Discoverers

Babies have been very busy this month again exploring the indoor and outdoor environments by going to Highbury fields playground and running around and sitting on the grass.

Babies have explored coloured and scented ice in the water tray by feeling the ice and exploring it with their mouths by tasting.

We have also loved playing and sitting in shredded paper in the trays and using their hands to explore textures and adding farm and jungle animals in the paper together.

The babies have also enjoyed the puzzles and shape sorters and finding the correct pieces and looking at the puzzle boards. The babies love the shape sorters and finding the different coloured shapes and putting them through the sorter correctly with the adults.

The babies have also enjoyed a lot of playdough and making it with glitter and using the flour and water to mix together and make the dough. The babies add the glitter and colour yellow using their hands to make marks on the table. We will continue making our own playdough every day and adding our colour of the month, which is Pink for June. The babies can use the different cutters and rolling pins to roll out the dough and use the cutters to make shapes.

We have had the green sand in our sand tray with different toys in there that they enjoy, namely animals and sponges. The babies have also used big and small pots to fill and empty. We will continue in exploring sand and water indoors and outdoors and adding the toys they enjoy most.

Det has also made glitter noodles with yellow paint for babies to explore in the garden this month and they really enjoyed the texture and using their hands to explore. The babies used spoons and plates from the home corner to role play with, and mixed the noodles in the bowls. We also did flower printing and picked flowers from the park and used different primary colours to mix and create spring pictures. We will continue in making our spring/summer pictures using different materials and if parents have any ideas in what their child enjoys at home then please do tell us so we can do at nursery too.

The babies have really enjoyed the parachute indoors and out while singing the rainbow song and lifting the parachute up and down and the children love going under it and sitting on it too. The children have also enjoyed bubbles throughout the day and also trying to blow out bubbles themselves by watching the adults.

As you may have seen our number and shape of the week display has been up on the pillar and we are now making a new one to show you what we focus on each week.

The children have really enjoyed circle times and choosing a story for us to read as a group. The babies listen closely for a short time and look at the pictures while the adult is describing what is going on in the story.

We will also be starting to make Father’s day cards and presents to say thank you to their daddies.

When it is warm the children don’t like having their jackets on while out but if you bring in long sleeves or a light cardigan then that would be great.

Toddler Room

May has been a very exciting and sunny month in Explorers room. We would like to welcome to the toddlers team our smiley friend Olga from the baby room. Our room is getting bigger and bigger every month so we would also to like say a big welcome to Berry and Willow now settling in from the discoverers room.

Science Experiments

Since summer is coming, we have been spending a lot of time, playing and making super interesting science experiments in our colourful garden. This month, adults have been helped by our littles scientists in carrying out different experiments such as:

• Floating and sinking egg experiment
• Feeling different textures
• Crystallising bicarbonate of soda onto string

When you will come to pick up your child, please look a little closer at our little science display. You will see pictures of children really engaged and this may give you some ideas for weekend activities.

Masterclass- This month our little chefs have been cooking pancakes, pizza and happy birthday cakes with playdough that they made themselves.  You can easily make playdough at home with just a few ingredients.

Here for you the recipe (they will love it!):

• Flour
• A tiny bit of salt
• Spoon of oil
• Glass of water

Mix everything together and to make it more interesting, you can also add food colouring scents and glitter.

Time to change- As you can probably see, our room has been revamped and the areas have been refreshed. We do have a corner turned into a wonderful full of insects that they have been painting. After talking about animals and nature, our staff have been thinking that a nature corner with sand and water would be a good idea to give them the opportunity to explore indoors.

We also a have new display about a story called “The train ride”. Our children love trains and this is a good opportunity to let them express their own preferences. The story is about a child on a train who is going to visit his grandma passing through tunnels, cities and landscapes where he can see sheep and geese. The really enjoy pretending to be on a train while they are lining up to go to the garden or when they are playing with big boxes. The love singing the story book and were enthusiastic to help paint the train, the grass and in making the sheep using cotton wool.

You will see what children said about the display as we have printed it in their own languages…. Well done toddlers, we are really proud of you!

 The importance of brushing teeth – Brushing teeth is an important lesson that children must learn. During circle time, using the example of a large pretend mouth and toothbrushes, we have been talking about the importance of keeping our mouth clean from germs. Adult also explained to them the correct use of the toothbrush.

Drama class and Sporty Champs- We have some future professional footballers in our class. Football and obstacle courses have been really appreciated by our children. Also, our drama class is always big success. The teacher can capture their attention and take them to other worlds and situations such as the zoo, the jungle and the desert.

Inventors

Summer will be with us soon and the sun and warm weather has been a pleasant welcome in the pre-school room. We have been very busy as usual taking all of our activities in the garden and even to the park. We would like to welcome some new children in the room who have been busy getting to know all the children and staff.  A warm and sunny welcome to Hubert, Adan and Charlie who have settled in very well over the past month.

This month we have been learning all about being healthy. Each day we have picked a topic and have based our activities around it. The children learnt all about the importance of sleep and exercise as well as eating healthy and drinking lots of water and milk. We also learnt about the importance of brushing our teeth and all took turns in brushing the teeth of some of our wild animals using toothpaste and toothbrushes.

The children also spent lots of time role playing doctors and patients and we transformed our home corner in to a GP with the doctors set and even borrowed a bed from the toddler room so the patients had a comfortable place to rest while the doctors were looking after them.

As usual the children have been going out in the garden and we had our monthly trip to the library, as well as trips to the park and the community play area. We have also been learning about letters, numbers and shapes.

As the warmer weather is approaching could we please ask you to bring in some sun cream and hats as we are going to be spending a lot of time in the garden and have planned lots of fun water activities to play with.