Hillside Day Nursery and Forest School

🫖🥞 Mud Kitchen Fun ✨🌿

What a wonderful morning of messy, imaginative fun in our mud kitchen! The children loved working together as they filled, poured, tipped, and mixed, creating delicious mud pancakes and cups of tea for their friends.

Many of the children were exploring the transporting schema, showing a strong interest in moving water from the water butt to the mud kitchen. They carefully filled saucepans and teapots before carrying them across to continue their play, repeating this process with great concentration and purpose.

Schemas are repeated patterns of play that help children make sense of the world around them. The transporting schema supports problem-solving, coordination, spatial awareness, and mathematical thinking, while also encouraging communication, teamwork, and imaginative play.

It was lovely to watch them sharing ideas, taking turns, and using their imaginations as they played together 💚✨

🌿🥞 Elderflower Pancakes 🥞🌿

The children made vegan elderflower pancakes using freshly picked elderflowers.

They enjoyed helping to measure the ingredients, mix the batter, and sprinkle the elderflowers into the mixture.

🌼💚 A wonderful hands-on activity that developed fine motor skills, and helped the children understand how natural ingredients can be foraged and used to create delicious food.

They all enjoyed their tasty treat🌼💚

🦕 Dinosaur Day! 🦖

Today we celebrated Dinosaur Day with a Dinosaur themed invitation to play, building on the children’s keen interest and love of dinosaurs! 🦕🦖 🦕

✨ The children enjoyed painting, exploring colours, and creating

As they played the children shared their dinosaur knowledge, used their imaginations, and developed their fine motor skills through creative play 🎨🦖✨

🌿 We Are Recruiting! 🌿

Hillside Day Nursery is excited to offer an opportunity for a Nursery Apprentice to join our team from September 2026.

This is a fantastic chance to start a rewarding career in early years education while gaining a recognised qualification and earning a wage at the same time. You’ll learn from experienced practitioners, gain valuable hands-on experience, and be part of our nurturing environment, complete with an onsite Forest School and our journey towards Curiosity Approach accreditation.

If you’re passionate about working with children, love learning through play and nature, and are eager to develop your skills, we’d love to hear from you!

📧 To apply, please email your CV to: [email protected]

May at the forest… 🌳

We’ve been busy celebrating Beltane, playing in the rain, splashing in muddy puddles, exploring nature, blowing bubbles, whittling sticks, creating with clay and making the most of every wild little moment spring has brought us ✨🍃☔️🪵

🐝 Happy World Bee Day 🐝

Learning about bees through stories, sensory exploration, and hands-on invitations to play

Exploring colours, textures, and creativity while learning about the importance of protecting bees and caring for nature.

🐝