Little Doves Day Nursery

Extension of our indoor classroom. Children are eager, exploring materials and properties. Using nature to create. Singing and reading outside. Enjoying shared building and creating stations. Children are proud of their creations showing older children in mix playtime. We made our own paintbrushes out of leaves. Children took interest in the new experiences and sustained interest with adults exploring new ways of using tools and exploring vocabulary.

At Little Doves we use songs as a huge foundation for extending learning, building vocabulary, recognising routines, associating actions and words. Learning about intonation is key for storytelling and communicating.
We continue to celebrate songs everyday!
Children at Little Doves sing spontaneously through play! And as part of routines such as lining up, tidying, in our circle, finding our clothes, washing our hands.
There is a link here for Talk, listen and cuddle website for song ideas.

This week is a celebration of all things Nursery Rhymes! This is a great way to develop your child's attention skills. Our facial and body language is the perfect way to gain attention - you can make these as big as you want and have fun with the rhymes. Some rhymes will also allow for movement such as "sleeping bunnies" - always a firm favourite!
For more ideas check out our FREE downloadable resources: https://www.tlc-essex.info/downloads/

Today we enjoyed nature school in our gardens.
Investigating the loose part mud kitchen, painting on large bed sheets, printing with leaves, climbing and balancing, storytelling, clay station (fine motor skills), den building (Gross motor skills- moving, balancing and co-ordinating) and building bird nests.
Children and staff dressed for all weather's. What do we need to wear? Thinking about climate. We enjoyed snack and lunch outside and exploring the awe and wonder of our nature garden. We warmed up with out hot chocolate station for a mid morning break!

Thank you for supporting our fundraising for the defibrilllator located at Little Doves Day Nursery.
Last week this was used in an emergency by a local resident. I have been informed that they are thankfully well, however we are pleased they had access to this equipment in such emergency.
Through feedback I'd like to let the community know to access this you firstly need a code from the ambulance service as it is in a locked box. There is a foot gate next to the main gate.I mention this as it was not clear when used last week. Our gates are open Monday to Friday 8- 6 pm. Outside these times the foot gate will need to be used.

Thanks again to parents, staff and community residents who contributed to the purchase of this lifesaving equipment.

We are currently ordering new pads, so the nearest one currently is at the village hall.

Laura and Little Doves Team.

At Little Doves Day Nursery we have nominated a Climate Planning Lead 'Chloe'. Please support Chloe enthusiasm in her new role by practising some climate related activities.

- Can parents provide wet bags.(Reduce use of plastic for sending home messy clothes).
- Can parents donate shirts for messy/painting activities.(We can wash these weekly)
- We are looking for donations for dolly/ bear clothes- for dress the 'weather bear' for each classroom. Mini umbrella, sunglasses, rain coat, sun hat, sundress. (Unwanted build a bear clothes would be appreciated). Children will be learning about our climate.

Many parents ask us how to support potty training along with our advice and experiences. Talk, listen and cuddle is a great support aswell as advice groups at the local berechurch Hall hub in Colchester. Timetable is allocated on our parent notice board at Little Doves. Great support with new skills. Follow page below.

Toilet training is a journey and takes lots of patience and praise. This is a new skill for a young child and like all new skills it takes time! Modelling the new language and routines before introducing the potty or toilet can be really helpful, as well as reading children's books to your child based around the potty or going to the toilet.
Click on this link to find out more information: https://www.tlc-essex.info/resource/potty-and-toilet-training/

In Ladybirds we enjoyed experimenting with autumn colours and materials. We used tools and our hands to make patterns in the paint, rolling pine cones and sticking materials. Mixing glue and paint for new textures. Children all focused together, beaming faces as they felt the paint on their hands. Children kept returning for more and adding objects of interest to the paint. Open ended activity.

In Butterfly room we have enjoyed shared cooking too! We made our own vegetable soup using tools such a plastic knives, grater, peeler. We also followed a recipe for making our own bread. At tea time we enjoyed tasting our creations.

We could cut the vegetables, blend it and serve it to the children or serve them ready made bread but instead we took the time to get the children involved.

🍎 Work together to prepare a shared meal for us to enjoy
🍎 Discuss about food, preferences, where food comes from, what's in our gardens, how we like to eat this food at home
🍎 Practice the physical skills, and resilience to manage tools and to cut and share different kinds of foods (some are harder to cut than others!) Peeling, grating and chopping!
🍎 Find our own ways to work with and build tolerance to different textures and smells of food, and working with sticky, juicy or mushy foods.
🍎 Develop mathematical concepts weighing and dividing food between all the bowls and ensuring there is a bowl for each person, so we can all try some and a seat for everyone at tea! Children lay the table.
🍎 Wash up our boards, knives and bowls and putting them out to dry.
🍎 Enjoy eating the result of our labour! Or ... exposure to, and trying, new tastes and textures and developing positive attitudes towards new food experiences. We didn't all like it! Some of us loved it! Trying new things.
🍎 Children enjoyed taking responsibility, all engaged and helpful and using new skills and re-visiting challenges such as using a peeler!

Today in caterpillars we made our own individual Gruffalo crumbles following our focus book interest. Children enjoyed preparing food together, spooning amounts and choosing fruit for the crumble. We look forward to parents sharing pictures on tapestry of you enjoying crumble. We played in our Gruffalo play space. Children spontaneously using lines from the story as they play.

Looking closely at the combine and corn. Children's faces beamed. We are gaining new knowledge about our rural surroundings. Watching the seasonal changes.

At Little Doves Day Nursery we continue to promote our love for reading. Today we enjoyed choosing our books of interest for our classroom to share with our peers. Conversations sparked as we shared our books. Looking at new words, characters, pictures. Exploring storytelling together. Highly fascinated children, faces beamed looking at the chosen books. We will continue to have more visits from the mobile library!