world book day

February Fun at Highgate!

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Send a Letter to a Friend Day!

At the start of February, the older babies celebrated “Send a Letter to a Friend Day”. They enjoyed drawing pictures for their friends, practicing their fine motor, and hand-eye coordination skills. When choosing the friend they wanted to make a picture for, some of the babies chose their peers who had recently moved up to the Toddler Room. They loved knocking on the door and giving cuddles when it was time to deliver them!

                                                                           

 

 

Toddler Room Workshop

Toddler Room hosted a story-themed workshop for their lovely parents and carers to attend. As World Book Day was approaching, the activities were all based on their favourite books. They dug through oats in the sensory tray to find the story board pictures and re-create their own story, made ‘Elmer’ elephants using milk jugs and tissue paper, and finished off by exploring natural materials to plant their very own beanstalks!

 

                       

 

 

Superhero Sid

The Pre-School children introduced a very special superhero – Superhero Sid! Sid will spend his time going on fun adventures with a different child each weekend. Sid’s backpack is filled with lots of key information from Start Well Sheffield and Change for Life. He gives lots of useful bedtime tips, and shares his favourite banana muffin recipe!

 

                                                                                     

 

Pancake Day

On Pancake Day in Rising Threes, the children helped to make their own playdough creating their very own playdough pancakes. Using the role play pots and pans, the children made big pancakes, small pancakes and even dinosaur shaped pancakes. The children used their imagination to create the pancake of their dreams! As a special afternoon treat, the children had pancakes to eat with a range of yummy toppings to choose from. We discussed how all of the different fruits were grown, and then looked at the fruit packaging to look on our globe and find where the fruit had been delivered from. We had bananas from Costa Rica! The staff also enjoyed creating some delicious looking pancakes from the pancake station on their lunch break too!

                                                                                                    

 

January at Kingswood 2023!

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Happy New Year!

Here are a few things that we have been getting up to at Kingswood this month…

In the run up to the New Year, the children took part in an inspiring firework tuff tray activity. They talked a lot about the New Year and how people may celebrate.

Here are a couple of the children playing in the tuff tray.

People who help us!

Pre-School have had some visitors in this month! Thanks to some wonderful parents that willingly gave up their time to answer our call for their assistance, the children were able to learn about what they do for a living and how they help within their role. Among others we were lucky enough to hear from a barrister and a doctor. The children got to try on different items relevant to the jobs and gain knowledge about the roles.

This then inspired great conversations around what they want to be when they grow up, and fabulous role play!

Chinese New Year!

Here we celebrated by having all the children try some delicious Chinese food! We had vegetable spring rolls, prawn crackers and Quorn and vegetable chow mein noodles. The children used their skills to make lanterns, we spoke about it being the Year of the Rabbit, and what everyone else’s birth years were.

Big Garden Bird Watch and Squirrel Appreciation Day!

As part of the Big Garden Bird Watch, and Squirrel Appreciation Day,  the children went on a walk around the wooded area across from the setting. We also took a trip to the local park. The children all wanted to see what birds they could find and see if they could spot any squirrels. They looked into where the animals natural habitats were, and came back to make their own animals, and houses for them to live in.  

National Storytelling Week!

As part of National Storytelling Week, the Pre-Schoolers took a trip to one of the local libraries. They enjoyed listening to stories and looking at the books while they were there.

Staff have been reminding parents about our own Lending Library, and many children have taken advantage by borrowing a book to take home and enjoy with their parents.

Reading stories at nursery with all the children is very important; afterwards, as a result, they engage in role play, tuff tray activities, and many more, relating to the books that we read. It also contributes greatly to their language development & increasing their vocabulary.

We are now looking forward to World Book Day in March!

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.

March at The Little School House

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Before the world went crazy over the corona virus we managed to pack in lots of fun activities in & out of the setting…

Each of our branches had a charity takeover week to raise money for Sheffield Children’s Hospital. The plan was to theme as many of the activities around bears, as the hospital is tying it in with the Bear Hunt that’s planned around the city over the Summer. During our chosen week we held a raffle (with some amazing donation prizes – thanks to all who contributed), guessing games to wind a prize and even took the children on a sponsored bear walk, as well as completing lots of bear-themed activities in their rooms with their friends. We want to thank all of the staff, children and parents for their support and donations for this fantastic cause. The week was very successful week and we raised over £800!!

We don’t think our annual celebration of World Book Day would be complete without giving the staff and children the opportunity to dress up as their favourite characters. We saw the likes of The Gingerbread Man, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan and many more! The children loved taking part in reading their favourite stories and making up their own book character, although perhaps their favourite part was enjoying some of the yummy cakes and buns from our bake sale!

Our termly staff training session was held early in the month. Lisa and Anna (Area Manager and Quality Practice Manager) decided to base the first part of the session around a recommendation from our Ofsted inspection (January 2020); the report suggested that we should ‘build on the good planning for adult-led activities to ensure that all participating children are fully challenged.’ So we spent a portion re-looking at what the activities we’re planning to meet the next steps of the children, how to extend them for the more advanced children, what we provide in our areas of continuous provision and how to support the children in order for them to access and achieve things more independently.

We spent the latter half being introduced to a relatively new teaching strategy called ‘Word Aware’. This tool is designed to support practitioners in the provision of effective vocabulary development and it’s aim is to shorten the ‘word gap’ between children from different backgrounds. We discussed how we can implement the strands into our daily practice and how it will work best for the different age groups. We’re looking forward to putting all this into action once things are back to normal!

Our Pre-School Room went on a trip to Weston Park Museum and they used public transport to get to and from. This was a big experience for some of our children, who had not been on a bus before! They enjoyed learning about the different parts of Sheffield’s history and playing in their role play areas.  The children loved looking at the animals after enjoying a yummy picnic for lunch.

Now the weather is starting to get warmer, we’ve been enjoying more sensory activities and activities in the garden. The Baby Room have really enjoyed splashing and playing in the sensory tray with all of the water and bubbles – they had lots of fun splashing the staff too! It’s been great having picnic snacks and lunch in the garden with our friends, and made us very excited for the Summer weather!


That’s all from us for now; we look forward to resuming normal nursery life as soon as possible, but in the meantime, wish you all well – stay safe!

February at Kingswood

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Throughout February Kingswood Day Nursery have been up to lots of fun and exciting activities. Utilising our loose-themed topic of ‘People Who Help Us’ we have invited visitors to the nursery and have been on an exciting trip out to the Old Police and Fire Museum. The children loved the coach journey to the museum and they particularly enjoyed exploring the inside of the ambulances and fire engines.  Our visitors have been DR Vicky Fletcher a local GP who brought all of her equipment for the children to explore and experiment with. They had great fun finding each other’s heartbeats and checking that their friends and carers didn’t have temperatures by using the thermometers!  We also had a visit from local PCSO’s – Adrian Thomson and Samantha Pacey. The Pre-School children particularly enjoyed dressing up in the police uniforms and trying out the hard hats! The PCSO’s shared lots of useful information about what to do if we need help and reminded us of the all important number to call – ‘999’.

We also hosted a charity event at Kingswood last month. ‘Crackerjacks’ is a local children’s charity who we have continually supported throughout the years. This year we raised money by inviting the children of Kingswood to dress up and have a fun princesses and hero’s day! All the children had an amazing day and dressed up as their favourite characters. The toddlers had a great time making masks by gluing and sticking, glittering and being very creative! As you can see from the pictures they did a great job and wore them with pride.

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At our setting we like to promote diversity and culture and, with this in mind, the toddlers have really embraced learning about Chinese New Year.  The children all made their own lanterns which they decorated and took home, as well as all contributing to a group creative activity of making an enormous Chinese Dragon.

We have recently introduced our lending library where we are further promoting literacy. Children and parents/carers can select and borrow books from the nursery library to share together at home. There is opportunity for even more parental involvement as we always welcome additions to the lending library from books that are no longer favourites in your household. This lending library links in beautifully with the promotion of ‘World Book Day’ and we have been able to provide all parents with a token which entitles them to receive a discount on many books from lots of high street shops.

Our upcoming events in the near future will include a ‘Mother’s Day Workshop’ for our Pre-School children, it’s a great opportunity for parental involvement. We have invited mothers, grandmothers and aunties along with any other influential female role models to attend our workshop on Tuesday 6th March 2018, where we will be baking tiffin, threading love heart cards, making flowers, making and moulding salt dough models and much, much more.

We will all be celebrating and supporting ‘Sport’s Relief’ by taking part in running races and other physical games. The babies will be toddling around our soft surfaced play area, throwing, catching and rolling balls to each other. Whilst our toddlers and pre-school children will be taking part in running races, obstacle courses and trying out their throwing skills with target practice games.

We are expecting a visit from Zoolab on 19th April  with their exotic animals.  The children will have the opportunity to look at & hold snakes, spiders & lots of other creepy crawlies! The expected learning outcomes are that children will discover, explore, investigate and ask questions about the different characteristics of the mini beasts and other animals from all around the world.

We look forward to another exciting term of events and will be back to update you further with other exciting activities!

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