Serendipitys Day Nursery Cotgrave

For the last two weeks preschool have been learning about where our food comes from.
We have:
•Planted flowers in our tuff spot and with our playdo
•Collected eggs from our hen house
•Practiced our milking skills with a homemade cow
•Learned about the lifecycles of flowers
•Explored the three parts to a story for world book day and made our own stories
•Tested our memory with matching games
•Most importantly we have had fun!

Today the toddlers have had a wonderful time celebrating the Hindu festival of colour ‘Holi’. The children have enjoyed exploring and naming colours, making marks and having lots of fun! Well done Toddlers!

Today the toddlers have been learning about room on the broom! We have had a tough spot with the animals and materials to make a broom. We have also been decorating our own broomsticks using tissue paper! The toddlers have also enjoyed making broomsticks with clay and natural sticks on the field!
Well done toddlers!

For the next two weeks we will be celebrating the love of books linking to world book day on Thursday the 5th of march. Yesterday we had activities based on the grufallo! We had the grufallo trail in our tough spot, meeting all the different animals and where they live. We also had large scale clay, making the grufallo cave.
Well done toddlers!

This week we have celebrated arctic animal week because today is international polar bear day! The babies have taken part in so many fine motor, sensory and creative crafts! We have made hand print penguins, explored and built our own igloo using our outdoor resources, we have build our own penguins using playdough and paper cutouts, and we used pipettes and watered paint to create colourful polar bears.

Our tuff spots had a variety of resources including glitter paint, shaving foam, flour, cotton wool, blue oobleck, glitter, arctic animals and blue water all great for sensory exploration and fine motor skills!

This week in the toddler room, we have been learning all about artic animals linking to ‘world polar bear day’. The children have enjoyed a variety of activities such a making artic scene collages using a variety of tools and materials. This encourages the children to communicate the names of the animals, learn about their habitat and excercise their fine motor skills. We have also enjoyed exploring artic animals hidden in ice, our artic loose parts tuff tray and making a huge box modelling igloo!
Also in the toddler room we do weekly expressive large scale paintings, this gives the children the opportunity to express themselves through painting such as feelings and emotions.
What a fabulous week.
Well done Toddlers!

This week in the baby room we have celebrated Chinese new year!
We decorated the baby room with new year decorations and displayed the babies arts and crafts! The babies really enjoyed taking part in lantern making by using their fine motor skills to glue and stick tissue paper down.
The babies took part in a messy flour and glitter activity to make horse prints in our tuff tray to celebrate the year of the horse.
We also made hand print dragons by letting the babies cover their hands in paint and gluing them all together.
We also took part in a treasure hunt looking for gold coins in our coloured rice and flour activity using paintbrushes to discover the hidden treasure.
Finally we experienced tasting Chinese food at snack time, the babies tried egg fried rice, prawn crackers, and vegetable spring rolls! 🧧
Next week our topic is artic animals!

Over the past few days the toddler room has celebrated Chinese New Year!
The children have enjoyed activities involving decorating their own lanterns, creating Chinese coins, food tasting and learning about the year of the horse. The toddlers have learnt fine motor skills including imitating Chinese writing, expressive arts and the cultural significance of Chinese new year.

As we come to the end of winter and begin to welcome the warmer weather, our activities this week have been centred around the changing seasons and lots of exciting celebrations! ❄️
On Tuesday we had a fantastic time celebrating pancake day! The children loved getting hands on by making their own pancake mix, exploring pancake themed playdough with pans and creating their own funny pancake faces. At circle time we talked about why we celebrate pancake day and of course we enjoyed eating some delicious pancakes too ! 😋🥞
We have also been busy celebrating Chinese New Year! The children sorted money into numbered lucky envelopes, listened to the story of the Chinese New Year zodiac great race and re-enacted by our practitioners using masks and created their own beautiful Chinese lanterns. The children also enjoyed a fine motor Chinese chopstick sensory tuff spot, had a trip to the shop to get ingredients and then enjoyed eating the Chinese food they had brought. 🏮🎊🎏
It’s been a week full of creativity, cultural learning, sensory exploration and lots of smiles. We are looking forward to more spring inspired activities as the days continue to brighten ! 🌸🌿

Happy pancake day babies!

Today we have done activities based around pancake day! The babies took part in making their own batter by mixing flour, water, and oil, the babies loved the feeling of this on their hands and were excited to see what they made! After the batter was mixed together the babies flattened out their dough and added on their favourite fruits! We also coloured our dream pancakes using our fine motor skills and had one for pudding with our tea 🥞

The toddler room have been learning about shrove Tuesday today.

We have been creating our own pancakes with play dough, using their fine motor skills to roll the play dough and cut it into different shapes. The toddlers have also been making their own pancake pictures using different toppings, they loved getting creative and picking their own toppings!
Happy pancake day! 🥞