fancy dress

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.

 

 

 

October at Riverview

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Space Week

Toddlers started the month in space!! Taking part in lots of different space-themed activities. From ‘space jelly’ to ‘cloud dough’, they had lots of fun exploring the different textures.  During Space Week the Word of the Week was “move”; outside the Toddlers explored how they could move their bodies in different ways, they walked slow on the moon and ran fast like a rocket.

Leanimals

Mid-month we had a lovely visit from Leanimals.

Before their arrival we asked the Pre-School children what animals they might like to see.  We had lots of suggestions, such as snakes, spiders and rabbits. Some of the children were thinking on a much bigger scale and suggested there might be a tiger come visit! Our core book for this week was ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ so the children had been taking part in lots of tiger-related activities. Fortunately, there wasn’t a tiger in nursery, but the children were all very happy with the animals that did come to visit!

Babies and Toddlers also got to see and hold the animals, their favourite being the tiny mouse. They were all very brave and excited.

Practitioner Appreciation Day

On the 17th October we celebrated our wonderful staff team! We treated them to graze boxes for lunch and some sweet treats!  We have a fantastic staff team, that is evidently agreed with by our parents going by the lovely comments that were left. Thank you for your continued support!

Halloween

Babies’ Playdough Pumpkins

Babies have enjoyed making playdough, testing out the recipe and getting very messy! When they eventually got the measurements right, and made the dough, they shaped the dough in balls, added eyes and called them pumpkins! They added orange food colouring and pumpkin spice scent for a full sensory experience.

Toddlers Pumpkin Carving

Toddlers have helped carve pumpkins for Halloween. They used a pumpkin carving kit with extra caution.  First they took it in turns to scoop out the inside of the pumpkins, they then each had a turn to draw a shape on the pumpkin and help cut it out.

Pre-School Parent Workshop

Pre-School held a very successful parent workshop. We welcomed many of our families in to stay and play! The children and grown-ups all had the chance to engage in a number of Halloween themed activities, we got messy making playdough and creative decorating cupcakes!

We look forward to welcoming lots of our lovely families at parent’s evening this week. We also have our Baby Room bonfire-themed stay and play to finish a busy month at Riverview.

Kingswood In March!!

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We have been getting very busy this month here at Kingswood. Starting with Pancake Day and Ash Wednesday where the children got to experience yummy pancakes for snack and a vegetarian corn beef hash for lunch. We incorporated this into our healthy eating by adding fruit and talking about how the fruit and vegetables keep us healthy.

HEY AWARD – Here at Kingswood we have been working towards our Healthy Early Years Award, between the Deputy Manager Chloe (who is currently on maternity leave) and the Acting Deputy Amy, they have provided staff with the HEY Toolkit, making them more aware of the correct portion sizes, exercise goals, bottle feeding best practice, safe sleep best practice and many more that is included. The beginning of March saw us have our HEY inspection and we are now awaiting our result.

World Book Day came next. The staff and the children enjoyed dressing up as their favourite characters and raising money for the Crackerjacks Children’s Trust. We managed to raise a grand total of £120 – huge thanks to all of those who contributed. The children engaged in story making activities, read their favourite stories and set up book-themed tuff trays. We also promoted our lending library for children to take them home.

Science week stemmed some great exploration, the staff helped the children explored in many different experiments. From bubble wrap painting to volcano eruptions. We continued this on water day talking about the water cycle and conducting an experiment to help explain this cycle.

Comic relief saw the children come dressed in red! We talked to the older children about what comic relief represented and asked questions about how they think people could help. We focused some of our activities around the theme incorporating it into the children’s interests.

We have generally had lots of fun outside, especially the week running up to mothers day where the sun started coming out for Spring.

Mother’s Day the the children did some planting, we talked a lot about what plants need, the beginning of Spring and the cycle of plants. I hope all had a lovely Mother’s Day and we will see you next time our blog comes along.

October at Highgate

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We know it’s been a while since you’ve been inside nursery, so we thought you might like to hear about all the improvements that have been going on behind the scenes over the last few months! We have had new windows, new flooring, a new outdoor play area, lots of decorating & the staff have been busy getting creative & doing a bit of upcycling in the rooms! Our nursery looks fantastic and if you would like a sneaky peak – please see our 3D virtual tour!



We have had lots of fun celebrating Halloween this month! The children enjoyed making Halloween monster biscuits and have thought of new ideas about how else they could make monsters. They decided to make playdough monsters using the loose parts! The children were so proud of their creations and enjoyed achieving what they set out to do! On Halloween, the children took part in a pumpkin hunt in the garden as well as taking part in our fancy dress competition. We saw lots of fantastic fancy dress costumes and all the children looked amazing – well done to all the children who took part!


Excited about bubble time!

September at The Little School House

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It has been an exciting start to Autumn. September at The Little School House started with a visit from the ever popular Mini Movez; they come into the setting to engage our Toddler and Pre-School children in fun physical activities. These sessions consist of some themed activities; this time it was ‘Safari’ which saw the children involved in creating their own unique variations of different animal sounds and movements, followed by some excellent cheer-leading involving pom poms and lots of energy and enthusiasm!

 

Our loose theme of ‘Space’ has seen all our age groups participating in numerous activities surrounding the planets; Pre-School learned about the different names and their climates, as well as learning about different methods of space travel and constructing the planets for a display. The children thought it was out of this world!! While our budding astronauts were busy upstairs, the Babies and Toddlers also had fun creating their own unique space designs such as stars, galaxies and their own interpretation of the planets. These messy activities were another great way for our early learners to explore different sensory experiences and learn through play.

 

We also took the time to host a Princess and Pirates day charity event in aid of  Cracker Jack Children’s trust which was a great success. The children came in their fancy dress and really got into their characters. They enjoyed making props for their costumes and demonstrated some fantastic role play.

 

So what’s next for The Little School House? The children and staff are all looking forward to our Pre-School Autumn workshop & activities for Road Safety Week, as well as lots of upcoming festive activities including our Christmas Concert, Christmas Party, Christmas Jumper Day for Save the Children, and Baby Room Christmas workshop.