Little Ones Childcare

At Budlake....Next week our book of the week is Mini Rabbit ‘Not lost’, and our sign is Rabbit. In our malleable material area, we will have a red playdough and flour tray where we can make our own little red berries just like in the story. We can shape and manipulate the materials, use our senses throughout the activity and explore textures. This activity will also help to improve our fine motor skills and put our turn taking into practice. In the back garden we are going to have an exciting ‘find the berry hunt’, pretending we are Mini Rabbit. We will have lots of red berries and cake cut outs as well as little bunnies helping us hiding around the garden too! To help us with the hunt we will have to use our problem solving and teamwork skills.



This week our story was The Bear Hunt. We had so much fun exploring textures with our sensory bear hunt trail in the garden. We enjoyed our story cards and having a go at retelling the story and using our mathematical skills to count and put them in the right order. We’ve really loved doing different puzzles and ride on vehicles in the garden too.

At Bovey....Next week, our number of the week is going to be number 2 our book of the week is going the be ‘the tiger who came to tea’.

During the week, we have planned to roleplay with food, cups and plates and have a tea party inspired by the book with tigers! We will also be using our senses to taste different food, alongside baking activities.

Outside in the garden, we will be encouraging lots of roleplay in the kitchen with pretend food and drinks.

Our music and movement sessions are going to include moving around like animals and singing animal songs.

Through focus time, the children will be given the opportunity to take part in baking activities and recognise the ingredients we need to bake certain foods.



This week, we have been reading ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and our number of the week was 1. During the week we have created obstacles courses and used the climbing frame to climb to the top of the beanstalk. The children have created their own beanstalks using paint and arts and craft resources which they have really enjoyed!

At Honiton....This week we have been busy caring for the dolls, washing and dressing them, we then read them stories and rocked them to sleep. Our preschool children have been drawing themselves using a selection of different craft resources, we used mirrors to look at our refection talking about hair and eye colour and how we are all different! the children extended this activity by wanting to draw their friends and family also, we then talked about who we live with and people who are special to us. We used playdough to make faces alongside looking at our feelings cards to help us express our own feelings.



Next week our book of the week is ‘car car truck jeep’ which is a favourite for lots of our children. We will be learning about transport, our activities will include rolling different vehicles through the paint making lots of different patterns and marks whilst talking about the colours that we are using. Outside we will have tubes of water and sponges so we can all have ago at cleaning our own bikes. If you have a favourite book at home about transport you are more than welcome to bring it in to nursery and we can read the book to everyone at group time.

At Whipton....Next week, we will be diving into our new story theme We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. Our number of the week will be 10, and our Makaton sign will be ‘Bear’.

The children will be fully immersed in retelling the story through large‑scale tuff trays filled with sensory materials from each part of the adventure. We will explore the grass, the river, the mud, the forest, the snowstorm, and of course—the cave!

Indoors, our creative table will offer bear‑themed activities throughout the week, including making bear masks and headbands, sorting compare bears, and enjoying a teddy bears’ picnic. These experiences will support imagination, storytelling, fine motor skills, and early mathematical thinking.

Our weekly focus will be imaginative play, encouraging the children to use props, role‑play items, and story language to retell and act out the Bear Hunt together.

Outdoors, we will continue the story theme with sensory trays, small world play, and opportunities for children to move, explore, and recreate the Bear Hunt journey using natural materials.



Last week, we loved learning all about our own babies, and the children thoroughly enjoyed using the puppets to tell their stories.

At the end of the week, the children excitedly requested face paints—so we did! They had a wonderful time choosing different animals and characters to become.

Alongside all this, our weekly focus was independence. The children embraced every opportunity to do things “all by myself”. They loved serving their own lunch, using jugs to pour their drinks, and practising how to use cutlery independently. What a lovely week!

At Honiton....This week we have been learning about holidays! We have been making passports, drawing ourselves and colouring them in, we’ve been talking about different ways to travel around the world, by train, car, boat or aeroplane, we used boxes outside to pretend that we were off on our travels, the children really used their imagination sitting in the boxes pretending their arms were wings saying we’re on an aeroplane. The children extended this activity by adding chairs alongside the boxes to make different carriages pretending they were on a train shouting choo choo, taking turns to be the train driver.

We are learning about self-care, our book of the week in Topsy and Tim go to the dentist, we have an exciting visit planned with someone from a detail practice who will be coming into nursery to talk to us about how to look after our teeth and gums, what foods we shouldn’t eat to much off and I’m sure everyone will get a sticker for being amazing listeners.

Outside in the garden we will be giving the dolls a bubble then drying and dressing them, talking about keeping clean and the impotence of washing our hands.



We also have a new and exciting climbing frame which the children have loved to explore!

At Budlake ...Next week our story of the week is The Bear Hunt, our word of the week is beautiful and our sign of the week is snowstorm. During our indoor provision we will be making story cards. This will help us to be able to use our memories to recall the story and put each part in order just like in the book! As we make our cards we’ll be sharing ideas, supporting each other and working as a team. We’ll use our mathematical skills to what patterns we can find in the story. In the garden we are going to explore textures with a sensory bear hunt trail. It will have grass, mud, water, snow as if we were really in the story, again encouraging turn taking as we wait for our turns which will also help to develop our PSED.

 

This week our book was sharing a shell. We explored all different sea creatures and loved learning their names and spotting similarities and differences between them. this gave us more of an understanding about the world and where sea creatures live. We really enjoyed getting messy and mixing colours whilst painting and decorating our own shells. This encouraged our sharing and turn taking as we waited our turns to use paintbrushes and shared our resources with friends.

We had fun splashing in the water and making homes for our sea creatures with stones, shells and leaves. This helps support our communication and language skills as well as being able to share our ideas with friends. Our construction area has been popular this week too and we’ve been loving building houses, towers, castles and roads!

At Bovey....Next week, our number of the week is going to be 1 and the book of the week is going to be ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.

During the week, we are gong to be exploring different plants and planting some beans and seeds.

The children will also be getting the opportunity to practise their climbing skills daily, by using the climbing frames we have and setting up obstacle courses. Alongside this, the children will be able to use their arts and craft skills to make their own beanstalks.



This week, we have been reading the book ‘shark in the park’ and our number of the week has been 10. During the week, the children have been creating their own telescope that they see Timothy Pope use in the story and using it to see if they can spot any sharks in the park! The children have been given the opportunity to explore lots of different water play activities, including finding the sharks in the water.

At Honiton....This week in the baby and Toddler room we have been exploring colours we had different coloured sensory bottles which made bubbles and pretty patterns when we moved them around. We made some colourful flowers using different coloured paper for petals we used our fine motor skills to choose which colours we wanted to stick on.

Outside we had great fun splashing in pretty coloured water we used spoons to scoop water into bowls then we poured the water out. We enjoyed splashing too!

We had coloured sand too, it was great fun to scoop the sand into the buckets and all the colours mixed together.

Next week we are having a music week we will be exploring lots of musical instruments and singing our favourite songs, we might even make up some fantastic dance moves!

At Whipton....Next week our book of the week will be ‘Owl babies’ our number of the week will be 9 and our Makaton signs will be Owl and Baby. We will be learning all about the big feelings in the story, to be brave, to feel safe and to know that our grown-ups always come back.

Our weekly focus will be on developing the children’s growing independence and self‑help skills. We will support the children in practising self‑serving skills during snack time, encouraging them to scoop, pour, and serve their own food. The children will also work on using knives safely to spread butter, marmite, or soft cheese on crackers and toast ect. Alongside this, we will continue to strengthen name recognition through daily opportunities to find, match, and say their own names.

The children will have opportunities to retell the story using puppets and props, explore small‑world play with nests, leaves, logs, and take part in forest themed movement sessions where they can flap, swoop, and glide like owls. The children will also create their own owl masks and feathered wings using collage materials.

Last week, we absolutely loved learning all about Under the Sea. The children were wonderfully creative, making their own sea creatures using paint, collage, and recycled materials. We learned lots of new Makaton signs linked to sea animals and enjoyed practising them during circle time.

At Bovey....this week, we are going to be reading the story ‘shark in the park’ and our number of the week is going to be 10.

During the week, week we are going to be making telescopes. The children are going to have the choice of how they decorate their telescope with the wide range of arts and crafts that we have. Inside, the children will have access to the small world tuff tray where they can roleplay with the animals and recognise that they are from the story. Outside, the children will be invited to play with the water play with sharks in!

During our music and movement session, the children are going to be dancing away to their favourite songs, as well as exploring our big drum and musical instruments. Through focus time, we will continue to practise our fine motor skills through threading, exploring letters and peg boards.



Last week, we have been reading the book ‘the colour monster goes to school’. We have practised our dressing skills and trying on school uniform, as well as identifying colours and mixing colours together. We have also been creating our own colour monsters!



Last week, we had our Graduation and Sports Day. The children had so much fun joining in with the races that we offered for sports day and the school leavers came and collected their certificate and wore their hats for their Graduation ceremony.