February at LSH

Valentine’s Day

This month at The Little School House we have had lots of fun creating our own Valentine’s Day crafts to send to the special people in our lives. The children had different ideas about the cards they would like to create in each of our rooms, in Pre-School we loved trying to write our own names. On the different hearts of our cards, we wrote different reasons why we love our special people.

Mark Making in Sensory

The Toddlers and Pre-Schoolers have loved making different marks in the shaving foam this month, we used paint brushes, glue spreaders and our fingers to make the different marks. We also used different cards to try and copy the patterns we could see.

National Apprenticeship Week

In February we celebrated National Apprenticeship Week – an opportunity to raise awareness of such a great scheme & also, more importantly we think, to celebrate the hard work & achievements of all the wonderful staff we have training towards their Early Years qualifications. We hope you agree with our view that they all deserve a treat which we’ve been happy to provide! 👏👏👏

Rhythm Time for Babies & Toddlers

We loved our sessions with Rhythm Time this month, we enjoyed banging the drums that are shaped like lollipops, shaking the ribbon, and feeling the different textures. We met a rabbit this time! He was white and he sang with us.

Pre-School School Readiness

In Pre-School we have done lots of different activities, getting us ready for going to big school in September. We practiced putting on our own coats and zipping them up, washing and drying our own hands – making sure that we used soap to clean off all the germs and continuing to blow our own noses, putting the tissues into the bin and then re-washing our hands.

Babies Winter Walk

Our Babies loved the Winter season so much that they went on one last walk to look at the conkers, crunchy leaves and acorns that were left over before the seasons changed and Spring began.  We also kept our eyes peeled for some squirrels but unfortunately we didn’t see any.

January 2021 at The Little School House

Firstly, may we wish you all a Happy New Year – what a year 2020 was! It provided us with many challenges that none of us could ever have imagined; two national lockdowns, closing our doors to many children and some of our staff being furloughed to name but a few! I think we can all agree we are more than happy to see the back end of 2020!

With that in mind, we have welcomed 2021 with open arms and look forward to the relaxing of restrictions in good time. During January, we spent a lot of our time outdoors exploring our local environment. We are extremely fortunate to have Graves Park on our doorstep and take full advantage when we can. Here are some pictures of our Baby Room & Toddler children walking though the park and into the woods. They used their senses to talk about the different noises they could hear and used the opportunity to practice their running skills, considering their speed while they were at it!

The month of January also brought us lots of lovely snow. It’s a fantastic learning opportunity for the children and we were lucky enough to have many occasions outside experiencing the temperature, texture and different experiences it brings. The children enjoyed making some fantastic structures; snowmen and snow fairies among others! But most of all, the amazing fun of sliding down the hill – such a simple process that brings such joy both to them doing it and to us observing them.

Our loose theme through January was ‘All About Me’ and our Pre-School children spent time drawing self-portraits. There was discussion about the facial features we all have and how, despite that, we are all different. Here are some of our self-portraits for you to see:

We’re looking forward to Valentine’s day and pancake day in February, and sharing more of our Little School House adventures with you all soon :)

January at Little School House

During January The Little School House have been up to lots of fun and exciting activities. We kick started the New Year with our loose theme topic ‘All About Me’. The Pre-School children started by talking about themselves, what they look like and how they are different from each other. They continued their learning by looking at their reflections in a mirror and drawing themselves, highlighting key features such as eye and hair colour, and then drew each other. The Baby and Toddler rooms used families as a theme and created displays of children’s family photographs, looking and talking about who the children live with and what they do as a family outside of the nursery setting. Parents enjoyed getting involved and provided us with lots of happy family memories that the children could share with each other at nursery.

Since our conception as Early Years Care and Education we have been striving to raise awareness of healthy lifestyles, diet of course being a big part of this area. As well as overhauling our menus, considering ingredients and portion sizes, we have also now introduced a new strategy – ‘Free Fruit Friday’ which runs the last Friday of each month. We are doing this as an opportunity to invite children, parents and carers to have a piece of fresh fruit on us! Although the children attending nursery receive lots of fresh fruit on a daily basis, we thought it would be another fantastic role modelling opportunity. Our first attempt at the end of January was a great success and I know that lots of parents and children alike are looking forward to having it again in February and beyond.

At our setting we like to promote diversity and culture and, with this in mind, the Pre-School children have been learning about Chinese New Year. They talked in group time about the different animals each year represents and how this year is the year of the dog. The children then made their own red ‘lucky envelopes’ and put chocolate coins inside which they took home to parents. The children discussed while doing this, how the colour red in Chinese culture is a lucky colour.

Our next exciting project will be our lending library where we will further promote literacy. Children and parents/carers will be able to select and borrow books from the nursery library to read together at home.