Spring Term News 2022!

January

In January we welcomed back Maxim Sports Coaching! Along with Coach Ian, Coach Jess has now joined the team and will be helping out with our sessions. In January the children took on a new activity challenge as part of their Sports session - basketball! Basketball supports basic hand-eye coordination. The children took it in turns to throw and catch the basketball before attempting to throw the ball into the basket. The children have also been learning about team-building skills and were cheering each other on and celebrating one anothers successes!

On 18th January the nurseries celebrated National Winnie the Pooh Day, where the children discovered that Pooh's favourite snack is Honey Sandwiches! The children were able to make their very own honey sandwiches whilst discussing what their favourite snack is. Once the honey sandwiches had been made (and eaten!) the children wanted to know where honey comes from! They eagerly asked the adults questions, with one child confidently telling the others, "Bees make honey!" This led the children and adults to research all about honeybees and how we can encourage them to visit our nursery garden in the Summer.

On 25th January the children celebrated National Opposite Day! The Clever Creators enjoyed trying to put their clothes on the wrong way which they found very funny! The were able to put their coats on upside down and their socks and shoes on their hands! After discussing where they should go the children tried to put their socks and shoes on the right way independently. Armed with clipboards the Incredible Inventors explored the nursery on the search for opposite things. They enjoyed looking for the items on their checklist such as hot and cold objects and soft and hard objects. They were able to discuss the differences in the objects and what they were used for.

Lots of craft and messy play was explored throughout the month with the children in our Clever Creator room experimenting with different coloured paints on tinfoil. This is a wonderful activity which promotes both gross and fine motor skills. The children enjoyed using a range of tools including paintbrushes, rollers and even their hands! The activity sparked lots of lovely conversations about colours, texture, light and shades. This is such a simple activity to do at home with your child!

February

Our loving children were very engaged in playing with the babies at the beginning of February - the staff sat back and observed as the children loved dressing, feeding and rocking their babies to sleep. Staff loved listening to the children's conversations about their babies favourite foods, what their names were and there was even talk about toilet training! This activity demonstrated each child's individual imagination and ability to care for others. They have learned this from what they see and hear on a daily basis and it is great to see this being expressed through play!

During February the Incredible Inventors were learning to recognise different shapes. The children helped create their very own shape monster using glue and lots of different sticking materials. The children were able to recognise the shapes of the materials they were using such as “circle eyes”. They were very proud of the work they created, as were we. Well done Incredible Inventors!

On 25th February at all three Nannas Day Nurseries sites the children and staff wore red in aid of the Brompton Fountain and to mark the end of Heart Month. The children have participated in heart themed craft and baking and have enjoyed dancing and playing with the balloons provided by the charity itself. We would like to thank all of the parents and the staff for their generous donations, this charity is extremely close to our hearts in memory of a very special little boy and raising awareness for the hospital and all that it does is extremely important to us.

On 14th February our little heartbreakers celebrated Valentine’s Day with their friends. There was lots of cooking, making cards, craft, creating gifts and other fun activities. The 3-5’s at our Hawthorn Avenue site loved creating love hearts using glue and different materials to develop their fine motor skills ready for school. The children loved having a Valentine’s lunch together with flowers, red table cloths and heart sequins with romantic music on in the background. A big thank you to our lovely parents for our Valentine’s Day gifts.

In February we celebrated National Apprenticeship week, and took the opportunity to thank all of our current apprentices at Nannas for all their hard work and commitment to both the company and their qualifications. 

The children were particularly interested in Fire Safety after a routine fire drill at the Turner Road nursery in February. Following the fire drill our pre-school children took a real interest in this process and were asking lots of questions to the staff as to why we do this. Therefore the staff within our Incredible Inventors room used this opportunity to teach the children about some basic Fire Safety and why this is important. The children sat and watched a short video on the importance of Fire Safety, the children asked questions throughout this and showed an amazing understanding of what they had learnt. Further to this the children decided they would like to make their very own Fire Safety posters, they showed lovely writing skills to create a poster and then drew pictures of what they had learnt, the children took these home to show their families but we have also displayed these within the nursery at our fire exits. 

The children enjoyed getting their bake on for events throughout January and February such as Valentines day and national blondie & brownie day! All age groups love to cook with the activity differentiated to meet their learning needs. From the younger children helping to add and stir the mixture to the older children challenging their math skills by measuring and pouring the ingredients! On a chilly Monday morning the Incredible Inventors enjoyed making their own individual tomato and cheese puff pastry tarts. The children spoke about the importance of washing their hands before touching food before being given their own ingredients and equipment. They were able to follow the instructions given to them to create their tart and once they had been put in the oven to cook the children even helped wash up their own equipment and wipe the tables.

Other crafty activities this month have included:

- clingfilm painting where the children used different size paint brushes to make marks on the clingfilm using variety of different paints, the children were very engaged with this and liked using the paint in a different format

- making koala pictures where the 2-3 year olds learnt about the animals native to Australia. They decorated these themselves before the adults cut out the body parts and the children then stuck these where they thought that they went! 

- object mark making where the adults collected a variety of different objects from around the nursery for the children to make marks with in the paint, the children liked exploring which objects made different marks dipping by these into the paint and placing them on the paper! 

March

The 1st of March saw us celebrate Pancake day, the children across all three sites enjoyed some yummy treats! The children helped to make their own pancakes before decorating them with their own choice of toppings, choosing between strawberries, blueberries and bananas and a variety of sauces! Throughout the day the children created pancakes using playdough, paint and different sticking materials. They also had the opportunity to experiment with the ingredients to see if they could crack the eggs, measure the flour and squeeze the lemons!

On 3rd March our children and staff at all three sites had the best day celebrating World Book Day! All of the staff and lots of the children dressed up as their favourite book characters. All of the activities set out for today were based around different books, lots of different stories were read, and the children in our older rooms enjoyed discussing what they had dressed up as and why! Our very own Paddington bear in the Incredible Inventors also brought in the ingredients to make his favourite marmalade sandwiches at nursery which the children took great pleasure in making for their afternoon snack! 

On the 8th of March we celebrated International Women's Day! The children explored different books from our Little People, Big Dreams collection and focused specifically on Inspirational Women such as Emmeline Pankhurst, Coco Chanel, Marie Curie and many others. After reading each of the stories, we extended the learning by discussing the inspirational women in our lives to which one child responded "My Mummy!" The children then engaged in a mark making activity where they created pictures of their person of choice using the resources provided.

In March our Eager Adventurers had a great time exploring the vegetable patch! They explored a variety of different fruit and vegetables using the gardening tools, filling up the plant pots, pretending to water them and digging in the soil! The children remained engaged at this activity for a long period of time and showed some lovely sharing skills! Looking forward to planting lots of real flowers in preparation for our Spring has Sprung competition! 


Basketball5 Babies1 Basketball-2 Brompton fountain-2 Honey sandwiches2-2 Brompton fountain3-2 Fire safety Int womens day-2 Painting1 Shape monster Veg patch-2 Wbd1-2