In June Bluebells have been learning and developing their skills of Independence. We have been doing this through lots of hands on activities. Some of these have included cooking, practicing our zips and buttons and getting dressed independently ready for our walks. The children have been encouraged to carry out a lot of jobs by themselves too, such as pouring their own water, buttering their toast in the mornings, pouring their own cereals and scraping their plates after meal times. We are going to be continuing to reinforce the independence in Bluebells as we go forward by more encouragement of self-serving at meal times. It would be great if parents/carers can continue these at home also!
As it is getting closer to the time where your children may be leaving us for school, we will continue to help the children prepare for school through different experiences. We will be adapting our home corner to a school uniform shop with uniform from some of the schools your children are going to, along with lots of encouragement with phonics in our morning group time, and writing skills in the art area. We will also have lots of positive conversations with the children about going to school too to help them feel ready for such a big transition.
Our topic for the month of July is going to be “All About Me.” We will be doing lots of activities where the children will be able to speak about who they are as individuals and explore their similarities and differences between one another.
If we could ask you all to send a picture of your family and pets in to us, and a photo of your front door/front of house, we would very much appreciate it for our upcoming topic to encourage the children to talk about where they live.
We will continue with our letter and number of the week too – our letters for July will be: J, K, L and M.
Last month lilies enjoyed continuing their adventure around the world. Each week they have been exploring and learning new things about different countries. After exploring Africa, Italy, China and India, this month they visited Australia, America, Hawaii, England and Antarctica.
Lilies explored each country by looking where it is in the encyclopaedia, looking at their flag and then they explored different facts about each one. They recreated an island surrounded by water and sharks whilst speaking about Australia, they also wore an Australian hat and looked at kangaroo and koala photos. Lilies then recreated the American flag with coloured rice and by creating a collage. Hawaii was a very fun week; they all wore the typical Hawaiian necklaces whilst dancing to Hawaiian music and learning to do the limbo. England week was in perfect timing with the football, so Lilies created their own football tops and one of their teachers taught them how to play football. Antarctica has been all about ice play and polar animals, exploring the different animals we might find and the differences between them and the animals in the UK.
This month we will be exploring different stories which the children have shown a great interest in recently. We will be exploring the Gruffalo, The Bumble Bee , The Colour Monster and The Dancing Man from France. We will touch all the area of the EYFS using each book with lots of exciting practical activities! We will explore our emotions and speak about how we are feeling. Using the Gruffalo and The Bumble Bee story we will be exploring animals, recreating the stories through story sacks and many more fun activities.
Throughout June in Daisies we have been following our topic of ‘all about me’. We have all been exploring parts of the body and facial features through lots of different songs, books and activities. We have also been creating some faces of our own through using collage materials, play dough and even making yummy fruit faces! Along with this, we have explored the different facial expressions we and others make with the help of mirrors and pictures to introduce language of feelings and emotions.
We have been exploring our five senses through creative and sensory activities. The Daisies children have shown great interest in investigating different materials through sight, touch, smell, sound and tasting some too. Many of the children have displayed a particular interest in exploring different textures during their play. They have each experimented in different ways how different materials feel whether it be crunchy, smooth, squidgy, bumpy and much more. Some of our older Daisies have also begun to recognise and use some colour names during these activities and their play.
Following the children’s interests, we will be beginning our new topic of ‘Colours and textures’ throughout July. We will be continuing to explore different textures during our play and also in the environment around us. We will be exploring different colours and their names through play and creative activities and even seeing how we can change colours through colour mixing. We look forward to exploring these topics and sharing all our fun with you soon!
This month we have decided to continue our theme of books and songs. The children have been exploring a variety of different tuff trays linked to each song and the children have started to become familiar with the different rhymes, as well as starting to show knowledge and understanding of the actions to each song. So to continue building on their development with this we will be supporting them to learn new songs and focus their attention on a variety of different stories which we can then incorporate into their free play.
We will be setting out a variety of open ended play activities to them to get involved in, using their different senses to engage in the stories and rhymes we explore.
Hot Weather Reminder
We follow guidance based on the UV levels when applying sun cream and ensuring the children are wearing hats and so there will be certain points in the day the children cannot go out without a sunhat on. Please note that even if it is a cloudy day it may still require your child to have sun cream and hats on!
The nursery is currently completing the Skin Sun Safe Accreditation, please check Famly for our updated policy and parents information and keep an eye out for any changes we make to ensure we are keeping your children as safe as possible.
As the nursery continues to get busier, please can you make sure all clothing items are labelled with your child’s name or initials so we can make sure they are returned to the correct family. Thank you!
Fundraising – Nursery Defibrillator
Over the coming months we will be putting on different fundraising events to raise money to purchase a life-saving defibrillator for the nursery. For those that didn’t know, if CPR is performed and a defibrillator is used within the first 5 minutes, the chance of survival jumps from 6% to a staggering 74%!
As part of our Paediatric First Aid training all staff have already been trained in how to use a defibrillator on both children and adults and we feel it would be an extremely important asset to our nursery.
Our first event was held on Tuesday 6th July and was a dress-up day. We encouraged the children to dress up as their favourite book/film character whilst making a donation to the fundraising pot. Thank you so much to everyone who participated and donated.
We are also going to create a nursery cook book. Please can all families send in their favourite recipes with photos for us to include. At the end of July we will be making this into a Monkey Puzzle Astwick family cook book for anyone to purchase with all funds going straight to the fundraising pot.
Home Observations / Home Learning
We love seeing your home observations and the exciting things you and your family have been getting up to at home so please continue to share these with us so we can support your child in sharing these experiences with their friends at nursery and incorporate it into their learning. We will now contact you when it is your child’s focus week and ask for you to contribute by letting us know anything significant that is happening in your child’s life or outings they have enjoyed and that have sparked their interest.
It’s really easy to do through the App, however if you are unsure, please send us a message or give us a call and we’ll be happy to help.
Monkey Puzzle Astwick
