community

Oak Valley welcomes October!

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October is best known for Halloween festivities, but it’s also a month of national and global celebrations.

Offering a helping hand!

At the start of October we received lots of  food donations for our Harvest Festival. The Pre-School children packed and delivered the food to the local church, New Hope Community Church. While there, the children talked about the importance of helping the local community, and ate some yummy toast!

Big or Small, we love them All

To celebrate World Animal Day on the 4th October, the children went on a bear hunt, explored different animals in the tuff tray and made symmetrical butterflies. They also had a visit from Leanimals, where they got to meet guinea pigs, a mouse and many more. The children loved learning about what the animals like to eat and where they live.

 

Out of this world

For National World Space Week, Toddlers have been enjoying the book Aliens Love Underpants. They have been talking about space and what they might find, along with making their very own aliens. The children used playdough with pipe cleaners and googly eyes or paint.

 

World Mental Health Day

To Celebrate World Mental Health Day, Pre-School have been  reading The Colour Monster Book, which helped them talk about their emotions and feelings. The children talked about what made them happy and sad, and also used the loose parts to make different emotions faces.

 

Trick or Treat!

No tricks only treats this Halloween! The children at Oak Valley have celebrated Halloween; Toddlers went to the supermarket and selected their own pumpkins to carve. Babies have loved singing ‘Incey Wincey Spider’ and using Makaton, they also explored the spider sensory tray. Pre-School and Rising 3’s made potions, carved pumpkins and wore fancy dress.

 

Autumn Fun

The most memorable days end with dirty clothes! Pre-School have loved making the most of the Autumn weather. They got messy with the clay making lots of creepy crawlies. They also put on their raincoats and wellies, and jumped in the puddles, making memories with their friends.

 

 

 

July at Oak Valley

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What an amazing month we have had! July saw us reach the hottest temperatures on record, but we embraced the heat & managed to keep cool by taking part in lots of water play; we even brought our swimming costumes to splash around in the paddling pool!

We loved welcoming visitors back into the nursery & started this off with Sarah & Albert the hearing dog! The children asked lots of questions & enjoyed finding out how Albert & his friends help the community 😊 Thank you so much for coming in to talk to us!

This month saw an amazing series of treats & events to celebrate the 5yr anniversary of our Company. The staff celebrated with Golden Envelope bonuses, raffles & dress down days as well as finishing the week with a party! Thank you to The Sitwell Arms for hosting us, Tasha’s Little Bakery for the wonderful cakes, Elegance Castle Hire Bouncy Castle for the fab disco dome, Cream Castles – Bouncy Castle Hire for the garden games, Laura’s Little Crafts for the personalised champagne flutes, B360Hire for the photo booth & last, but by no means least, Moonlight Entertainments disco & karaoke for the grand selection of tunes that kept us singing & dancing all night! Thank you to our lovely families for their kind & complimentary words also.

We also said goodbye to our Pre-School children this month as they head off to big school! But not before giving them a big send off. We started by holding ‘Oakfest’ our annual school leavers festival. The children played games such as Hook a Duck & Tin Can Alley. We had facepaints, glitter tattoos & a picnic lunch, followed by a visit from the ice-cream van!

It was lovely to invite parents & carers back into nursery as the children then had their graduation ceremony. This was followed by a leavers workshop to make keepsakes of their time at Oak Valley.

A big thank you to Saul Isaac photography who came in to nursery to do a professional photoshoot of the children graduating to capture the special moments for the children & parents.

We will miss you all as you all go off to school, but we know you will all be amazing on your next adventure!

April at Highgate

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During the month of April Highgate has been blessed with a multitude of visitors! We started with Donald and his community engagement ambulance. He talked to the toddlers and Pre-School children about his role and what it entails. They learnt about what an ambulance is for, what it does and how it helps people. The children got to actually sit inside the ambulance and even try out the siren! Possibly their favourite part of the visit was the opportunity to try on the uniform that Donald brought. We ended the session by colouring in some pictures that he’d also supplied.

Zoolab came to bring their exotic wildlife for the children to see. The children were able to handle creatures such as a snake, a giant snail, rats, mice and even a gecko. The Zoolab representative explained to the children where the animals come from, where they live and what they eat. We found the session really encouraged the children to ‘have a go’, even when they weren’t very keen at the beginning!

Last but not least we had our monthly enrichment of ‘Mini Movez’. One of the lovely ladies came to Highgate to lead a fun and expressive session themed around what the children were learning. The sessions are always lively and energetic and the Toddler and Pre-School groups take full advantage of this opportunity for active learning which really gets their hearts pumping!

Aside from visitors, there’s been plenty more exciting things happening within nursery. Our Pre-School children have been learning about life cycles this month and have focussed on frogs. We introduced a tank of real tadpoles & the children explored them using magnifying glasses to examine them. At each stage of development, they’ve made efforts to draw observational portraits.  They are very excited that the tadpoles are now developing legs and are eager to see when they will turn into a frog.

Monday 23rd April saw us celebrating St George’s Day. This date marks the anniversary of the English patron saint’s death. According to legend, he was a soldier in the Roman army who killed a dragon and saved a princess. Rather than re-enacting the legend (!) we decided to mark the day by holding an afternoon tea party. The children made flags using a variety of different art and craft methods such as colouring, sticking and painting. We then used the flags to decorate the table where they ate scones with clotted cream and jam – yummy!

Throughout April our babies have been experimenting with different sensory experiences. We took advantage of the warm weather, stripped the babies down to their nappies and let them explore ‘gloop’, shaving foam, water, cereals, sand and even ice! We focussed on several of the ‘characteristics of effective learning’ with each of these – ‘playing and exploring’, ‘active learning’ and ‘creating and thinking critically’. It was great to observe the different ways they investigated the different mediums and their textures.