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Monday 8:30am - 3pm Tuesday 8:30am - 3pm Wednesday 8:30am - 3pm Thursday 8:30am - 3pm Friday 8:30am - 3pm

Apple Tree Montessori Nursery School, Rottingdean

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Brighton and Hove
Apple Tree Montessori Nursery School, Rottingdean

“Small is Beautiful”
"Providing the best early years experiences for all children in our care." Funded spaces available.

Apple Tree Montessori Nursery School is an independent nursery school based in Rottingdean, Brighton and founded upon the cornerstones of the internationally famous Montessori method of leadership and tuition. All children aged between 2 and 6 years old are warmly welcomed to our classroom, registration available from birth. We are proud to be a part of the Apple Tree Nursery Schools group.

04/09/2026

We have had a lovely and busy few days back at nursery, filled with lots of exploring and learning.

🎂 There was a very special 4th birthday to celebrate this week! 🥳🎉 The children loved joining in with our birthday tradition as we walked around the sun together, counting each year that had passed. ☀️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♂️

🐛There was great excitement when the children spotted a caterpillar in the garden! 🐛🌿 Everyone gathered around to have a closer look and carefully watched as it wriggled along. The children decided that our little visitor needed somewhere safe to stay, so it was kindly booked into our bug hotel! 🏨🐞

🧩The children have really enjoyed the slower pace of the new term, and it has been wonderful to see them settling into their routines and becoming deeply engaged in their work. 💛 We have seen some fantastic examples of independent Montessori learning this week. 🌟

It has been lovely to stand back and watch the children confidently choose their own activities, work things out for themselves and proudly complete a task. 🌱✨

🍂 It is beginning to feel like Autumn is on its way! 🍁🍂 The children have started noticing little changes happening around us. The mornings are feeling a little cooler, the evenings are getting darker earlier, and we are beginning to see leaves changing colour and falling from the trees. 🌳

17/07/2026

🌟 This Week at Nursery:

🕷️ Mini Beast of the Week: Spiders! This week we've been learning all about spiders! Here are some of the fun facts we discovered:

🦵 If a spider loses a leg, it can grow a new one back
🕷️ Not all spiders spin webs — some just wait and pounce on their dinner!
🦖 Spiders have been around since before the dinosaurs

🎪 Parachute Play
We had a wonderful time with the parachute this week — up and down, up and down! ⬆️⬇️ We practised running underneath it while our friends held it up high, and we sang songs together as we shook it. The giggles when running under the parachute were the best part of the day! 😄

🦋 Talking About Friendship and Change
With September on the horizon, we've been having gentle chats about friendship and change. As our older children get ready to leave for "big school," things will feel a little different for our 2 and 3 year olds. We're taking time to talk about these feelings together, so everyone feels safe, supported, and ready for what's next. 💛

🎂 Birthday Celebrations
This week we celebrated a very special 4th birthday! 🎉 We gathered together and sang our Montessori birthday song, walking around the sun once for each year of life. 🌞 Happy birthday to our wonderful friend!

💦 Water Play

With the sunshine still keeping things warm, we cooled off with lots of water play! We had:
🫧 Bubbles galore
🧽 Sponges for squeezing and squelching
🥤 Pouring water between all sorts of different vessels
Lots of splashing, giggling, and cooling down in the sunshine! ☀️

🎈 Getting Ready for Our Summer Party

Next Monday will be the last day of nursery for all our children and our school leavers, and we can't wait to celebrate! We've been busy preparing for our summer party, and our photo backdrop is all ready and waiting. 📸 We're so excited to celebrate as they get ready for their next big adventure!

10/07/2026

🌳✨ What a wonderful week at nursery! ✨🌳

🐾 St Auburn's Field Play Area — the children had the best time:
🧗 Climbing and jumping to their hearts' content 🎶 Singing songs together
🧺 Snack time in the shade 🍐 We went on a fruit tree hunt and guessed what was growing — we spotted a pear tree!

🏴‍☠️ In the Garden ⚓ Pirate adventures a plenty 🐞 Checking in on our residents at the nursery bug hotel 🌤️ Staying cool in the shade while digging in the sand 💦 Water play galore — and yes, some wonderfully slimy, sticky mud was made!

🧠 Montessori activity: Knobbed Cylinders 🔵 The children enjoyed working with the k**bbed cylinders this week — a classic Montessori sensorial material! 🖐️ Each cylinder has a little k**b, held between thumb and two fingers — this is called the "tripod grip," and it's the exact grip children later use to hold a pencil. So really, this activity is quietly preparing little hands for writing! 📏 The blocks come in sets that vary by height, width, or both — so children are learning to visually discriminate size and dimension, matching each cylinder to its correct hole.

Why we love this activity:
✋ Builds fine motor skills and hand strength
👀 Develops visual discrimination (spotting subtle size differences)
🧩 Introduces the idea of a "control of error" — if a cylinder doesn't fit, the child knows to try again themselves, no adult correction needed!
🧘 Encourages concentration, patience, and independence.

In Montessori, we call this kind of focused, purposeful activity "work" — because to a child, it is meaningful work, and we take it just as seriously as they do! 💛

🦋 Mini Beast Topic of the Week: Butterflies, Moths & Caterpillars.
We've been learning all about their incredible life cycle! 🐛 Did you know? A caterpillar has over 4,000 muscles (humans only have around 650!) — that's why they're so brilliant at wiggling, gripping, and munching their way around.

💬 Chat with your little one at home: Ask them what a caterpillar turns into, and see if they can name the stages — egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly! I wonder if you will spot some butterflies in your garden this weekend?

03/07/2026

🖍️ Pencil Power! – Our little artists have been practising their pencil grip by drawing super swirly snails – lots of concentration (and tongues poking out in focus)!

🐌 Minibeast Mania – This week's stars of the show are snails and slugs! We've become expert minibeast detectives, hunting high and low in every nook and cranny to find our slimy friends. 🔍 On the Hunt – Under logs, behind pots, in shady corners… nowhere is safe from our curious explorers!

💦 Splish Splash Water Play – Petals and pouring galore! The children have been busy filling, tipping, and pouring water between all sorts of vessels – brilliant for those little hand muscles.

🌟 Eager Learners – Honestly, the enthusiasm this week has been wonderful to see – so many bright, curious minds soaking everything up!

🎒 Big School Visitors! – We were delighted to welcome teachers from both of our village schools, who popped in to meet the children who will be moving on in a few weeks. It was lovely for them to see our children playing and learning with their friends.

💛 Talking Feelings – With big changes on the horizon, we've been chatting about starting school – sharing excitements and worries, and reminding everyone that it's okay to feel all sorts of feelings about it!

26/06/2026

☀️ It's been an extremely hot one this week! The children have done brilliantly in the heat and we've made sure to keep cool with lots of fun activities.

💦 Lots of water play to keep everyone refreshed — we used sponges to soak up water and squeeze it out, which is great for building hand strength and fine motor skills ready for writing.

🌞 We made beautiful collages of the sun using lots of different colours and textures, celebrating this crazy heatwave we've been having.

🐛 Our mini beasts of the week were worms and woodlice — we coloured pictures, practised tracing them, and learned lots of interesting facts about how they live. We even went on a little hunt around the garden to see if we could spot any for real.

🧊 To help everyone cool down, we enjoyed refreshing cups of water with ice cubes, and made sure to spend plenty of time playing in the shade.

🔤 We practised our alphabet out in the garden, taking it in turns to have a go — a lovely way to combine learning with some fresh air.

🤞 Fingers crossed it cools down a little next week so we can get out and about and explore a bit more!

19/06/2026

🏨 The bug hotel continues to a big hit – we've been peeking inside to check on new guests, and a centipede has officially checked in! 🐛

🔍 We've introduced our new mini beasts chart to help us identify creatures we might spot in the garden. 🐞

🇷🇴 One of our children brought in a Romanian book to share, so we enjoyed looking through the pictures together as a group. We also read our Romanian/English book to the children. 📖✨

🦋 Our mini beast of the week is the dragonfly! We learned all about where they live, what they eat, and had lots of fun making our own dragonflies to take home. 🎨

👨‍👧 For Father's Day, the children got creative making "My Dad Rocks" cards ready for Sunday! 🪨💙

🌱 In the garden, our beetroot is sprouting up nicely, and the children have been carefully watering the carrots – we're all patiently waiting for them to grow! 🥕💧

🐞This week the children have been practising how to draw ladybirds! 🎨 They've been having a go at the spots, the wings, and getting the shape just right – lovely to see their little artistic skills growing alongside our mini beast theme! 🖍️

12/06/2026

🐜 This week we learnt about ants! We headed outside on a big ant hunt — but the rain had other plans for us!

🐌 Due to all the wet weather, we mostly found snails on our bug hunt — an exciting discovery all the same!

🌿 We continued decorating our bug hotel with natural materials foraged from outside 🪵 Bark and logs collected from the garden were carefully placed to make cosy bug homes 🍂 Old leaves were added — perfect hiding spots for tiny creatures!🎋 Bamboo sections tucked in to give our bug residents their own little rooms.

🌱 In the garden the children helped paint plant pots — each one beautifully unique! We filled the pots with fresh compost and got our hands lovely and earthy. Beetroot seeds were planted — we can't wait to watch them grow!

✨ The children have also been busy with their Montessori work this week — showing wonderful focus and independence as always! What a brilliant, busy week! 🐛🌸

05/06/2026

🏨 Our bug hotel is open for business!

We've been busy filling up the rooms in our garden bug hotel with beautiful natural materials found right here in our garden. And the exciting news — we already have our very first guests! 🎉

🐌
The snail room has new residents!
The children were absolutely fascinated, spending lots of time watching the snails move and asking brilliant questions about them. Their curiosity was wonderful to see! 🔍

🪱 A very special garden visitor!
This week we made an exciting discovery in the garden — a real live millipede! 🔍🌿

The children were brilliant scientists, watching it move with its rippling legs and asking so many great questions. Did you know millipedes aren't insects? Insects have 6 legs — millipedes have many, many more! This sparked a wonderful conversation about what makes a mini beast. 🤔💡

🎨 Messy play and colour mixing magic!
We got wonderfully messy with foam and powder paint — and it sparked something special. The children started asking all sorts of questions about colour mixing, so we turned it into our very own experiment! 🧪

Together we explored what colours we could create by mixing — the learning was entirely child-led, which makes it even more special. 🟡 + 🔵 = 🟢

🐞 Mini beast topic: all about ladybirds!
This week we've been learning all about ladybirds — their spots, their colours, and why they're so important in our gardens.

The children have even created their very own ladybirds — we can't wait for you to see their amazing artwork! 🎨❤️

22/05/2026

🐝🌼 World Bee Day – We celebrated Bee Day by making wonderful bees using pine cones, wool, and pom poms. We searched for our bees in the garden and talked about the different parts of a bee and why they are important.

• 🌧️🥧 Mud Kitchen Fun – We made the most of the muddy weather by creating mud pies, squelching, squashing, and exploring different textures outdoors.

• 🐌🌿 Snail Spotting – The rainy weather brought out lots of snails in the garden, and the children enjoyed carefully observing them and talking about where they live.

• ✏️🟡 Letter Formation Practice – We practised our letter formation using sandpaper letters and the sand tray, supporting early writing skills through sensory play.

• 💛😊 Talking About Emotions – Each day we talk about our feelings and explore pictures showing different facial expressions to help us recognise and express emotions.

15/05/2026

🪲 We explored the wonderful world of mini beasts this week! We went on a hunt and discovered woodlice and worms hiding in our outdoor space. The children had a fantastic time learning how to dance like a bee — wiggles and all!

🪥 🦷 We completed our supervised toothbrushing this week — keeping those little smiles sparkling clean! We remind the children that it's so important to brush our teeth twice a day at home too! We had a brilliant activity where we used shaving foam and toothbrushes to scrub the dirt off pretend teeth — a great way to see how brushing works.

🌨️ The hail caused lots of excitement — we watched in wonder as it got heavier and settled on the ground! The children couldn't wait to get their coats on and explore and play outside in it!

Address

The Village Hall, Park Road, Rottingdean
Brighton And Hove
BN27HL

Opening Hours

Monday	8:30am - 3pm
Tuesday	8:30am - 3pm
Wednesday	8:30am - 3pm
Thursday	8:30am - 3pm
Friday	8:30am - 3pm

Telephone

+441273271969

Website

https://appletreenurseryschools.co.uk/

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