapes and colours found in flags from around the world and recreating theses with a variety of materials.

·         All about Mexico. Laura Z will be sharing her knowledge and passion for her home country Mexico with the children through songs, dances and stories.

·         Trip to the library. Christine will organise trips to the library to collect books about different countries and cultures to bring back to nursery and share with the other children.

·         Indian dancing. Shilpi will help the children to learn simple dances from India  

What you could do to support your children at home:

 

·        Do you have family who come from a different country? You could share photos, stories or experiences from that country with your children

·        Do some research together, use books, the Internet, documentaries about different countries to talk to your child about the different ways of life, the animals and the food people eat in other countries.

·       Get down and boogie to some music from around the world. We’ll be doing a lot of this at nursery- share some moves together at home too!

·       Sing together. sing songs and rhymes with your child, see if you can find some simple songs in different languages such as Frère Jacques.