Little Pioneers Nursery & Pre-school - Oxford Station

⚽️ Football Fun in the Tuff Tray! ⚽️

With the England game on yesterday, lots of our children have been showing an interest in football! To build on their enthusiasm, we set up a fun finger football activity using cotton wool balls in the tuff tray.

The children enjoyed using their fingers to move the cotton wool "footballs" and score goals, helping to develop their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and concentration. They also began learning simple football rules while taking turns and cheering each other on.

A fantastic way to combine learning, play, and the excitement of football! ⚽️😊

🐾🦁 Sensory Play Adventure at Nursery! 🦒🐘

Today our 2–3-year-olds enjoyed a wonderful sensory exploration activity using wet sand. The children loved feeling the different textures, scooping, moulding, and making marks as they explored the sand with their hands and tools.

To extend their learning and interests, we added a variety of zoo animals to the activity. Zoo animals are currently a popular topic of conversation within our room, and the children were excited to create habitats, make animal footprints, and engage in imaginative play as they discussed their favourite animals.

This activity supported the development of sensory awareness, fine motor skills, language, and creativity while encouraging the children to share ideas and engage in meaningful conversations with their peers.

It was fantastic to see so much curiosity, engagement, and imaginative thinking throughout the session! 🌟

❄️🎨 Our Little Explorers and Little Adventurers had so much fun ice painting today! 🌈✨

The children loved spreading the colourful ice and paint around the tuff tray, watching the colours swirl, mix, and create beautiful new shades. 💙💛❤️ They were fully engaged in the sensory experience, exploring the cold textures, melting ice, and vibrant patterns with excitement and curiosity. 🧊👋

Activities like this support the EYFS areas of Expressive Arts and Design 🎨, Understanding the World 🌍, and Physical Development 💪 as children experiment, create, investigate, and develop their fine motor skills through play.

What a wonderful way to learn, explore, and have fun together! 🥰✨

🌟 We'd like to take this opportunity to introduce our wonderful new colleague, Aliaa! 👋😊

Aliaa will be providing lunch cover for our team and will be with us every day from 10:00am to 2:00pm, with the possibility of additional hours when needed. 🕙✨

She is highly qualified, holding a Level 3 qualification in Childcare and Education 🎓🧸, and brings valuable skills and experience to our setting.

This morning, Aliaa spent some time in our preschool room and did an absolutely fantastic job with the children. 🌈💛 The children have been incredibly welcoming, and it has been lovely to see them already building positive relationships with her. 😊

Please join us in giving Aliaa a very warm welcome to the team! 🎉👏

🍃💦 Nature Tuff Tray Fun! 💦🍃

This morning, the children enjoyed exploring a natural tuff tray filled with leaves and water. 🌿🍂 They had lots of fun discovering different textures, colours, and how the leaves moved in the water.

Activities like this support sensory development, encourage curiosity, build language skills, and help develop fine motor skills through hands-on exploration. 🌱✨

A wonderful morning of learning through play!

🎉 Our Open Day at Oxford Station Nursery has gone off with a bang! 🎉

We've had a fantastic day welcoming so many lovely families through our doors. It has been wonderful meeting new potential families and sharing everything that makes our nursery such a special place for children to learn, grow, and thrive.

We have received so many lovely compliments about our setting, team, and learning environments, and we are incredibly grateful for all the positive feedback.

A huge thank you to everyone who came along and spent time with us today. We look forward to welcoming many of you back again soon and becoming part of your family's early years journey. 💚

🦉 Owl Babies 🦉

Our children have been enjoying reading Owl Babies during group times and throughout the week. The story sparked lots of wonderful conversations about families, especially their mummies, just like the owl babies in the book. ❤️

To extend their learning, the children got creative and made their very own owl babies using paint, glue, and cotton wool. They had great fun exploring different textures and developing their fine motor skills while bringing the story to life.

It has been lovely to hear the children talking about their families and sharing special memories as we explored this much-loved story together. 🦉✨

Our Little Learners had a wonderfully muddy adventure today! 🧁🌱

The children thoroughly enjoyed exploring mud play outdoors, where there was plenty of pouring, tipping, mixing, digging and, of course, getting a little messy! Their creativity soon took over as they began making delicious-looking mud cakes for one another.

This sparked lots of lovely conversations about birthdays and celebrations. The children chatted about their favourite birthday cakes, the cakes they would like for their next birthday, how cakes are made, and whether they had ever helped bake one before. 🎂

Mud play provides fantastic opportunities for developing imagination, communication skills, problem-solving and fine motor skills, all while having lots of fun. Although we wouldn't recommend eating today's cakes, they certainly looked good enough to be on display in a bakery! 😄

📚✨ This morning, in our 1-2's room, we brought our story time to life with Handa's Surprise! 🍍🍌🥭

Using real fruits and animal props, the children explored colours, textures, and characters from the story, making group time more interactive, engaging, and fun. 🦜🐘

We have also removed chairs during group time to support physical development, helping children build core strength, balance, and body awareness while they learn. 💪✨

The children loved this hands-on approach to storytelling and were fully engaged from start to finish! ❤️

🌧️✨ Rainy Day Magic in Nursery! ✨🌧️

Today, our nursery children embraced the rainy weather and headed outside for some wonderful sensory exploration! ☔💦

As they played, the children noticed that the chalk had softened in the rain. They were fascinated by how vibrant and beautiful the colours became when wet! 🌈🎨

Using a variety of tools, the children mashed, mixed, and blended the chalks together, watching the colours swirl and change. They used the falling rainwater to help create their very own "chalk potions" 🧪✨, carefully stirring and experimenting as they explored.

This imaginative activity encouraged creativity, curiosity, problem-solving, and sensory learning, all while enjoying the great outdoors! 🌿💚

What a fantastic way to turn a rainy day into an exciting learning adventure! 🌧️😊