Wellbeing Wednesday

The children dressed in black and learnt all about fire safety. We carried out a Fire Drill and many of the children had a good understanding of what was happening and who will would come to support us with a fire. Practitioners also talked to the children about bonfire safety in preparation for bonfire night. The children took part in activities and discussions on the importance of friendships and being kind to one another.

Making Spells

The children have been making potions and casting spells this Halloween. Children have explored natural maerials like conkers, pumpkin, sticks, pumpkin seeds etc and chose their own ingredients to add to their potion. Each ingrediant had been given a Halloween name such as vampire blood, bats wings and witches hair. Practitioners talked about the textures of natural resources and children used their senses to explore the items. Practitioners introduced rhyming words such as ghost and toast and cat and bat. They then used washing up liquid, white wine vinegar and bicarbonate of soda and explored mixing the ingrediants together to create fizz and froth to their potion. Children listened to the fizzing, slurping and sloshing.

Halloween Party

Don't forget tomorrow is our Halloween Party, we will be having fun with some halloween games and spooky stories follwed by our trick or treat hunt in the park, please send your child in halloween fancy dress.

Bonkers with Conkers

Down at The Park we have been going bonkers with the conkers that the children collected from the park. Children have used conkers with various activities around nursery to support their interest and enjoyment of natural resources as well as teaching opportunities in different areas of development.

 

To extend our discovery of conkers, children will be bringing several home this half term for children to explore them with their familes. Please use your creativity to create something with the conkers and return your finished product to nursery after half term. For some ideas of what to do with your conkers please look at pintrest https://uk.pinterest.com/ and put conkers in the search box.

Wellbeing Wednesday October

Wednesday is our Wellbeing Wednesday and children are invited to dress in black clothes. The message of the day for children will be 'friendship'. Practitioners will be promoting, being kind and friendly to one another through a range of activities during routines and play. The safety message for this month will be fire safety. Parents will receive safety information to take home and children will learn fire safety messages for in the home and in preparation for Bonfire Night.

Autumn in the Park

This week the children have been exploring the beauty of Autumn with a walk around the park. The beautiful colours, the crunchy leaves and the shiny conkers. Each children had their own bucket to collect items in to take back to nursery. The childen had lots of fun exploring and were doing lots of good talking about the wonders of the park.

Halloween spooky fun

On Thursday 27th October the children are invited to dress in their Halloween clothes for a day of spooky Halloween fun @ The Park. The children can get involved in lots of activities linked to Halloween including The Monster Mash at wake and shake, reading Winnie the Witch story sack, spooky spider maths activities, making spells in the mud kitchen and green flour in the malleable area. The session will end with a short trick or treat walk around the park, collecting goodies along the way.

 

Talking Tuesdays

Today was our Talking Tuesday. Here is Susan carrying out the Talking Tables activity. She brought in  a bus ticket from one day when she caught the bus to nursery. Susan provided language about the bus and her ticket and her journey to nursery. As the children joined in the conversation they started to talk about tickets they had bought and money they had used to buy tickets, chocolate coins they had at home, other sweets they had at home which then lead onto a conversation about Halloween. The children also talked about different pictures during group time. Susan's key children were shown a picture of a cow in a field, here are some of the comments they made:

"it's playing in the sun"
"it's got a head, it's got a body"
"it's on the farm and you get milk from the cows"
"it says moo, moo, moo"
"Farmer"
"Old MacDonald"
"Milk"
"In the fridge"

Pre-writing skills

Today the children have been strengthening their hand and finger muscles, by popping the bubbles from bubble package wrap. Children were encouraged to find the individual bubbles and use their fingers to pop them. This activity builds up muscle strength in children's hands and fingers ready for children to hold and control pencils for early writing.

Talking Tuesdays

From our Talking Tables training we have introduced Talking Tuesdays to St Marys @ The Park. Each week (Tuesday) Key Workers will focus on speech and language as part of their group time sessions. Key Workers will show children a picture card and encourage them to lead discussions about it. This acivity will promote children's language development at all levels from gestures and pointing to single words, building up to more complex sentences and asking questions. Practitioners will ensure all children have an opportunity to develop their speech and language through these wekly activities along with numerous others we do at nursery. To launch our Talking Tuesdays we also sent home a picture card acivity for children to have the opportunity to share their activities with their families. If you have not yet carried out the activity and returned your sheet to nursery then please do so. The activity can be carried out in the child's home language if they are more confident in that language.
In addition to this we will have our Talking Table out during the session. This week Amanda carried out the activity using a padlock and keys as a focus point to start the conversation. The idea is then to follow the child's lead talking about whatever they are happy to talk about, offering writing resources for them to doodle as they talk. I will post further updates on the blog as Talking Tuesdays and Talking Tables become embedded in our practise.
We are working towards children being confident to say, understand and use 5000 words for when they start school.

Talking Tables Training

In September, the nursery Pactitioners went on Speech and Language training. This was to seek further advice on speech and language activities that can be used in nursery to support children's language development.
Speech and Language is a crucial part of children's learning and it builds solid foundations for children to then learn in all other areas. It is the most important part of your child's learning development. There are many ways that you can support your child in being a good communicator. Playing with your child is a great way to model language for them. It doesn't matter what the game is. It can be playing with a ball, a board game, animals etc etc. Parents should talk about what they are doing and provide a running commentary for children, "my horse is thirsty, he needs a drink, I wonder what he would like?" This can be carried out with all general routine actvities, giving children a bath, cleaning their teeth, making their food, travelling to nursery. These are perfect times to talk to children about what the weather is like, what letters and numbers you can see in the environment, talk about crossing OVER the road, walking NEXT TO Mummy/Daddy, talk about exercise and how walking is good for them, the traffic lights, cars, people on bikes, the list of possible communication interests goes on and on. This is especially important if your child is not a confident talker or does not talk in clear, full sentences.
When children are not talking appropriately for their age group it has an inpact on all areas of their learning development.

Here is an example of speaking goals in the seven areas of learning:

30-50 months, approx age 3-4 years 

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Children should be aiming to keep their play with friends going, responding to what children are saying to them and offering other ideas and suggesstions. They should be able to inititate conversations with their friends and adults.
Children are aiming to talk confidently about their family and community and be able to ask for help.

Communication and Language Development

Children should be aiming to join in with songs and stories they are familiar with and follow directions.
Begin to understand and respond to 'why' and 'how' questions. Understand prepositions such as 'on top' 'behind' 'under'
Begining to use more complex sentences, questions why things happen and gives explanations.
Uses a range of tenses eg, play, playing, played

Physical Development

Children should be aiming to tell adults when they are hungry or tired and clearly communicte a need for the toilet.

Literacy Development

Children should be aiming to be aware of the way stories are structured, suggest how a story might end. Describe main story settings, events and principle characters.
Talk about marks they see in the environment, asking what symbols, signs, notices etc might mean or say.

Mathematics

Children should be aiming at reciting numbers in order to 10. Using positional language. Talks about the similarities of shapes in the environment eg "that wheel is a circle"
Begining to talk about the shape of every day objects 'round' 'tall' etc

Understanding the World

Children should be aiming to talk about significant events and describe special tims or eents for family or friends.
Comment and ask questions about aspects of the place they live or the natural world. Talk about the things they have observed such as plants, animals etc.

Expressive Arts and Design

Children should be aiming to describe the texture of things. Sing a few familiar songs.
Build stories around toys. Sings to self and makes up simple songs. Engage in imaginative role play based on first hand experiences.

A messge from the Queen

When the Queen celebrated her 90th Birthday, St Marys @ The Park celebrated too. We dressed as Prince and Princesses and had a tea party and party games. The pre-school children also made the Queen a card and we posted it off to the Palace. This week we received a letter of thanks.

You said, we did ..........................................................

Riley said he really enjoys and is showing great interest in Crown Green Bowling.

We werent allowed to use the bowling green in the Park but we improvised and took the children out to play Crown Green Bowling, St Marys @ The Park style

If your child has a strong interest in anything in particular, please share this with your childs key worker and we will try our best to explore it with them at nursery too.

Dough Disco

Believe it or not, teaching your child to write letters and follow dotted lines is not the way to make them successful writers. Before children aquire these skills they must first ensure that their bodies are strong enough to hold their pencil and begin to control it. To prepare young children for writing it is important to strengthen the muscles in their hands and fingers. Children always learn better through fun and interesting activities. St Marys @ The Park has launched Dough Disco. This is carried out a couple of times through the week as just one of the ways we can strengthen and develop children's muscles ready for them to begin their journey into writing. Dough Disco involves, encouraging children to manipulate dough while listening to upbeat songs. Children are encouraged, while practitioners model, rolling the dough, squeezing it, poking it, flattening it etc. manipulating the dough and giving the muscles a good work out. Playdough is a wonderful resource and can be used in a variety of ways to teach children many educaional benefits. It is not just something to be feared as it sticks to the carpet. Here are some of the children getting involved in Dough Disco at nursery. We carried out our first Dough Disco to Pharrell Williams - Happy.