Discoverers

This month the babies have been busy with lots of different creative messy activities and have displayed lots of passion for learning. We have focused on body painting on the floor and in the builder’s tray using brushes and sponges to make marks.  We have also been leaving footprints on large paper by mixing the colours together. The children really seemed to enjoy getting messy although some needed a little encouragement to explore the expressive arts and design in the EYFS. Displays will be updated with your child’s artwork and creativeness full of mess and learning and lots of pictures too.

Also as it was Chinese new year this month the children made monkey pictures and using brown paint and making marks with markers too. We really enjoy celebrating all occasions I am sure our parents have enjoyed the artwork their baby has made for them.

As spring time is VERY slowly approaching, we have started to plan activities around spring time and will continue being creative for the children to design their own spring display usingdaffodil hand prints and brushes to mark make.  The babies will design their own colourful butterflies and mini bugs too. This will develop the babies understanding of the animals living around them and being imaginative.

This month the children have enjoyed making their own playdough and using their hands to mix the ingredients together. They then added glitter and powder paints. Babies also enjoy using the shape cutters to make shapes and use the rolling pins to make patterns too.  Our babies enjoyed exploring cornflour with mega blocks and making marks on the table while feeling the gooey and runny texture.

As a group, we have also enjoyed exploring damp sand with sea animals, and with crazy foam for babies that love spreading it all over the table, hair and face!

Babies have also enjoyed looking at books we bought from the library for circle times and are very concentrated for a short time in the pictures while the teachers read to them.

We have been going out for nature walks to Highbury fields and the playground too that the babies love to run around on the field and get all muddy.

In March we will be celebrating world book day on the 3rd March so you can dress your child as a book character if you can that would be lovely. Also as mother’s day is on the 6^th March we will be preparing some activities to create some beautiful work for our beautiful and amazing mums we have, with lots of surprises too.

Thank you to parents for sending us your family pictures. We really appreciate it and have been finishing our family albums for your child.  They are able to have a look at and recognise faces which will develop their learning in people and communities. Also to remind our new children who have recently joined us, to send family pictures too and others who haven’t had the chance yet, that would be great. Parents can also attach pictures of what their child is up to at home. Have a look at the learning book to attach them so we can link it to the development at nursery too. It would be lovely to see.

Welcome to our new children who have started with us: Woodrow, Vicente and Zade we look forward to teaching you all and watching you grow to your full potential along with our current babies.

Just a note to parents if you have accidentally picked up wrong dirty clothes on the peg in a nappy bag would appreciate if you bring back to us, as we have a jumper with tractors missing with jeans. Many thanks and have a lovely March to you all.

Explorers

We are beginning to welcome spring by creating a new spring display.  Please keep your eyes peeled!

The children were kept busy by looking at many different celebrations throughout the world.  We made the children aware of Chinese New Year.  They made various decorations such as lanterns, dragons and cards.  There was also Valentine’s day where children made cards for you all to take home.

Shrove Tuesday was observed by making pancakes and we also had a carnival day in the nursery on the same day, as lots of countries such as Spain and Portugal do this.

There is plenty of cooking activities going on each month and this month has been no exception.  There was an amazing pizza making activity with our resident Italian Claudia, and all of the children had fun kneading, mixing and stirring all of the ingredients.

There are many additional classes that the children take part in, on top of all the wonderful activities that go on each day.  Each week, they all take part in the Italian and Spanish lessons, as well as baby yoga and Zumba!

Toddlers have made a wonderful house of seeds that are now beginning to grow.  Please do take the time to stop and take a look.  The children are fascinated.

We are very excited for next month to arrive as we will be celebrating World Book Day, Mothering Sunday and Easter to name but a few. Please do take a look at your child’s Learning Book and leave any comments you would like.  Did you know that you can upload photos and videos from home too?

Inventors

We are ending February, how the time flies! February was a wonderful month full of events and celebrations such as the Portuguese carnival. Our fantastic Portuguese staff showed us this fun celebration. The children and the adults came to the nursery with very funny customs and we had a party with music.

Also, this month was Chinese New Year. We learned lots of things about Chinese culture such as food, typical decorations etc.

We redecorated our Pre-school room with typical Chinese lanterns and fans that the children made with their own hands. We would also like to mention that we were learning that in Asia there is different letter formation when hand writing. They were practicing this by making posters, celebrating the New Year and was fun.

Also we had a special visit from Det in the Baby room, who was with us all the morning. He taught us how to cook Spring rolls. We had amazing time cooking it and we had an even better time eating them! It was a marvellous and different experience.

Also, we would like to mention that this month we had a great idea to re-decorate the room by improving and making more comfortable and cosy Reading corner. We put a nice sofa and lots of cushions to make our time to read more enjoyable. Joy is coming every day to visit us to read a story on a one to one basis, with the intention to improvingand encouragingmorethe reading in the classroom.  It will improve and teach the following:

• Listening and enjoying story time
• Be aware of the stories are structured
• Increasing attention and recall
• Describe main stories’ setting, events and principals characters
• Shows interest in illustrations, print in books and print in the environment
• Look at books independently
• Handle the books carefully and so on.

In addition to this, we are waiting for the new book that we have ordered to make our library much richer.

I would like to mention that we have new material in the reading area such us a new display, with all our names on it and a display with logos such as Disney, Dinosaurs Adventures, Peppa pig, etc. These material help them to recognise familiar words and signs. And is anotherscaffold to facilitatereading.

With the arrival ofthe spring season, we will take advantageand createmanynew art displays. We will speakabout thegerminationof plantsandbutterflymetamorphosis. It will be a lovely subject to learn about.

We have made many different art techniques to elaborate butterflies, different kinds of flowers, bees and ladybirds. Techniques such as the use of forks and paint to make our flowers, a caterpillar with egg cartons or small bees with rolls of toilet paper.