The Great Outdoors

We love nothing better than getting outside to get some fresh air and burn off some energy.  And there are so many great activities we enjoy with the children.  Our Rathvilly nursery have enjoyed lots of outdoor play over the last few weeks. Wellies and puddlesuits are on and it's time to explore the garden! They also visited the allotment area and looked at where the bugs live and play. And the cold doesn’t stop us – icy puddles just add to the fun as the children enjoyed breaking through it to reach the water. This was a great sensory touch for them 

Over in Chichester the pre-schoolers have been learning about how to care for our environment. They went litter picking in the garden and around the front of the nursery. They also talked about what litter goes in general waste and what can be recycled.  Well done to our little eco-warriors!

RSPCA Big Garden Bird Week

Many of our nurseries have loved getting involved in the RSPCA Big Garden Bird Watch. It’s the perfect time to learn about the names and sounds of the different birds that visit our gardens, as well as where the live.

At Carterton the children have been very busy making bird feeders so to entice lots of different birds into their garden. They also made some bird feeders and drew lovely pictures of birds to share with their local care home as part of our intergenerational programme.

Over in Southampton the children decided to see what birds they could find in their nursery garden. They used their picture checklists to identify the birds they saw and talked about the sounds they could hear. Then they built their very own birds nests with twigs and made some eggs to go inside from playdough! 

The children at St Edwards nursery have also been looking at different types of birds, made bird houses and a bird feeding area in their garden.

Everyone learned a lot about the different birds we see every day!

Messy play and mark making

There’s no better way to have fun than when there’s some mess involved! And whilst the ideal of all that mess at home may make you draw a breath, we encourage it every day at nursery and means we can deal with all the tidying up so you don’t have to!

At our Sussex nursery the children have been busy exploring a wide range of different textured tuff trays. The children showed a particular interest in crushing, crunching and squeezing different materials and learning new descriptive words and building their confidence to explore new textures.

Over at Reading it’s been all about rolling and pushing so they’ve been enjoying some car rolling painting. The children showed great concentration and loved showing off their artistic skills!

Sensory play

Did you know that research shows that sensory play builds nerve connections in the brain's pathways, which lead to the child's ability to complete more complex learning tasks?  That's why we are all about sensory play as it’s a great way for the children to explore, experience and learn.

At Watford South Nursery the children have been been talking about their five senses,  They made their own sensory bottles adding different objects to make different sounds. If you'd like to give this a go at home, head over to our Arts and Crafts page for tips on getting started.

And over at Hounslow, sensory time is a firm favourite to help calm and relax the children at the end of a very busy day at nursery.