Yellow Brick Rd Nursery Highwoods

This week at Little Dots, we are supporting the children in learning about the wider world, diversity, creativity, and community, while developing a strong sense of belonging and respect for others and their environment.

In the Small World Area 🌍

The children will explore an animal habitat sensory setup featuring a variety of textures and environments to represent different biomes. This encourages the children to learn about the different habitats animals live in and how environments can vary around the world.

For example, a swamp biome may include darker green colours and damp textures, while a plains biome may feature lighter greens and flowers. Through sensory exploration and imaginative play, the children will deepen their understanding of the natural world and develop curiosity about different living environments.

In the Art Area 🎨🫟

The children will take part in an activity inspired by the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar. They will practise their fine motor skills by threading and attaching different leaves onto a string to help the caterpillar “grow.”

This activity also supports early literacy and mathematical development, as the children will count the leaves together and discuss the story sequence. In addition, it introduces children to life cycles and helps them understand how caterpillars grow and transform into butterflies.

In the Home Corner 🍦

We will be creating a melted ice cream sensory activity using gloop to imitate the texture and movement of melting ice cream. This gives the children an opportunity to explore how different materials respond to touch.

The children will notice that gentle movements make the gloop flow, while firmer pressure causes it to become more solid. Activities such as this encourage curiosity, creativity, and early scientific thinking through safe, hands-on exploration.

Within the Sensory Area ✋

The sensory area will include small bowls containing a variety of materials such as flour, water, and cereal. These experiences encourage the children to investigate different textures using their hands while strengthening their fine motor skills.

Exploring familiar household materials also supports the children’s understanding of how materials can move and change when handled in different ways, helping to build confidence, curiosity, and respect for their environment.

Inside the Reading Area 📚📖

As always, books will be available for the children to independently explore or share with an adult throughout the day.

In addition, we will be holding rhyme time sessions where the children can join in with familiar nursery rhymes and songs. These sessions help to build confidence, support early literacy and language development, and encourage listening and communication skills in a fun and engaging way.

This weeks focus from our statement is:
“Children will learn about the wider world, diversity, creativity and community, developing a good sense of belonging and respect.”

🎨 In the art area we have a lovely activity set up all about “Handas suprise”. In this activity the children can look at the different fruits that feature inside of the book and also paint them. This activity supports children with learning about the wider world, fine motor skills and hand eye coordination.

🦒 In the small world area we have a lovely safari activity set out. Children can learn about the different animals from different parts of the world. This activity helps support the children with their communication and language, understanding of the world and creative play.

🏠 In the home area there is an activity set out to support children to learn the differences and similarities between themselves and other children. This focuses on diversity and having a good senses of belonging and respect.

🌳 In the garden we have a lovely range of different activities set out. In the tuff tray we have the England flag messy play out, here we can talk about our flag and the World Cup. We also have a artic water play set up where we can discuss where different animals live and their living conditions. In the mud kitchen we have a lemonade station set up where the children can work independently or as a team to make their own lemonade. These activities help promote and support communication and language, colour recognition, exploring colour mixing, fine and gross motor skills and learning about the wider world.

Good Afternoon- ready for another week of engaging and inviting activities ☺️

In our garden area we have our mud kitchen area set up with different senses eg smell,touch and sight . 👀👁️🫷🏼The children can use the mud kitchen area for loads of different things whether this being to make mud pies , ice cream or to mix , pour and stir using the resources . In our water tray we have water with a flavouring in it of mint again for the children to use their senses and to talk about what they can smell etc . 💦Added into the water we have our sea animals and water boats which are very popular in our setting , our children love water play whether this being inside or outside ⛵️. The children love exploring the tray and seeing what they can find . In our big tuff tray we have a car wash set up , children can make the dirty cars all clean again by using the cloths , sponges and clean water . Once they are clean they can make them muddy or dirty again with the dirty water ready for the other children in the garden . 🚗💦🫧

In our home corner we have a tuff tray set up including numbers and bugs , the children can use the tweezers to get the insects and count how many they can pick up 🦋🐛🐜. This activity helps to develop children’s gross motor skills , hand to eye coordination and mathematics . 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣

In our art area we have a colour monster activity set out, again one of our most popular resources being our colour monsters💛🩵🩷💚❤️🩶 the children can use the colour monsters and talk about their feelings with their peers or an adult at the activity and read the book to understand their emotions . We encourage children to talk about their feelings daily aswell as using our emotions board . Talking about emotions helps children to build emotional literacy and transforming overwhelming physical feelings into manageable words.🖤

In our construction area we have train tracks with different resources including leafs, acorns, and some trains.🚂 In this area children can promote their understanding of the world, for example learning about why trains are used for transport and how they work, also all off the different resources such as the leafs too. Children can use their communication and language discussing this activity with one another, for example whose turn it is to play with the trains etc and also team building with the train tracks. Literacy can also be promoted with the train story included in this activity, an adult can read this story to the children and also test their knowledge on the story.🚂🍃🌿

In Little Dots this week we will be focusing on communication and language skills. 💛

Our statement for this week from our curriculum is “Children will become confident communicators with strong communication and language skills” 🗣️

SMALL WORLD AREA 🌍

In our small world area we have set up an animal rescue activity, this activity helps our Little Dots with their fine motor, hand to eye coordination, problem solving, critical thinking and concentration skills.

This activity is also great for communication and language skills as we used words such as rescue, save, stuck, free, unwrap and peel. We also spoke about what the animals are that we rescued.

SENSORY AREA 👂 👀

In our sensory area we have made up bottle shakers, using different materials in them for our Little Dots to explore the different sounds and effects they make. This supports fine and gross motor skills, understanding the world around them, expressive arts and design and PSED.

This activity also support communication and language skills, as we used words such as loud, quiet, heavy, light, sparkly and float.

EXPRESSIVE ARTS AND DESIGN 🎭

In our art area our Little Dots did animal prints with potato paw print stamps. This activity is great for our Little Dots fine motor skills, expressive arts and design, mathematics, understanding the world and PSED skills.

This activity also supports communication and language as we talked about what animals prints we were using and the colour, we also discussed what the texture of the paint and potato felt like.

HOME CORNER 🏡

In our home corner we made play-doh for our Little Dots to encourage imaginative play in home baking. This activity is good for fine motor skills, mathematics, PSED, understanding the world and expressive art and design skills.

This activity also supports communication and language as we used many different words such as mix, roll, knead, bake, cook and recipes.

BOOK AREA 📚

In our book area we are focusing on the Giraffe in the book Dear Zoo, using different resources to represent the height of the Giraffe. This activity supports our Little Dots with their mathematic, physical development and expressive arts and design.

This activity also support communication and language skills as we discussed the books, talked about the height of a giraffe. We used words such as tall, high, taller, smaller and height.

Today staff from across all four settings took part in some extremely inspiring baby room practice training.

We focused on babies feeling safe, loved and ready to learn and how to recognise and support this alongside different attachment styles and baby led planning!

We have all learnt so much from this and have ideas ready to implement into all four settings next week.

Thank you to stronger practice hubs for this and a lovely lunch too with free resources 😊

Glinda has been to the salon and looking fabulous! ❤️

We have so much more planned for our children now we have means of safe travel to take larger groups and our SEN children out safely, we have always included the local community and real life experiences into our curriculum and this has opened the door to so much more for us!

⭐️ beach trips
⭐️library trips
⭐️forest school sessions
⭐️sensory experiences
⭐️pumpkin patches
⭐️theatre shows
⭐️woodland walks
⭐️santa visits
⭐️farm and zoo trips
⭐️care home visits

So many opportunities for our wonderful children.

www.yellowbrickroadnursery.co.uk

Good morning everybody, we hope you all had a lovely half term 😊

Our focus off this week is “Children will develop early literacy, numeracy and thinking skills through purposeful play based learning”.

Outside in our garden we have our mud kitchen, tuff tray and water tray where all children can really work on their fine motor skills, in our mud kitchen children can explore with the shaving foam, coloured water, and leaves to make different things such as potions! 🧪 In our tuff tray children can use their fine motor skills by using the syringes by collecting the water and squirting it into the bowls, children can also use their mathematical skills by measuring the water and identifying the different colours off the flowers. 🌷 In our water tray we have bubbly water with different letters, children can use their literacy skills by identifying what letters there are and which letters are in their names. They can also experiment with the water by pouring the water onto our waterfall, which helps encourage children to use their fine motor skills also.🫧 We also have our book corner which provides a calm environment for the children where staff can read the children stories which promotes children’s literacy skills. 📚

In our kitchen area we have an activity providing shaving foam, coloured water and syringes. This activity can help children with colour recognition, mixing the different colours together, fine motor skills by using the syringes, also measuring and pouring the water promoting their mathematical skills. Children can do this activity in a group which encourages children to use their communication and language skills. Children can also explore the different textures from the foam to the water. 💦

In our construction area we have our colour monsters and matching coloured bricks. This activity also promotes children’s mathematical skills with colour recognition, and colour matching with the bricks and colour monsters. Communication and language skills also, children can communicate with one another regarding the activity. We also have the colour monster book out which promotes children’s literacy skills, staff can read this story to all the children whilst they take part in the activity.📕

In our art area we also have another colour monsters activity, children can recognise their emotions in this activity especially for our school leavers by understanding how they are feeling about starting school. A member of staff can also read the colour monster school story to the children which can promote children’s literacy skills. Communication and language skills are also encouraged in this activity where children can communicate to one another about how they are feeling, also to staff. Mathematical skills also with using the different coloured crayons using their fine motor skills, and hand to eye coordination by colouring the colour monster in.✏️

Welcome back Little Dots 💛hope everyone had a wonderful, safe half term in the sunshine ☀️

We have now created a ‘sun cream’ station which will be based just outside our main door. We understand how busy mornings can be with children & babies, please feel free to use before drop off to ensure your child/children are ready for the day ahead. We do have parent permissions to re-apply nursery suncream throughout the day, but if you wish to use your own, please provide a labelled bottle in their bag. ☺️

Another note - if anyone has any old sun hats they no longer use, we will be accepting donations for spares to ensure we are covered and well protected outside 🧢 thank you in advance 💛

We have had a change around in the room to keep things fresh ✨

Little Dots would like to share with you our EYFS statement we are focusing on this week:

“Children learn and develop through playing, exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking.”

🏡Home Corner – Coloured Pasta
To encourage the children to explore textures and colours through sensory play while developing their fine motor skills using scoops and bowls. The activity also supports early mathematical language such as full, empty, more and less alongside imaginative play. June also marks pride awareness month, we created a colourful rainbow using pasta to symbolise this. We like to make sure we are inclusive of all celebrations and diversity. 🌈

🌍 Small World Area – Clean the Beach Tuff Tray
To support children’s understanding of caring for the environment through hands-on play. Children will develop fine motor control using tweezers while exploring sand, shells and water and learning about keeping beaches clean and safe for animals.

🎨 Art Table – Dinosaur Footprint Painting
To encourage creativity and self-expression through sensory mark making using dinosaur feet and paint. Children will explore patterns, prints and movement while developing their communication and imagination around national Dinosaur Day, today 🦖

✋🏼Sensory Area – Shaving Foam and Coloured Paints
To provide a calming sensory experience where children can explore mixing colours, textures and tools. The activity supports curiosity, language development and fine motor skills through open-ended messy play.

📚 Reading Area – Jigsaw Puzzles and Books
To promote emerging Literacy, concentration and problem-solving skills through sharing books and completing puzzles. Children will be encouraged to develop communication, turn-taking and independent thinking in a calm environment.