Category: Squirrel News

Hedgehogs News February 2018

We would like to welcome Henry who has started with the Hedgehogs this month and to wish Happy Birthday to Iggy and Eva who turned 2 years old this month.

Animal Room

The children have enjoyed a range of messy play activities relating to transport and transporting this month. The children had fun making tracks on paper with paint and cars. We also had some Transport stencils such as Cars, Bikes, Boats, Planes, Buses and Trains which the children used to paint and make their own transport.  We have also been transporting water into the sand tray and exploring different textures and learning about wet and dry sand.

Tree Room

In the Tree room we have had lots of different puzzles to explore such as Transport puzzles, shape puzzles and the Very Hungry Caterpillar which is the children’s favourite at the moment. Our story corner has been most popular this month with lots of new songs the children have been learning to sing along to and join in with some of the actions.

Garden/Trips

In the garden this month we have had lots of fun using the bikes and making a car track with Tyres and crates.

The children have been racing on the bikes and saying “Ready steady Go”! We have also enjoyed using the wheel barrows and buggies around the garden, collecting objects and transporting these objects to another area of the garden.  Some of our older Hedgehogs have enjoyed a trip to Sciennes, a lovely walk around the woodland area where the children explored and collected some sticks and branches and brought these back to nursery.  The children used the sticks and branches they collected to make some lovely pictures in the messy room.

Hedgehogs News January 2018

We would like to welcome Sandy who has started with the Hedgehogs this month and to wish Happy Birthday to Solo who has now turned one and to Rengim, Angus, Theia and Emma who turned 2.

This month, the Hedgehogs have been very busy helping to make our flying saucer display. We all made our own flying saucer with a paper plate, paint and different crafts to glue on. Some of us helped to paint and stick foil on the big flying saucer for the centre of the display, which was great fun.

The Hedgehogs have enjoyed doing our new puzzles and spending time in the home corner doing lots of role play with the aprons, clothes and role play food. This is great for the Hegdehogs to develop their imagination and relationships.

This month in our garden we have had lots of great fun transporting the sand with all our different buckets, spades, plates, and kitchen tools in our sand tray and sand kitchen. We have recently been focusing on Hula Hoops and balls which is great for us to develop relationship with friends and teachers.

The Hedgehogs parents joined us for a Scottish breakfast to celebrate Burns Day. The children really enjoyed having their parents spend some time in the playrooms so a bog thanks to all who attended.

 

Hedgehogs News December 2017

A big welcome to Finn and Izabella who started with the Hedgehogs this month and a Happy 2^nd Birthday to Nathan, Salman, Bo and Finn

We have been busy during November getting started with our Christmas crafts. We all made our own Christmas card, tree decorations, calendar and bag and food for the reindeers. We made Rudolph cards and glued shiny red pom-poms for his nose and stick eyes. We also made a very glittery decoration for our tree. Some of us have been exploring the sand and water tray, others have preferred to spend lots of time at our play dough table rolling lots of different patterns with our patterned rollers.

Our teachers made sensory bags with coffee beans, sponges, lavender, vanilla and lots more to help to develop our sense of smell. We also had lots of song time throughout the day, learning to take turns with the musical instruments and other toys with all our friends. We have lots of activities and areas to explore such as an activity table which has lots of puzzles, sorting elephants to encourage us to learn our colours, drawing paper, crayons and stickle bricks. We have a home corner unit and dressing up box so we can role play, little sofas so we can have quiet time to read a story, an area for construction.

We continue to go to the care home every second Monday with 2 Hedgehogs and 4 children from downstairs where we do lots of activities with the residents. We have also had trips to the park with our older Foxes and Rabbits.

For Children in Need we did some baking with our teachers, we made little biscuits and the older children downstairs made scones and cupcakes and we had a bake sale at the end of the day. We also dressed up in our pyjamas and brought in our little teddies for a tea party in the afternoon!

 

Hedgehogs News November 2017

A big welcome to Bo, Arran, Fin and Leon our new Hedgehogs who joined us in October.

This month we had lots of texture and sensory play. We had a tray full of crazy foam, shaving foam, pasta, spaghetti, oats, rice, feathers and straws which we explored with our hands and feet. The sand tray also had lots of different coloured foam in it, which encourages us to explore textures and to use our fine motor skills. Our teachers made sensory bottles which the babies especially liked. We made some cards for our new Hedgehog friends and did lots of gluing and painting with our junk modelling.

We have had fun with the tunnels and building blocks which encourage us to develop our gross motor skills. The Hedgehogs have also been busy doing puzzles, role playing in our home corner, reading stories with our teachers, and enjoying music time.

We continue to go to the Care Home every second Wednesday with two hedgehogs and four children from the ground floor. We have also had trips to the park with our older Foxes and rabbits as well.

For Halloween we had a tea party, where we all dressed up in different costumes. We did some baking with our teachers and made biscuits and crispy cakes. Some parents came along and we had great fun dancing and colouring in Halloween pictures.

 

 

Hedgehogs News October 2017

A big Welcome! to Thomas, Solo, Angus, Cormac and Salman, our new Hedgehogs, who started with us this month – and a very Happy Birthday! to Julek, Max, Emily and Krishna who are now 2 and to Cormac who recently had his first birthday.

This month the children have been very busy helping to make a pond for our Tree Room wall display. It has been great fun, gluing and sticking with our friends. We have had lots of activities to encourage and develop our fine motor skills, using our big chalk board and threading pasta through spaghetti. We have also been exploring our junk modelling table, gluing and sticking lots of different things, painting and playing in the sand and water tray.

In the Tree Room, we have been doing lots of different Number and animal puzzles, drawing on paper and magazines with chalk and crayons, also doing role play with dolls, story time and lots of music time that keeps us very active and on our toes. We have been practicing taking off our socks and shoes and putting them back when it’s time to go to the garden or go home. This encourages the children to become independent along with their fine motor skills and concentration skills.

We have been using the Bird Room, which is a nice quiet room, for our tired little Hedgehogs who need naps throughout the day. We also use this room for Hedgehogs to explore texture and sensory play.

Garden time is always great fun, we get all wrapped up in our waterproofs if it’s raining so we can still go out to play. Some of us have been developing and using our hand and feet coordination, kicking and throwing balls with our teachers and friends. Our teachers read us stories in the Garden Room if we want to have quiet time or we free play in the garden with the slide, buggies, babies, building blocks, sand play, bikes, balls, and our Wendy house where we also do role play and peekaboo.

We continue to go to the Care Home every second Wednesday with two Hedgehogs and 4 children from downstairs. We really enjoy the activities with the residents and making friends with them. We have also had trips to the Meadows park with our older Foxes and Rabbits which is great fun.

 

Hedgehogs News September 2017

Meadows would like to give a warm welcome to Theia and Isa, our new Hedgehogs, who started with us this month, we look forward to getting to know you all more.

We would also like to wish Sandy a very happy 1^st birthday!

We have been very busy in the Animal Room this month, messy painting our own little fishes for our wall display which has been great fun. Our teachers helped us to plant our own water cress plants by putting cotton wool into a tub with water, then adding our seeds. We also enjoyed our junk modelling table, gluing and sticking lots of different things.

In the Tree Room, we have had our tunnels out, puzzles, drawing paper and crayons, role play dolls, story time and lots of music time which keeps us very active. We have been practicing taking off our socks and shoes and putting them back on when it’s time to go to the garden or to go home.

We have had lots of messy fun in the garden playing with our mud kitchen. Some of us Hedgehogs used our spades to carry the sand over into the sand tray which takes a lot of concentration and hand eye coordination skills. We have also had our water tray out and some of us got very wet splashing about with our friends. We have lots of activities such as drawing with crayons, balancing beams, ball games, sand and water.

We continue to go to the care home every second Wednesday with 2 Hedgehogs and 4 older children. We do lots of activities with the residents which helps us to develop skills and relationships. We have also had trips to the park with the older Foxes and Rabbits.

We had a tea party at the start of this month for which the children baked banana scones and biscuits. Parents were also invited to the tea party and had some snacks with the children and some juice!

 

 

 

Hedgehogs News June 2017

The Hedgehogs would like to welcome our new friends Ella, Sandy and Magnus to our nursery.

We have been very busy this month exploring our plastic bugs. Our teachers put bugs in gloves with water and froze them so we could explore the different textures. We have also been fruit painting and making lots of patterns and cards for our new friends. We have had lots of water play and sand play too, we love getting messy and wet in nursery.

 

 

We have been doing lots of dancing. We love music and we never stand still when there is a tune playing! We have been singing lots of circle songs and even doing the actions. We have also been very interested in hand washing. We did various activities, including using a gel that allowed us to see the bacteria.

Some of the children have been helping to settle our new little Hedgehogs. We have shown our new friends our sensory toys and texture play.

We have been helping our teachers water the plants in our garden and have been learning about wildlife which was fun. We have lots of water play in the garden and exploring the patterns we can make in the sand.

We have been on trips to the Care Home this month and spent time with the residents. We have also been on trips to the park with our Rabbits and Foxes friends from the nursery. We have lots of fun at the park and enjoy getting out on a walk.

 

 

 

Hedgehogs News May 2017

We would like to give a very big welcome our new friends Ella & Sandy who have joined the Hedgehogs this month.

We have had lots of activities in the Tree room this month. We turned our home corner into a grocery shop, with baskets to collect and learn about all different kind of food. We have also had lots of fun exploring our doctors role play set, checking over the teddy bears and babies with it, which has been really fun.

Scented play dough was great fun this month! We added lemon and lime to our play dough and also different colours, so we can learn colours and smells. Our teachers have let us do some tasting of the fruit we put into the play dough. We tasted some lemon and we made lots of funny faces. We have also been splashing in our water tray which has been lots of fun.

In the Bird room this month we have been focusing on a cosy corner with books that we like to read with our teachers and friends. We have lots of picture books and sensory books so we have lots of fun when we are reading. We have also been making funny faces in our mirrors with our friends to see our reflection.

Garden time is always fun in the sun. We have been singing Sleeping Bunnies under our parachute which we use shade us from the sun. We have been on our bikes and our teachers have been drawing tracks and snakes that the children all try to follow with their feet, which helps to develop their eye coordination and balance.

We took a few trips to Meadows Park this month to practice and develop our gross motor skills on climbing frames. We also had trips to the care home and did lots of fun activities such as painting, drawing, catching and reading books with some of the residents.

 

 

Hedgehogs News April 2017

The children have been very busy this month getting ready for the Easter bunny. We all got to paint a card for our loved ones and also paint our own bunny ears. We used feathers, sand, paint, glitter and glue to stick everything on and lots of other messy things to decorate them. We all had lots of fun making our own ears. This develops fine motor skills and hand eye coordination.

The children also enjoyed having the baby chicks in the nursery. Watching the chicks hatch was very exciting and the children loved holding the chicks.

We have also had lots of role play using our red and blue building blocks to role play transport such as a bus, train and even a tram. We all got a turn at being the driver, using paper plates for the steering wheel and little wooden blocks for the bus tickets. This is good for the children as they use their imagination and they are also learning to share with each other.

The garden has been lots of fun. We have been playing with the balls and hockey sticks which helps the children to develop hand eye coordination and gross motor skills. We have also been playing lots in our outdoor sand, with lots of measuring jugs, buckets, spades and spoons.

The highlight of the trips this month was the care home visit. We like to do activities with the elderly residents such as drawing and colouring-in, reading books together and also dancing to music.

 

 

Hedgehogs News March 2017

Birthdays

We would like to wish our friend Matilda a very happy 2nd birthday

Animal room

This month in the Animal Room we have been very busy doing lots of fun messy play. We have been exploring different dry and wet sensory items such as feathers, sponges, jelly, rice, paint, and porridge oats. We all like getting messy, as well as splashing around in our water tray. Most of us end up getting all wet and have to change our clothes. Playing with the sand is fun too, we like to explore wet and dry stand with buckets and spades.

Tree Room

We have had lots of fun and making great progress with the baby walker this month which helps us to practice walking and balancing. We also like to zoom around which is great fun. We also had a range of fun table top activities such as puzzles, colour sorting and threading.

The Bird Room

We have been very busy making lots of noise with our musical instruments in the Bird Room this month. We are learning about the different sounds, shapes and sizes of instruments. We have also been using the different shape mirrors to look at our reflection.

Garden

This month in the garden we have been doing lots of fun activities. With help from our teachers, we are able to climb and walk along our crates, wooden logs and balancing beams. This is great for us to practice balancing. We have also been reading books, drawing and playing in our outdoor sand pit.

Trips

We have recently been out on a trip to the park where we swung back and forth on the swings, and went round and round on the roundabout too. We also enjoyed running about and climbing up onto the climbing frame and sliding down the slide. These outdoor activities are good for the children as they used their gross motor skills and develops relationship with each other.