Rock A Tots - Compton Acres, Canford Cliffs

🌊🐠 Exploring the World Around Us 🐠🌊

As part of our June topic, The World Around Us, the children have been learning about our oceans and the amazing animals that live beneath the sea, linked to World Ocean Day.

Our tuff trays were transformed into exciting ocean habitats where the children explored sea creatures through sensory and imaginative play. They enjoyed discovering different textures, developing their curiosity, and learning about marine life through hands-on exploration.

In our Arts and Design activities, the children practised their fine motor skills by carefully cutting, colouring, and creating their own beautiful jellyfish artwork. They showed great creativity and concentration while expressing their ideas through different materials and techniques.

These experiences support the EYFS by promoting:
🌟 Understanding the World – learning about oceans, habitats, and sea life.
🌟 Expressive Arts and Design – exploring creativity through art and imaginative play.
🌟 Physical Development – strengthening fine motor skills through cutting and colouring.
🌟 Communication and Language – encouraging discussions about sea animals and their environments.

We have loved diving into this exciting topic and discovering more about the wonderful world around us! 🐙🐬🦀

🌈 Celebrating Pride Month at Nursery 🌈

This week, our children have been busy creating colourful Pride flags and bunting as we celebrate Pride Month together.

Through age-appropriate discussions and creative activities, we have been exploring important values such as love, kindness, respect, and celebrating what makes each of us unique. We talked about how every family is special and how our differences help make our community a wonderful place to be.

These activities support the EYFS by encouraging children’s understanding of the world around them, developing their communication and language skills, and promoting positive relationships and a sense of belonging. Most importantly, they help children learn to be kind, inclusive, and respectful of others.

We are so proud of the children’s creativity and thoughtful conversations. 🌈❤️

World Bee Day! 🐝

Last week, the children celebrated world bee day across the nursery! The children explored a rice tray engaging their sense through sounds, touch, sight, using their hands and natural resources to engage with the dry rice. The children observed their peers alongside, and imitated each others actions (such as dropping rice from a height and scooping/pouring).
Engaging in a painting activity both inside and out, we used a potato masher to re-create the bee's body, and then building upon fine motor development we used our fingers to create the black stripes that bumblebees have!

Practitioners extended upon the children's interest by adding in bumblebee 3D figures and various sized bowls, in which the children show interest in by engaging in schema play daily using our heuristic area. We also sang our bumblebee song, building upon self awareness by identifying children's names and encouraging repetition to support their own identification! 😄

Creative with nature! 🍂

Our Brown Bears have been busy down in the woods, exploring their creativity with natural resources! The children demonstrated superb listening skills, expanding upon their focus as we support them for school readiness. The children used their paper and pencils to create a postcard, creating prints from leaves and adding a stamp as well. The practitioners and children had a lovely discussion about how postcards & letters are delivered, bringing everyday life into their own learning environment!

Using magnifying glasses, the children then went around the woods finding various sized colours and leaves, sparking conversation about their differences. The children transported this onto paper, creating their very own bracelet! On recent adventures, the children have also enjoyed creating their own wands that they were able to move freely with, observing their actions and the affect they have. Parachute games have been fun to explore as a group too, adding natural objects such as pinecones, engaging the whole body and building coordination within the brain through games!

Its a bugs life! 🐜

Exploring our beautiful world, the children are focusing on minibeasts and lifecycles this month🐛

Starting off, the children have had the pleasure of observing our caterpillars during group times. We have been discussing their lifecycle and the changes that we can expect to observe over the next few weeks. We have listened to a song about caterpillars too, which the children have enjoyed wriggling to! 🦋

Using playdough, our panda bears created their very own spiders! Focusing on hand eye coordination skills and building upon fine motor development, the children counted how many legs a spider has and pushed them into the dough, creating their own! Outside in the garden too, the children engaged in ice play where the spiders were stuck! Using various tools and methods, the children did their very best to set them free🕷

VE Day!

Celebrating VE day, the children have been learning about this day through play! Using mark making tools, the children developed and strengthened their grip to explore colours on their very own Spitfire Aeroplane. Sparking curiosity and questions amongst our older children, we were able to have conversations about this type of aeroplane and its different features that we could see (such as a propeller)!
We have engaged our senses through a shaving foam United Kingdom flag, using paint brushes and our hands to explore. Practitioners extended this activity further by adding vehicles into the foam, as recently the children have shown a high interest in cars. This enabled the children to observe prints made as they learn through cause and affect.
Our younger children have been using cotton wool to create their very own poppy, transporting the paint onto the paper as they use a whole arm movement to make their marks. Building upon their language through the textures, colours and outcome of their image and supporting understanding through action words.

✨ Mark Making Magic in Early Years! ✨

This week the children have been exploring mark making, an important foundation for early writing. Through using crayons, chalk, paint, and even natural materials like sticks and water, they are strengthening their fine motor skills, developing hand–eye coordination, and discovering that the marks they make can carry meaning.

Mark making supports several areas of the EYFS. In Physical Development, children build the small muscle strength needed for writing. In Literacy, they begin to understand that marks represent ideas and can be used to communicate. It also encourages creativity within Expressive Arts and Design and supports Communication and Language as children talk about what they have created.

You can support this at home by offering simple opportunities such as drawing with chalk outside, using water and brushes on pavements or fences, or making marks in flour, sand, or shaving foam. Every swirl, scribble, and experiment helps build confidence and early writing skills—learning through play at its best! ✨✍️

We have been having lots of fun exploring and learning in our outdoor classroom 🌿☀️🪴

Outdoor learning gives our children so many wonderful opportunities to build confidence, develop friendships, strengthen physical skills and spark their creativity through play and exploration 😊

We have been busy strengthening our fine motor skills with cereal threading activities, developing hand-eye coordination and concentration 🧵🥣

We have also loved splashing and exploring during water play 💦 while painting flowers in the garden has encouraged creativity and helped us notice the beautiful world around us 🌸🎨🐞

Learning outdoors is such a lovely way for children to investigate, discover and learn new skills while having fun together 🌈✨

Today we celebrated Earth Day across our EYFS rooms 🌍💚

Our babies explored the world through sensory play, getting creative with paints to make their own beautiful versions of the Earth. It was a wonderful way to introduce early mark-making while beginning to explore the world around them.

Our 2-year-olds and preschool children took part in a range of hands-on activities inspired by nature. They created nature bracelets using natural materials, encouraging curiosity about the environment and supporting their understanding of the natural world. The children also wrote postcards to their loved ones, sharing messages about caring for the Earth and showing how even small voices can make a big impact.

We also embraced our Forest School session, where the children developed key skills such as problem-solving, and independence. They explored the outdoor environment, expanding their understanding of the Earth through real-life experiences, while building confidence and a sense of respect for nature. Of course, there was also lots of joy and laughter, especially relaxing and playing in the hammock 🌿

These activities link closely to the EYFS framework, particularly Understanding the World and Expressive Arts and Design, as children explored nature, expressed their ideas creatively, and developed a growing awareness of how to care for our planet.

We are so proud of how the children engaged with learning about our Earth and how we can all help to look after it 🌱

Spring is in the Air! 🌻🌱

Our baby room have been busy with planting and water play recently, incorporating resources linking to spring and growing. The children use wooden scoops to dig away in edible mud, using imaginative play as practitioners use language such as 'planting' 'flowers' 'fruit' 'dig and scoop' and link to home life by identifying home/mummy/daddy.
During our water play activity the children were able to explore early maths within their play as they recognise more than one object and them being different sizes. The children build upon their hand eye coordination through tipping and pouring, and listen to sounds as they realises actions have an affect (splashing water).

Sensory activities are an important part of development in a child's early life, as they use their senses to explore through play and build upon understanding and language development. It supports early social interaction too through eye contact and body language, gradually building a sense of self for the child.