Squirrels News – March 2015

Sensory/ Messy Play

This month we have been fundraising for Red Nose Day! We helped to make red cakes for the bake sale. We added lots of red food colouring, and made some red icing to add on top too. Then we added a yummy chocolate Malteser! We made Mothers Day cards for our mummys in the shape of mugs! We used lots of bright colours and glitter to show them how much we love them! As it is now Springtime, we have started making our Spring display and have added some sheep too! Some of the Squirrels wanted to add colour to the sheep, so we said they were Baa Baa Black sheep’s  colourful friends! Easter is also coming up soon, so we started making our Easter Nests, using lots of yummy chocolate and cornflakes!

Cognitive/Role Play

We have been pretending to be hairdressers too with the dolls! We had hairdryers, and brushes and lots more to role-play with. Some of us were even making the noise of the hair driers with our mouths! For World Book Day we dressed up as our favourite story characters – we had Spiderman, the Gruffalo and a very scary monster from a Pip and Posy Story. We brought the tents out too this month, and made dens using lots of material! We would then jump out and shout peek a boo! We have also been working our problem solving skills by using the jigsaws! We have some new Gruffalo jigsaws, and we were trying to complete, the 2, 3, 4 and 5 piece puzzles! Some of them were a bit tricky but we managed them with a bit of help. Pirates invaded the Squirrels this month too! They were looking for buried treasure in the sand and making treasure maps using tea bags! It was very exciting.

Garden/ Physical Play

The hockey sticks have been out in the garden this month, to try and work on our hand-eye coordination and gross motor skills. We also played some football in the garden using the goal nets. We were trying to kick the balls into the net! It was difficult sometimes, but we managed to score a few goals! We also played hide and seek, where everyone hid under our Green Flag! It was very hard to find everyone!

Squirrels News – February 2015

Sensory/ Messy Play

The Squirrels have had lots of messy play this month! We liked exploring all of the different textures including oats, flour, gluck and pasta! We used our hands to touch and feel how they felt! We also had fun painting with shaving foam! It was very messy. We bathed the babies too with cloths and soapy, bubbly water. Some of us were so wet we even had a bath ourselves! We painted using lots of different resources too, especially our hands and fingers! We also painted with different fruit and veg to see what patterns and shapes we could make. Some of us joined in making sensory bags using lots of different things. We put Wheatabix in one, shaving foam in another, beads, flour and lots of other things!

Cognitive Play

We have been carrying on with our Special Day this month, introducing colours too! We have been bringing in items that are red and yellow! As it is World Book Week coming up, we will start bringing in our favourite books from home too! Some of us have been looking at letters and numbers using the flash cards and magnetic letters. We have also been building up our fine motor skills using the tweezers to pick up pom poms.

Physical Play

Out in the garden we have enjoyed building towers with the big blocks! We have also been singing lots of songs in the garden, including Sleeping Bunnies! Some of us also went on a trip to the park with the Foxes group too! We had lots of fun on the Pirate Ship and going down the slide.

Squirrels News January 2015

Messy/ Sensory Play

This month we have been getting very messy as we have enjoyed painting with lots of different resources! We tried painting with toothbrushes, brushes and bubble wrap! This gave us lots of different textures and patterns. We then tried painting with cars and balls; the cars gave us long straight lines while the balls made the paint splat on the paper! It made us giggle a lot! We have been baking a variety of goods this month too including flapjacks, biscuits and chocolate chip cookies!

Cognitive

Some of the Squirrels have been looking at letters this month too. We were using the magnetic letters lots to observe if we can identify what words go with each letter. We also used the letter sponges to make learning letters much more fun (and messy!). We were practising our problem solving skills too by trying to complete jigsaws; the 2 piece ones were a bit too easy for some of us so we tried the 4 piece puzzles, but they were still a bit difficult.

Outdoor/ Physical Play

We have been exploring the snow out in the garden. It was very cold to touch! We were trying to catch it in our hands and cups but it kept melting! We also had obstacle courses set up in the garden, the Squirrels liked using the bowling pins and balls!

Other News

We have recently started Special Day in the Squirrels where each day someone gets to bring in something from home. For the first week we have been bringing in one of our favourite toys, but we will gradually start bringing in related objects, such as something red or blue or something which has 2 parts.

Squirrels News November 2014

This month the Squirrels have been very creative through painting and gluing. At the start of the month we celebrated bonfire night. We made some beautiful fireworks paintings; we added glitter to make them sparkle like real fireworks. We learnt that fireworks are very “Noisy” and are “hot” so we must not touch them. We watched a clip of fireworks on the Ipad, which had lots of different “colours”. We also looked at some photographs of bonfires, so we decided to create our own bonfire gluings using red, orange and yellow tissue paper. They looked fantastic!

 

 

The Squirrels have enjoyed using their imagination with paint. We used different objects to paint with; lollypop sticks, pegs and toothbrushes. Painting with our hands is our favourite! We enjoyed an experience where we painted with our hands and feet, it was great fun walking and running across the paper to make footprints!

As always we have done some more baking this month. We made some yummy fairy cakes which we then decorated. Also some delicious cookies! We are becoming great bakers and are all becoming familiar with the ingredients. We are fantastic at taking turns and sharing! Well done everyone.

We have also liked some quiet times throughout the month where we have been using construction, caring for our babies and using our problem solving skills; with the linking elephants, counting bears and pin boards.

Squirrels News October 2014

Messy/Creative Play

This month the Squirrels have been experimenting with clean painting. They all created some beautiful pictures by putting clingfilm over the paint paper and using their fingers to draw patterns in the paint. As it has been Halloween this month, the Squirrels had great fun being creative and making spiders from paper plates and pipe cleaners and ghosts with cotton wool for their bodies. Boooo! They also made some spooky Halloween cards to go home.

The Squirrels have really enjoyed exploring the sand tray this month. Their favourite thing to do was to pour the dry sand from one tub to the other! Have a look!

Discovery Play

Throughout October, the Squirrels have been discovering jigsaws more and more. They have been working together using their teamwork skills to try out the trickier puzzles. Well done Squirrels!

The Squirrels have also been discovering and exploring colours and numbers using the sorting and matching toys. We are all getting really good at recognising colours!

Outdoor/Physical Play

Out in the garden the Squirrels have been wrapping up warm to enjoy zooming around on the bikes and scooters. They have also been practicing their hula hooping and crawling through the little tunnels! During our Halloween party we all had a great time dancing to the spooky music!

 

Halloween Party/Role Play

At the end of October we had our Halloween Party. We all had a fantastic time dressing up with all our friends and enjoying some spooky activities. We had spooky, slimy messy play with green spaghetti, jelly and shaving foam! We also enjoyed singing some spooky songs with Lisa and her guitar and tasting our yummy pumpkin soup for snack.

Welcome to Squirrels News September 2014

This month the Squirrels have loved baking. We have made lots of yummy treats to have for snack and go home. We made some fruit scones, blueberry muffins and oatmeal cookies. We are all very good at taking turns and sharing. The Squirrels have been learning about simple measuring during our baking experiences, we have talked about how much of each ingredient we need i.e. 100g. We have also been practising some new skills. We especially liked rolling out the fruit scones and then cutting them into shapes. Evie loves baking when she find out we are baking she gives a big smile and shouts “baking!”.We also made some yummy snacks for our tea party and bake sale for Macmillan Cancer support, where we managed to raise a fantastic £116.03. Thank you to everyone who came along, it was a great day!

We have also been really interested in construction. The Squirrels have used a range of different resources to build with; lego, mobilo, magnetic blocks and stickle bricks. We have been using our imaginations to create and build lots of different things. Our favourites are cars and trains. Connor has especially like using the magnetic blocks. He can build fantastic cars which he likes zooming around the room.

We all had great fun making our new sensory bottles. We made some coloured rice using rice and food colouring to put inside some of them. We used a funnel to help us pour the rice into the bottles it was “funny” watching the rice go into the different bottles. Yelena laughed lots as she poured in the rice. We also made some bottles with glitter and coloured water. We especially like the blue glittery one.

Sensory messy play has been another favourite for us this month. Some of us did not like touching the wet messy play, so we put it all into Ziploc bags for us to explore. We loved it! And our hands stayed nice and clean. Romain loved the bag with gluck inside. He watch closely as the gluck slowly ran around the bag. He also liked squeezing the bag with shaving foam.

Welcome to Squirrels News August 2014

This month we have had a bit of a change within the nursery. The Squirrels group has now split into two separate groups. The Squirrels are now the younger group at 2-2.5 years old and the new group the Foxes are the older group at 2.5-3 years old. The Squirrels currently begin the day downstairs, having free flow and snack. At 10:30 we come upstairs for our activity time. Lunch and sleep remain the same. In the afternoon we now stay upstairs and have snack with the Hedgehogs and go down to the garden at 4:30 with them. The Foxes now spend all day downstairs including lunch and sleep. This is working really well in the nursery.

This month the Squirrels have shown great interest in mark-making with the playdough. At the beginning of the month we used dinosaurs to make marks in the playdough with their feet. We then decided to do our own foot prints; it was very squashy on our feet and got stuck in between our toes. We also used kitchen utensils to make marks in the playdough. We especially like squashing the playdough with the potato mashers and wooden spatulas, causing a pattern to appear.

 

 

Painting has been much fun this month. We used a variety of resources to paint with. We used shower scrunches to splodge the paint onto the paper. We also used the kitchen utensils to paint with. Our favourites were the fish slice and the metal spoons. We especially liked the fish slice as we could splat the paint. Some of us used metal spoons to scoop up the paint and splash it onto the paper. Painting with our hands is our favourite way to paint!

 

 

We have all loved being outside this month. Some of us are getting really good at using the bikes in the garden. The Squirrels all seem to enjoy exploring the sand pit, using the buckets and spades. We all like using chalk outside adding some colour to the garden. Some of us can now draw circles and even faces! We also had a trip to the park were which we all had a blast. Climbing up the ladder to the slide and zooming down and swinging high on the swings were great fun.