Woodlands Day Nursery

Friends in our Caterpillar room have enjoyed spending time in the role-play kitchen.

They collected the vegetables, placed them into the pans and carefully put them into the oven, becoming completely absorbed in their pretend cooking.

Role play is an important part of learning in the early years. It gives babies and young children opportunities to explore familiar experiences, develop their imagination and make sense of the world around them. It also encourages communication, problem-solving and independence as they explore and recreate what they see happening in everyday life.

So lovely to see our little ones getting involved in their own imaginative play

To continue our focus on ‘around the world’, this week our friends have been taking a closer look at Antarctica!

Here’s what we’ve been getting up to:

❄️ Exploring an Antarctica habitat tuff tray, with penguins and polar bears.

❄️ Building mountains, icebergs and science labs in our construction area.

❄️ Painting and sticking to create our very own penguin masks.

❄️ Using the atlas during focused group times, looking at different animals and weather conditions. On closer inspection, we even spotted mountains marked on our map!

❄️ Making marks and practising letter formation using foam.

❄️ Learning the Makaton sign for ‘penguin’.

❄️ Working together to create our own Antarctica through mark making, adding polar bears, icebergs and even a submarine!

So many opportunities to explore, create and learn as we continue our journey around the world.

Preschool loved getting a little messy with Jess’ letter matching activity!

The children used foam to create marks and patterns on their pages before getting to work matching the letters.

This is a great way to support letter recognition while encouraging children to look closely at each letter and notice what is the same and what is different.

We love how these turned out!

Today we got stuck into some messy paint play in our Caterpillar room! We asked the children which colours they would like to explore, and our bigger children chose blue and yellow. 💙💛

We began by picking up the paint bottles and turning them upside down to see what would happen next. We watched as the paint went “drip, drip, drip” onto the paper!

We used our hands and fingers to explore the paint, feeling the different textures and creating lots of different marks. We continued chatting about the colours we could see and watching how the paint moved across the paper.

Not everyone was keen to get messy, and that’s absolutely okay! Some children enjoyed helping to pour the paint, while others preferred watching and chatting with their friends as they explored. It was a lovely sensory experience.

Our children enjoyed exploring water painting, using small brushes to dip into the water and paint across the paper. As they painted, they watched with excitement as hidden pictures slowly appeared! 👀✨

The children showed great fine motor control, curiosity and concentration as they carefully used their brushes to uncover more of the pictures.

There was also lots of lovely language as the children recognised and named the different animals they discovered.

Our children had lots of fun exploring how sound can make things move! We placed different objects onto cling film and then got ready to make as much noise as we could! 📢

The children watched closely as some of the objects began to spin, wobble and move, while others didn't budge at all! 👀

There were lots of excited faces and plenty of predictions as the children wondered what might happen next

What a wonderful week of exploring the world around us! 🌎✨

This week, our Preschool children have been learning all about different places, people, animals and cultures. We have:

🗺️ Used mark making to explore and talk about our local community.

🎨 Created our own beautiful mehndi-inspired designs using loose parts.

🌍 Painted our own Earth, using an atlas as a reference to help us explore our planet.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Talked about ourselves and our families, sharing the things that make each of us unique, such as who we live with and how many siblings we have.

🐘 Explored our small world animals and wondered where they might live and what their homes might be like.

There have been so many lovely conversations, questions and ideas throughout the week. We have loved watching the children's curiosity grow as they discover more about the wonderful world around them!

With everyone talking about yesterday’s exciting solar eclipse, our Preschool children were inspired to create their very own planet Earth! 🌎✨

We hung our planet from the ceiling and quickly got to work painting it… although we soon discovered that our Earth didn't want to stay still! 😂🎨

The children had to think carefully and use lots of problem-solving skills to work out how to paint their moving planet. There was plenty of teamwork, creativity and, of course, lots of messy hands!

Once our Earth was finished, the children LOVED looking back at the photos and seeing themselves hard at work. 📸🥰

What a lovely way to build on their curiosity about the world around them and turn yesterday's exciting event into some hands-on learning and fun!

🐢🌊 Turtle Time in Preschool! 🌊🐢
Our children have been learning all about different sea animals, and loved discovering the wonderful world of turtles! 🐢💚

The children used a variety of materials and resources to create their very own turtles, getting creative with colours, shapes and textures. 🎨✨ We even used the laptop to do a little research and find out more about these fascinating creatures!

There were lots of lovely conversations and questions along the way as the children wondered what turtles get up to, where they live and what they do each day.

And, of course, we had one very important question... Do you think turtles go to school too?

Our Preschool children have been busy creating their very own self-portraits! They looked closely at their features and thought carefully about what they could see. We heard lots of lovely observations, including, “What colour is your hair?”, “My eyes are blue!” and “I look happy!” 😊

The children had a range of colours to choose from and carefully selected the ones they felt best matched their skin, hair and eyes. 🎨

Once our portraits were finished, we had a lovely conversation about what makes each of us special. The children shared lots of wonderful things about themselves, from the things they enjoy to the things they are proud of. 💕

A lovely opportunity to celebrate who we are, what makes us unique and all the wonderful things that make us special! 🌈✨