Emeralds Little Gems Daycare - Crook

What a a fun-filled week we have had in orange and pink room The children have loved exploring our hairdressers role-play, taking on different roles such as hairdressers, customers and receptionists. They enjoyed using their imagination, developing their communication and language skills, and practising turn-taking as they booked appointments, styled, brushed and dryed hair. 🎀💇‍♀️
We have also been busy writing postcards, thinking carefully about who we could send them to. The children enjoyed sharing their favourite days out and holidays. Doing some fantastic mark making with some children having a go at writing their own name.
It has been wonderful to see the children’s confidence, creativity and imagination shine throughout the week. What a fantastic week of learning through play! 🌟⛱️🏝️⛵️

🌞 This Week in Blue Room 🌞

This week in Blue Room, we have been enjoying dressing up for summer! ☀️ The children have been exploring a variety of summer accessories, including sunglasses, hats, and other seasonal items, encouraging imaginative play and conversations about the sunny weather. 😎🕶️🧢

Following the children’s enthusiasm for playdough last week, we extended the activity with a mini beast-themed playdough tray. 🐛 The children loved creating “worms” and other mini beasts, helping to strengthen their fine motor skills while having lots of fun.

The children have also shown a keen interest in cleaning, so we provided a selection of child-friendly cleaning equipment. They thoroughly enjoyed sweeping, brushing, and helping to tidy up Blue Room, developing their independence and sense of responsibility. 🧹🧻🧽

It has been another week full of fun, exploration, and learning in Blue Room! 💙

This week in Pink and Orange Room the children have enjoyed our Safari Lookout role play. The children became wildlife explorers, using binoculars to search for different animals. They excitedly shared what they discovered, described the animals they could see, and developed their communication and language skills through conversations with friends. The children also enjoyed role playing taking turns as visitors and rangers, building confidence, social skills, and imaginative thinking. 🦁💚🦓🪾✨🐘

In our Coral Reef Playdough activity, the children used playdough and coloured pasta to create beautiful underwater coral reef scenes. This activity encouraged creativity while strengthening fine motor skills as they rolled, squeezed, pinched, and carefully placed the pasta to bring their ocean habitats to life. 🪸🐚🌊🐠

What a lovely week we’ve had! 🩵

The children were really excited to go into the garden and start picking the vegetables they have been helping to look after over the past few months. They were eager to harvest the produce to prepare a delicious home-cooked meal.
The children took turns and worked together to collect tomatoes, green beans, spring onions, cucumbers, pea pods, cucamelons, strawberries, fresh herbs, and other vegetables they had grown. They then helped to wash the freshly picked fruit, vegetables, and herbs, taking care to clean them before they were prepared for tea. They showed great teamwork throughout, supporting one another and enjoying the experience of seeing the results of their hard work.

For tea, the children enjoyed delicious lemon chicken wraps filled with their freshly picked salad ingredients. For pudding, they had fresh strawberries served with meringue and whipped cream. The children were proud to eat the fruit and vegetables they had helped to grow, making mealtime a rewarding and enjoyable experience 🍓🥒🧅🍋🫛🍅🍚 🥗

We had a lovely day out at Wolsingham River and Park! 🌳🛝🦆

We started the day by visiting Lidl to pick up some food for our picnic, then caught the 1:00 pm bus to Wolsingham for a day out exploring.
When we arrived, we found a lovely spot by the river to enjoy our picnic before taking a peaceful walk through the park, soaking up the fresh air, beautiful scenery, and surroundings. We also enjoyed browsing the local town charity shop, which was a nice addition to the end of the day ☀️🧺🚌🐶

This week, we transformed Blue Room into a beach complete with sand, beach balls, buckets and spades! 🏖️🪣🪏 The children had lots of fun exploring the sand, filling and emptying their buckets, and enjoying their own little seaside adventure.

To continue our beach theme, the children also enjoyed making delicious-looking ice creams using playdough. 🍦

We got creative with some mark making, gluing and sticking while decorating postcards. 💌📮

Following on from the children’s enjoyment of the bubbly paint activity last week, this week they explored water play using fishing nets to catch floating balls. They loved the challenge and had great fun trying to scoop them up! 🎣🏐

To finish off another wonderful week, the children also enjoyed a trip to the park, where they had lots of fun exploring and playing together. 🛝🎠

What a fantastic week full of learning, creativity and fun! 💙

🏴‍☠️🌊 Pink & Orange Room Adventures! 🚤🦈

This week, our little explorers had a fantastic time taking part in our “Walk the Plank” activity! As they carefully balanced their way along the beam, they developed their balance, coordination, core strength, and spatial awareness. The children explored different ways of moving, built their confidence, and let their imaginations run wild as they became brave little pirates on an exciting adventure! ☠️✨

The fun continued with our sea and boats water play, where the children splashed, poured, and created their own ocean adventures. As they played together, they practised taking turns, shared resources, followed simple rules, and worked collaboratively with their friends, helping to develop their communication and social skills.

It has been a week full of learning, laughter, and imaginative play—we’re so proud of our amazing little pirates! 💙

🏴‍☠️🚤🌊🦈

Preschool Graduation 2026 🎓
What a truly special day! 💚

A huge thank you to all of our wonderful families for joining us to celebrate our amazing preschool graduates. Your love, support and encouragement have helped your children grow into the confident, kind and curious little people they are today.
The celebrations started with an amazing video showing snippets of the children's time at nursery, followed by the ceremony, where the children popped on their graduation cap & gown and took to the stage to receive their medal, photos and sweet treats.
As a little keepsake we surprised each of our graduates with a Nursery Graduate T-shirt. It was a small gift thought of from the team to help them remember their special day and the wonderful memories they have made with us. We hope they'll wear it with pride and treasure it for years to come.
Thank you to all the team for making the day so special and thank you to Hayley and Claire for their hard work prepping and decorating the venue. Congratulations, graduates!
We will miss each and every one of you 💚✨🧑🏼‍🎓 🎓✏️👩🏼‍🎓💜

🌸🧡 Pink & Orange Room 🧡🌸

This term in Pink & Orange Room, our theme is Holidays! 🌞✈️

To kick off the summer holidays, the children had lots of fun playing balloon badminton. They showed fantastic coordination and control as they balanced their rackets with one hand while keeping their balloons in the air. There were lots of smiles and laughter as the children chased their balloons, demonstrating excellent spatial awareness as they navigated around the play area.

Following on from our animal fishing activity, the children also enjoyed taking part in Emerald’s Little Gems Carnival! 🎡🎈 They had a wonderful time exploring a variety of carnival games, including Hook-a-Duck and Can Toss. The children loved talking about their favourite games and confidently expressed how they felt when they won or lost. They listened carefully to instructions from the adults and showed fantastic sportsmanship by cheering on and encouraging their friends.

What a fun-filled week we’ve had! We can’t wait for more holiday adventures together. 🌞💛

🚗💙 This Week in Blue Room 💙🚗

This week, the children in Blue Room enjoyed an exciting adventure outside the nursery to explore the different sounds they could hear in the environment. They listened carefully for cars, buses, emergency vehicles, and the crossing lights. The boys and girls had lots of fun copying the sounds they heard, saying “brum brum,” “nee naw,” and “beep beep!” 🚗🚦🚒

Back in Blue Room, the children continued their learning through play, exploring a variety of vehicles and using their imaginations to recreate the sounds they had discovered.

We also followed on from the children’s love of bubbles with a fun bubble painting activity! We covered the floor with large sheets of paper, added colourful paint, and placed bubble wrap on top. The children loved walking across the bubble wrap, watching the paint spread, and, of course, popping the bubbles! 🎨🫧

To enhance our continuous provision, we introduced a large play car and some train tracks for the children to explore. These quickly became favourites, with the children enjoying imaginative play throughout the week. 🚘🚂

What a fantastic week of exploring, creating, and learning through play! 💙