BrightStart Day Nurseries

K3 - Clough Road

What a fantastic week we've had at nursery! 🦖


This week, the children have been busy exploring all things dinosaurs through a range of exciting activities.

🦴 We practised our sorting skills by organising dinosaur bones.

🎨 The children enjoyed making their own playdough, developing their fine motor skills and creativity.

🏃‍♂️ We had lots of fun completing a dinosaur obstacle course, encouraging physical development and teamwork.

🌿 Loose parts play allowed the children to use their imaginations to create their own dinosaur worlds.

📚 We explored fascinating dinosaur facts and learned more about these amazing prehistoric creatures.

🖌️ The children worked together to glue and stick materials onto a giant dinosaur picture, creating a fantastic collaborative piece of artwork.

🧊 We rescued dinosaurs that had become trapped in ice and looked at different ways in which we could free them.

🐌 To finish the week off, we discovered a few snails venturing out into our garden after all the rain we have had this week which produced some lovely conversations about where the snails live and what they eat.

It has been wonderful to see the children's enthusiasm, curiosity and creativity throughout the week. We are very proud of all their hard work and look forward to more adventures next week! 😊

Compass

This week at compass, our babies and toddlers have enjoyed a range of dinosaur-themed sensory activities. They explored green dinosaur water, rescued dinosaurs from shaving foam and practiced making dinosaur footprints in playdough. As the shaving foam was a particular favourite, we also provided a shaving foam and paint ice cream tray which they loved mixing together. 🍦These activities have encouraged curiosity, supported their communication and language development, and helped them explore different textures through sensory play.🌺

Preschool have also enjoyed a number of dinosaur activities this week. The children have been busy creating a dinosaur swamp with gloop and digging for fossils using hammers and chisels. 🦕 In celebration of the World Cup starting this week, they made their own footballs by gluing and sticking, and designed their very own football shirts, inspired by a variety of flags. These activities have developed their understanding of the world as we have had conversations about different countries, and their creativity. 🌷

Have a lovely weekend,

Compass

A Roarsome Week at BrightStart @ Thorpes!

What an exciting and prehistoric week we have had at BrightStart @ Thorpes! Our children have fully embraced our Book of the Month, 10 Little Dinosaurs, alongside our Songs of the Month, 10 Little Dinosaurs and A Dinosaur Went Stomping One Day. The children's enthusiasm for all things dinosaur has inspired learning opportunities across every area of the nursery, creating a week full of exploration, discovery, creativity, and fun.

In our creative area, the children designed and created their very own dinosaurs using a variety of recycled materials. As they selected resources, joined materials together, and discussed their creations, they developed their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, creativity, and imagination. The children also explored colour mixing, investigating what happens when different colours are combined to create new shades. This supported their understanding of the world around them while encouraging scientific thinking, curiosity, and prediction skills. These activities linked closely to the EYFS areas of Expressive Arts and Design and Understanding the World, whilst also promoting the Characteristics of Effective Learning through Playing and Exploring as children investigated materials and experimented with different creative techniques.

Our mathematical learning continued with the creation of fantastic dinosaur pictures using 2D shapes. The children identified and named shapes, discussing their properties and how they could be combined to create different dinosaur features. Through this activity, the children developed their mathematical language, shape recognition, problem-solving skills, and spatial awareness. Some children challenged themselves by selecting specific shapes independently and explaining their choices to their peers. This supported learning within the EYFS area of Mathematics and demonstrated the characteristic of Creating and Thinking Critically as children planned, designed, and adapted their dinosaur creations.

Sensory exploration played a big part in our dinosaur theme this week. The children enjoyed a variety of dinosaur small world setups featuring different textures, materials, and environments. From exploring rough and smooth surfaces to investigating messy and tactile resources, the children used their senses to learn about the world around them. These experiences encouraged language development as children described what they could see, feel, and discover, while also supporting social interactions as they shared ideas and played collaboratively. These activities linked to Communication and Language, Understanding the World, and Personal, Social and Emotional Development. The children demonstrated Active Learning by remaining engaged, concentrating for extended periods, and showing great pride in their discoveries.

Our young palaeontologists have also loved learning new and exciting dinosaur facts throughout the week. Through stories, discussions, songs, and play opportunities, the children have been developing their listening skills, vocabulary, memory, and understanding of the past. They have shown great curiosity by asking questions, sharing their own knowledge, and making connections between different learning experiences.

Outdoors, we were delighted to receive some fantastic new resources which the children have thoroughly enjoyed exploring. One of the highlights has been the opportunity to create their own obstacle courses. The children worked together to move equipment, test different routes, and decide how to travel safely from one point to another. Through climbing, balancing, jumping, crawling, and negotiating spaces, they developed their gross motor skills, balance, coordination, core strength, and body awareness. This learning strongly supports the EYFS area of Physical Development, while also encouraging teamwork, resilience, communication, and problem-solving. The children demonstrated the Characteristics of Effective Learning through Active Learning, showing determination when facing challenges and celebrating their achievements. Another exciting addition to our outdoor environment was a beautiful small world house. The children eagerly explored the new resource using transport vehicles and people figures to create imaginative stories and scenarios. Through role play and collaborative play experiences, they developed their communication and language skills, imagination, social skills, storytelling abilities, and understanding of different roles within their communities. This activity supported Communication and Language, Personal, Social and Emotional Development, and Understanding the World, while encouraging children to Play and Explore and Create and Think Critically as they developed their own narratives and solved problems within their play.

Overall, this week has been filled with curiosity, creativity, and discovery. The children have demonstrated a wonderful eagerness to learn, explore, investigate, and share their ideas with others. We are incredibly proud of all the skills they have developed and the enthusiasm they have shown throughout our dinosaur-themed adventures.

🦕 Dinosaur Week Fun @ Dorchester! 🦖

We've had a roaring good time exploring all things dinosaur this week!

The children enjoyed painting dinosaur eggs, investigating icy dinosaur eggs, and creating their own paper mâché eggs. Outdoors, they loved making dinosaur footprints with water and taking on our exciting dinosaur obstacle course.

We also got creative with dinosaur drawings and had lots of fun with water play. Our Dear Zoo tuff tray sparked plenty of imaginative play and storytelling, while letter matching activities helped develop early literacy skills.

To finish off our busy week, the children enjoyed playing noughts and crosses with their friends, practising turn-taking and problem-solving skills.

What a fantastic week of learning, creativity, and adventure! 🦖🦕✨

Issue now fixed - K3 - Parents URGENT

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Many Thanks

Clough Road - K3

The nursery setting was transformed into an exciting learning environment this week, exploring all things dino! We have celebrated both Dinosaur Day and Milk Day with lots of themed activities to encourage children's curiosity and engagement.

This week, the children took part in a variety of hands-on activities. They explored a dinosaur excavation area where they used brushes and tools to uncover dinosaur bones and fossils hidden in sand. The children created dinosaur footprints using paint, traced around dinosaurs and enjoyed listening to dinosaur stories. We also created a dinosaur world under a table, which the children were fascinated by and eager to explore. We painted the edges to give the dinosaurs a swamp-like environment to make them feel more at home. We also looked at different dinosaur bones and sorted them by size and counted how many we had.

The younger children had a turn at colouring in their own dinosaur pictures using the paint sticks, further developing their hand-eye coordination as the practitioners described colours and movement to introduce new words. They have also explored a sensory swamp with green rice crispies and toy dinosaurs to explore.

To celebrate Milk Day, the preschool children learned about where milk comes from and discussed other healthy foods and drinks. They took part in a milking activity where we used filled gloves to help us to 'milk' the cow. The children then created their own cow patterns after discussing and researching the different coloured cows that we see.

We can't wait to see what other dinosaur adventures next week will bring!

This week at Compass we have been exploring our book of the month, Ten Little Dinosaurs. 🦖

Our toddlers and babies have been busy developing their fine motor skills through ribbon and pipe cleaner threading, strengthening the muscles needed for mark making. They explored colours, shapes and textures through a puzzle game, and equally enjoyed a fossil hunt activity where dinosaurs and bones were hidden in sand and they had to use brushes to dust them off; this encouraged curiosity, concentration and hand-eye coordination. The children also loved investigating bugs in green gloop and making dinosaur footprints with paint, which supported sensory exploration and creativity. 🎨

Our pre-school children brought our book of the month to life through a dinosaur small world that encouraged them to lead their own imaginative play and develop their curiosity. The children also investigated a dinosaur counting activity that supported number recognition and a measuring dinosaur task that introduced early mathematical concepts such as comparison of size and the use of rulers. The group also investigated a dinosaur sensory tray with fabric, tissue paper, orange oats and yellow rice that represented an exploding volcano, which combined multiple interests within the room into one activity. 🌋

It’s been a great week full of discovery, investigation and child-led learning. 🦕

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

Compass. 🌞

Parks

We have had a very busy week this week @ Parks after returning from the half term ☺️

We have been very interested in the magnets this week, sticking them together with the other magnets. we explored what toys and materials we could find that would stick to our magnets too, we all went around the room and found lots of different things we even found a patch on the wall that the magnets stuck to we all found this very funny. Kirsty then got us some paperclips out to see if they stuck to the magnets or not. We was all very excited as the magnets picked up lots of the paper clips up at once which made tidying them up very easy.

When we returned we was all very excited to see that we had lots of new toys in the garden to explore, and also that our grass heads that we did before we broke off for our week off had grown some grass, so we got straight to looking after them and made sure that they had plenty of water. In the garden we have been especially interested in our new easel and have been using our chalk pens to create marks with our friends. In the garden we have also been looking at our new animals with the younger children talking about what sounds the animals make and where the animals might live if they live in the water or the forest etc.

Our mud kitchen has also been a big interest we have used lots of natural materials to combine them together and mix using different tools.

This week we have also introduced our book of the month and our songs which are all based on dinosaurs. We have lots of different opportunities to explore these around the room, we have been drawing around dinosaurs looking at dinosaur bones and using the ruler to measure them and see which ones are the biggest. We have also found our dinosaurs in lots of different materials. Such as playdough so we could see the dinosaurs foot prints as they stomped around the playdough we talked about the different sizes and shapes of the foot prints that the dinosaurs left behind. We also had some very messy dinosaurs in the gloop we all enjoyed scooping the gloop in our hands and watching it fall between our fingers. 🦖