Category: Squirrel News

Hedgehogs News February 2017

We would like to say a big welcome to our friend Dylan who has started at Meadows Nursery this month.

We would also like to wish Misha and Otto a very happy 2nd birthday!

This month in the Animal Room we have been exploring the different colours of paint.  We have decided to put cling film over the table as most of the children seemed to like to paint the table instead of paper! The children really enjoy this activity, using their imagination to explore with the paint, glitter, foam and different assorted sponges.

The children were interested in playing with the garage, cars and puzzles this month. We had great fun rolling the cars down the ramps and made our own big ramps using guttering in the garden for our cars to roll down.  We have put out a variety of different puzzles along with cars and another garage. This is lots of fun.

The children also enjoyed our new shape sorters. We spent lots of time matching the shapes and putting them in and taking them out of the sorters.  This is a great activity for the children to play with as it helps to develop their hand-eye coordination skills.

 

 

Hedgehogs News January 2017

New Hedgehogs

We would like to say a big welcome to our new friends Alex, Nathan, Otto, Rengim and Emily who have started here at Meadows Nursery this month.

Birthdays

We would like to wish our friend Hector and Ruby a very happy 2^nd birthday and also Emma and Rengim a happy 1^st birthday.

Robert Burns Tea Party

We celebrated Burns Day on 25^th January by having a tea party at nursery. We made yummy shortbread, danced to Scottish music and (the best part) was our mums and dads spent the afternoon playing with us.

We had a great time at our tea party and really enjoyed showing our parents our favourite toys and what we like to do here at nursery.

The Animal Room

We have enjoyed many baking activities this month with our teacher Caitlin. We made delicious shortbread for our Burns tea party. We helped to add the mixture to a big bowl and stirred it using a wooden spoon. Sometimes we need a little help but it is always lots of fun.

The Tree Room

In the Tree Room this month our teachers made a big soft play area for us to climb, jump and roll on. It was great fun! We have large soft play blocks that we used to create a wall around two huge beanbags. We had so much fun jumping off them and landing on the soft beanbags, we laughed lots doing this.

We have also been doing lots of dancing in the Tree Room this month. We enjoyed dancing to Scottish music at our Burns Tea Party, and we also enjoyed dancing with the Pom poms and streamers.

The Bird Room

The children all really like seeing their reflection in the new coloured mirrors and the new shakers that are great fun at music time.

 

 

Hedgehogs News December 2016

Birthdays

We would like to wish Rafi a very happy 2^nd birthday, we hope that you had a fantastic day. Thank you very much for the delicious biscuits you brought in for us!

Christmas Party

This month at nursery we celebrated Christmas by having a party .We baked yummy cakes with our teachers leading up to our party, we hope you all enjoyed them. We sang many Christmas songs and were joined by Boogie Beats who came and played party games with us. It was great fun and even our mummies, daddies and grandparents joined in the fun!

We had a very special visitor who came to our party – Santa Claus! Santa brought us all a special present, it was great to meet him.

We have all completed our Christmas crafts and now taken them home.

The Animal Room

We enjoyed baking delicious cheese scones for our Christmas party. We helped our teacher to add the mixture to a big bowl and stirred it using a wooden spoon. Sometimes we need a little help but it is always lots of fun.

We also enjoyed playing with the playdough and made it green and red for Christmas.

The Tree Room

We have enjoyed dancing in the Tree Room this month! We have streamers and Pom Poms to hold as we jump up and down. We think this is fantastic and laugh lots while we do this.

At song time we have been learning Christmas songs. Lizzie has been coming to see us on a Monday and Friday morning to play the guitar and the piano with us. We have been learning Rudolph the red nosed reindeer, Jingle bells and We wish you a merry Christmas. We enjoy our time with Lizzie and always have a song to ask her to play for us. Our favourites are : Ba Ba black sheep, Old McDonald and Twinkle Twinkle little star.

The Bird Room

This month we have enjoyed playing with the wooden blocks and balls. We have been practising building tall towers and we giggle lots when they fall down.

We have had new children settling into our nursery and they have been enjoying crawling around the room exploring our toys. We have been showing them what toys we like to play with best. Our teachers told us that we are ‘being kind’ and ‘being good by sharing’.

 

Hedgehogs News November 2016

We would like to wish Kitty a big happy 1^st birthday! We hope you had a magical day, from all of your friends at Meadows Nursery.

We would also like to welcome a few new friends, Arran, Emily, Fin and Ruby to the nursery who have joined us this month.

We are looking forward to you playing with us and can’t wait to show you all of the best toys!

Pyjama Day

We had a pyjama day at nursery to raise money for Children in Need!

We got to wear our pyjamas to nursery for the day, even the teachers took part! We also had a bake sale to raise money which will go to a good cause.

Book Week

To celebrate Book Week at nursery we got the chance to bring in our favourite book from home and dress up as our favourite story book character. The Gruffalo decided to come to nursery that day!

Christmas

We have had a fun and exciting month at nursery getting ready for Christmas. We have been making a variety of Christmas crafts to take home to our family in the Animal Room and we have had such a good time gluing, sticking, painting, and adding coloured glitter to everything we can!

We have enjoyed exploring a variety of textures though our hands, fingers and even our feet! We don’t want to give the surprise away but we have been making gifts to take home. We decorated a calendar adding a lovely Christmas poem. We have also decorated a glass candle holder, we have made our Christmas cards, a decoration for our Christmas tree at home and a special bag to put everything we made into. We have been very busy!

Colours

We have been exploring colours this month in The Tree Room. We have been looking through colour books at story time, playing with the coloured elephants and sorting them into matching coloured bags. We also made a colour sorting box, we cut holes out and coloured around them red, blue and green and we practiced putting coloured balls into the correct holes. We really enjoyed doing this and some of us are doing well learning the names of a few colours.

Bird Room

We have enjoyed having quiet stories in the Bird Room, relaxing on the comfy rugs and lie back on the cushions and having a story with our teachers. We have also been playing with the discovery bottles a lot this month: water with glitter, beads, coloured lollipop sticks, pom-poms, but we like the loud ones that rattle best of course!

 

 

Hedgehogs News October 2016

Firstly we would like to wish Charlie, Chunyi, Reuben, Branwen, Carlotta, Anna, Pearl and Isabella a big happy 2^nd Birthday!

We have had a very fun, messy, exciting October here at Meadows Nursery and we would like to share it with you.

The Animal Room

The Animal Room is the room where all the little artists get to make the most of using the paint, glue, junk modelling, play dough, crayons and chalk. We love it! This month we made salt dough using flour, salt and water, our teacher helped by using Halloween shaped cutters and cut out a mixture of ghosts and bats. We then put them into the oven and, once they were hard, we painted them and took them home to hang up for a Halloween decoration at our house!

We also completed our Autumn display. We created many pictures using leaves that we had collected while we were out for nursery walks to Meadows park. We had the choice to paint, glue and colour leaves using crayons and then stick them onto a variety of coloured paper. We got very sticky!

The Tree Room

We really enjoy playing in our role play corner, exploring the different utensils that we have, making ‘meals’ and ‘cups of tea’ for our friends and of course our teachers, so our teachers thought it would be a nice idea if we had a teddy bears picnic here at nursery! We brought our favourite soft toy from home and we made them tea, coffee and they even had a yummy cake!

We also had a ‘Book of the Week’, where each child got the chance to bring in their favourite book from home. We took special turns of reading the different books, we loved sitting in our cosy story corner listening to our favourite books and sharing them with friends.

The Bird Room

In the Bird Room this month we have enjoyed exploring the different resources that we have. We have been playing with the old mobile phones and cameras, putting the phones to our ears and phoning our mummies and daddies. This makes us smile lots!

We have also enjoyed playing with the natural resources such as the sea shells, acorns and the wooden resources.

Halloween Party

We also celebrated Halloween at nursery by having a tea party with our friends, teachers and even our mummies and daddies came. For our tea party we baked cakes, made decorations and we even dressed up! It’s was lots of fun having our mummies and daddies here to play at nursery.

 

Hedgehogs News September 2016

We would all like to wish Happy Birthday to Julek and Krishna who have turned 1 and Isabella who has turned 2 this month!

Tree Room

In the Tree Room this month our main focus and the children’s interest has been role play and dressing up. We changed our dressing up area to Doctors which the children have all enjoyed, dressing up as doctors and playing doctors with their friends. The older Hedgehogs have been doing a range of table top activities such as puzzles, sorting eggs, sorting games and magnetic letter and numbers.  These activities help the children develop their fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

Bird Room

In the Bird Room our younger Hedgehogs have been using crayons and chalk to mark-make on paper and chalk boards. We have also enjoyed exploring our sensory baskets.  Favourite this month has been the shakers and musical instruments making lots of different sounds.

Animal Room

We have had fun and messy activities this month. We have been doing lots of mark-making on the white board using coloured pens attached to cars, rolling the cars to make different shapes and patterns.  We have also been exploring lots of natural resources in the texture tray exploring textures such as leaves, grass, pine cones, shells and sticks.  The children have also used the grass and leaves with glue, sticking them down to create their own pictures.

Garden

The Hedgehogs have enjoyed using paint brushes and water pretending to paint the walls and toys of the garden, making different shapes and patterns. We have also had fun using the bikes and buggies this month.

 

 

 

Hedgehogs News August 2016

We would like to give a big welcome to William, Krishna, Emma and Rafi who have all joined the Hedgehogs this month.

Tree Room

In the Tree Room the children’s interest have been exploring and sorting puzzles. Animal puzzles have been the children’s favourite. The children have been matching the animals together, naming the animals and making the sounds of the animals. This helps the children to develop their fine motor skills and to learn animal names and sounds through this activity.  The children have also shown interest in stories and enjoy looking through and listening to different stories at story/song time.  Some of our older Hedgehogs enjoy having some quiet time sitting in the story corner looking through books.

Bird Room

We have lots of new toys for the children to explore in our cosy natural Bird Room. The younger children have enjoyed exploring lots of sensory baskets such as pine cones, willow balls, wooden pegs, materials, textured sponges and many more.

Animal Room

The children have been doing lots of fun messy play this month, using a range of glue/paint materials for the children to explore and create their own pictures for our display. Some of the children preferred to use their hands and fingers in the paint to explore the texture and made lots of patterns on the paper.  The children showed an interest in animals this month so we made our very own safari to explore.  We did this by using the large texture tray with sand and lots of wild animals. The younger children enjoyed sitting in the large tray to explore the sand and animals with their hands and feet.

Garden

The children have been interested in water play out in the garden this month exploring coloured and soapy water with their hands and using a range of toys such as jugs, cups, boats and fish to play in the water with. We have also been using the small and large crates in the garden. The children have enjoyed sitting in the crates and doing lots of singing and actions such as ‘Row Row Row your Boat’ and ‘Wheels on the Bus’ which have been the two most favourite songs this month.

 

Hedgehogs News July 2016

We would all like to welcome Julek and Chunyi who have both started with the Hedgehogs this month!

We would also like to wish Happy Birthday to Myles who has turned 2 this month.

The Hedgehogs have enjoyed a range of fun activities in the play rooms and also in the garden, enjoying the sunshine!

Tree Room & Bird Room

This month in the Tree room the children’s main interests have been role-playing with puppets and making a puppet show. The children have also been ‘transporting’ items from one object to another, opening and closing boxes and tubs, which helps to develop their fine-motor skills.

We have also had fun exploring with the dinosaurs and making lots of dinosaur noises!

Animal Room

The Hedgehogs have enjoyed lots of messy play activities, using paint and gluing materials to make pictures for our display board. We have also loved splashing in the water tray with a range of utensils such as bowls, spoons and whisks to mix the water and make bubbles!

Garden Play

We have been making the most of the lovely sunshine and getting lots of time outside. The children have been exploring with the water trays out in the garden, splashing and sitting in the water and playing with the balls and water toys. We have also been on trips to Meadows Park. The children have been developing their gross motor skills by climbing up the big steps to the slide and also running around on the big grass area.

 

Hedgehogs News June 2016

This month the Hedgehogs have had a busy and fun month and enjoyed a range of fun and exciting activities.

Tree Room

In the Tree Room we have a construction work-shop area, where we enjoyed dressing up as builders, wearing vests and builders hats. We have had a range of different tools to explore and a builder’s work bench to use the tools on. The children have been very interested in dressing up as ‘Bob the Builder’ and helping to ‘fix’ things using their tools, whilst taking turns with friends interacting together and developing their fine motor skills.  Our favourite song whilst playing in the work-shop has been “Bob the Builder”!

Animal Room

The children have shown an interest in trains, so our main focus in messy play was making our own trains using a range of junk materials such as boxes, tubes, milk bottle, bottle lids and a choice of gluing/ painting material. The Hedgehogs used their own imagination to create their very own trains.

Bird Room

The younger Hedgehogs have enjoyed time in the Bird Room using baby walkers and pulling themselves up or cruising by holding on to furniture and becoming more mobile and confident on their feet. We have also enjoyed sensory play with a variety of textures such as sand, water, glitter, foam, oats and paint, using texture gloves to feel and explore the textures through the gloves.

Outdoor Play

We have been spending lots of time in the garden in the sunshine (and also the rain!). We have enjoyed being out in the rain with our wellington boots on and splashing in the puddles. We have also been developing our gross motor skills and balancing whilst making an obstacle course using crates, tyres and balancing beams, walking across the beams whilst balancing and jumping from tyre to tyre.

 

Hedgehogs News May 2016

We would like to welcome Sebastian who has joined the Hedgehogs this month!

This month our main focus has been mark-making activities. The children have had lots of fun exploring with coloured water, making patterns on the chalk board and on paper. We also did this in the garden, using the paint brushes with coloured water to paint the walls and the ground.

 

Our favourite song has been “Sleeping Dinosaurs “. The children have had lots of fun doing dinosaur actions and making lots of dinosaur noises. We also had lots of big dinosaurs to play with and explore in our sand tray and also making dinosaur prints using paint and the dinosaur paws.

The younger Hedgehogs have been exploring with our sensory bags in the garden. The bags include a range of sensory objects, balls, jars and bottles and a range of materials to touch and feel and explore. The older Hedgehogs have had fun and active activities in the garden, including mark making, tunnels, hoops, balls balancing beams to develop their gross motor skills and balance. We also had lots of fun making a train and boat using crates whilst singing lots of song.