Smart Steps Nursery

🐍✨ Today we had a very special visitor! ✨🐍

Sarah brought in her pet snake, Gary, for the children to meet. The children were fascinated as they learned all about Gary, including what he eats, where he lives, and how to care for him.

Many of the children were brave enough to have a closer look and ask lots of fantastic questions. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn about different animals and develop an understanding of how to care for living things.

Thank you, Sarah, for sharing Gary with us and helping to create such an exciting and memorable experience for the children! 🐍💚

🏡 Exciting Changes at Smart Steps! 🏡

Our new fencing went up today! ✨ We are so pleased with how it’s looking and the improvements it brings to our outdoor environment.

Next stop… a brand-new front porch! ☺️

We can’t wait to continue enhancing our setting and creating an even more welcoming space for our children, families, and staff. Watch this space for more updates! 🌟

✨ Smart Steps Early Years Curriculum ✨

At Smart Steps, our Early Years Curriculum is designed to provide children with a strong foundation for lifelong learning. Through a balance of play-based experiences, adult-led activities, and child-initiated learning, we support every child to develop confidence, curiosity, and independence.

Our curriculum follows the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and focuses on the seven areas of learning and development. We create engaging, meaningful experiences that build children’s communication skills, physical development, personal, social and emotional wellbeing, literacy, mathematics, understanding of the world, and expressive arts and design.

By nurturing children’s interests and recognising their individual strengths, we help them become happy, resilient learners who are ready for their next stage of education.

💚🌻 Climate Change 🌻💚

Wow! What an amazing day learning about where our fruits come from and how we can shop smart. The children buddied up and travelled to our local co-op on the hunt for Red Tractor labels 🚜🚜.

As a group, we decided to make a cool, fresh and sustainably sourced smoothie ⭐😊

The children chopped, tasted and shared stories about their favourite fruits before settling down to watch a David Attenborough documentary about melting ice (happy belated birthday, David!) 🌍❄️

After trying the smoothie they had made, the children decided it was the best smoothie ever! They then began writing down the recipe to share at home 😀🌟

📚✨ HOME LEARNING PACKS ✨📚

We have put together some lovely home learning packs to help encourage early reading skills at home.

Each pack contains stories for you and your child to enjoy together. 💛

These will be available after half term. If you would like to borrow a pack, please speak to a member of staff to sign one out ☺️

Early reading also helps children to:
✨ Develop listening and concentration skills
✨ Build vocabulary and communication
✨ Encourage creativity and imagination
✨ Support confidence and independence
✨ Create a love of books and learning

Reading together at home, even for a few minutes each day, can make a big difference and helps children develop important skills that will support them throughout their education. 💛

🐝🌼 Today we celebrated World Bee Day! 🌼🐝

World Bee Day is celebrated annually on May 20th to honour bees, raise awareness of the vital role they play in our ecosystem, and promote sustainable beekeeping practices. 🐝💛

To celebrate, we took part in a fun bee shape activity where the children explored lots of different shapes and worked hard to place them in the correct positions to create their very own bees. 🔺🟡⬛

We also enjoyed a step-by-step bee drawing activity. The children followed numbered instructions from 1–4 to create their own bee pictures, developing their listening skills, pencil control, and confidence in following simple sequences. ✏️🐝

🔢✨ It’s World Numeracy Day! ✨🔢

The children in our Stepping Stones room have had a very busy morning taking part in lots of fun number-based activities. They enjoyed mark making in our oat and lentil number tray, exploring numbers through sensory play and developing their early writing skills. 🌾✏️

The children also practised matching numbers with adult support, helping to build their confidence with number recognition and early mathematical skills in a fun and engaging way. 💛🔢

🦋 Our Tiny Toes room enjoyed a lovely walk around the local area today as we went on a butterfly hunt! Although we didn’t manage to spot any butterflies on our walk, the children had lots of fun exploring and discovering many other interesting things along the way. 🌿☀️

Back at nursery, we were very excited to take another look at our beautiful butterflies that hatched yesterday. The children loved observing them closely and talking about their colours, wings, and movements. 🦋✨

🥦🥕🌽 SUPERTATO FUN 🌽🥕🥦

In line with our topic, Supertato, the children in our Stepping Stone’s room enjoyed lots of exciting activities today! This morning, we explored the Evil Pea scooping tuff tray, rescuing the vegetables from the mischievous peas 🫛🦸🥔

This afternoon, the children carefully cut their own vegetables and helped to make delicious rainbow couscous 🌈🥒🥕

The children showed fantastic cutting skills, confidence and teamwork throughout the activities. Well done everyone! 😀