Play2Day Nursery

Teaching young children about road safety is crucial in preventing deaths and serious injuries. Brake, the road safety charity, reported that an average of nine children under the age of seven were killed or seriously injured on the roads of Britain each day in 2022.
During May, we focused on road safety with the children in Friendly Foxes and Little Owls. To explore road safety, the children engaged in a variety of activities, including crafts of cars, road signs and traffic lights, engaging in small world road and pedestrian scenes and learning a song about road safety. This opened up conversations about how we walk near roads, what signs mean and other ways we can keep ourselves safe. We hope supporting parents to teach their children about road safety ensures the children are safer on the roads.

Last Wednesday, we celebrated National Bee Day at nursery 🐝💛
The children enjoyed lots of exciting bee-themed activities throughout the day, including creative crafts, sensory play, fine motor activities, and learning all about our little buzzing friends.
🐝🖤💛
It has been a lovely day full of learning, laughter, and busy little bees! 🌼🐝

April has been another busy month....

Throughout the nursery, the children have been exploring what changes occur at this time of year.

This has included the Darling Ducks getting outside for longer periods of time to experience the warmer weather. The babies were keen to participate in the release of butterflies. It was great for their speech as staff introduced new vocabulary like 'flutter'. Some babies were keen to share this experience with others using short sentences.

In Little Owls, the children have created flower pictures through a variety of means such as stamping forks to make tulips. Not only did the children get to be creative but it opened up conversations about the growth of plants.

Whilst in Friendly Foxes, the pre-schoolers have been keen to watch the caterpillars turn into butterflies. Many of them showing their understanding of a butterflies' life cycle and learning new words like 'chrysalis'. Their interest in bugs extended into the garden where they have been keen to go on bug hunts. They have also been helping plant cucumber, pepper and tomato plants ready for them to produce goods later in the year.

Did you know?
Once a month on a Thursday, Suffolk Libraries Mobile Service comes to outside Play2Day Ipswich. Each time it visits, several children get to go on the Library bus to return and select new books for us to borrow.
We want to encourage a love for reading so introducing children to new stories and non-fiction books for the children to explore is important to us.
It offers the children new experiences as they may not have visited a library before or been on a bus.
If you would like to visit the mobile Library Bus, please follow the link below to see the different locations and schedules:
https://suffolkcommunitylibraries.co.uk/visit/mobile-libraries/?search=&pg=12

Can you believe we are over a quarter of the way through 2026!
March has been a busy month. The children have been looking at Spring and all the different changes we see at this time of year. Each room created a mother's day card to celebrate the important women in our children's home life. As the month drew to an end, we started to explore the topic of Easter. The children were getting very excited about receiving some chocolate eggs! 🍫🍫

Last Thursday, it was WORLD BOOK DAY 📚

Throughout the week, the children engaged in some book related activities including:
- Dressing up
- Tuff trays to explore traditional tales and non-fiction books
- Creating book marks
- Julia Donaldson Scavenger Hunt
- Counting characters

Fitting in some time together to share a story or book with your child can:
- help your child learn words and express themselves
- help them feel close and connected to you
- teach them about the world and about different kinds of people
- be relaxing and help your child learn to regulate their feelings
- spark their imagination and creativity that you might see in their pretend play and the stories they make up!

As today is international women's day, we want to thank the amazing team of women, who make Play2day Nursery what it is.

From passionate educators, who nurture and care for young minds with patience, compassion and creativity to our managers, who bring their vision of a positive early education to reality.
We are so proud to work each day with this amazing group of women who believe that every child deserves care, encouragement and a nurturing environment where they can 'learn through play'.
🌸🌷Happy International Women's Day to the women who help to nurture little minds 🌸🌷

Unfortunately not all of our fantastic team are pictured, but today we celebrate every single one of you!!

What another busy month we have had!

The children have been exploring oral hygiene. The children have practiced brushing teeth and discussed the importance of brushing teeth. In preschool, the children found the letters of their name to form the teeth. They also completed number ordering the teeth. The children have engaged in conversations about what is good and bad for their teeth.
Below is a useful link about looking after children's teeth. It is suggested that children need help brushing their teeth up until the age of 7.
www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-teeth-and-gums/taking-care-of-childrens-teeth/

During half term, it was Chinese New Year and Pancake Day.

The children explored these events in a variety of ways, including:
- Eating pancakes
- Making pancake mix
- Creating pancake pictures
- Role playing making pancakes
- Reading stories about Chinese new year
- Looking at how numerals are written in Chinese
- Constructed their own Chinese lanterns
If you have any pictures of you celebrating pancake day or Chinese new year with your children please send them in. The children love to share about and look at pictures of what you have been doing at home.