Earlswood Early Years

This week we have enjoyed a range of textures in the red playdough such as lentils, pine cones, leaves and sequences. Playdough activities encourage our fine motor skills when rolling, squeezing and the use of playdough tools.
In the book corner we have looked at a range of books and props such as hand puppets or soft animals encouraging language development when repeating words or sounds.
The littler babies have enjoyed walking and crawling in the garden to find the balls. we have enjoyed exploring the shaving foam in the tuff tray, using glue spatulas to spread and make marks in the shaving foam, the children started to use their fingers and whole hands and introduced cars into the foam, and we looked at the tracks they left behind.

Over the past two weeks the Saplings have definitely been showing off their creative side as we have focused on ' Goldilocks and the three bears' and ' The Gruffalo'🌳🐻🐹
In the garden we have spent time painting and colouring in the bear family using lots of different mediums and working on our fine motor skills while doing this! The Saplings were serving porridge to our teddy bears using lots of different scoops and different size bowls, they matched the correct size bowls to the different bears🍧 We also used frozen paint lollipops to draw on the fence🎨 Megan created a lovely woodland themed tuff tray so we could pretend to be in the forest with the Gruffalo and all the creatures!
In our room over the past couple of weeks we have focused alot on our literacy, the Saplings traced letters, words, different type of lines and also animals😃 We played with the connecting straws creating shapes, houses and much more! We have completed lots of puzzles , the Saplings are brilliant at matching up the right domino's with eachother too🦓🦒

This week in little acorns we have had lots of fun exploring different textures in the tuff tray with shaving foam and cornflour, cereal and blue sand. The older children have enjoyed making marks in a variety of ways throughout the week and have had the opportunity to use different mark making tools.
We have had lots of fun in the garden with practising balancing over the bridge. Little Acorns have investigated many different water activities this week with glitter, bubbles and coloured water.
the babies have enjoyed the ramp and slide in the room, copying familiar phrases like ready, steady go. In the tuff tray the children enjoyed bathing the dolls with bubbles, enjoying the sensory experience of the texture of the bubbles and the strawberry smell

This weekLittle Acorns have enjoyed playing with the foam ramps and cars, the wooden car garage and small world figures in the aeroplane following their own interests with the small world and vehicles. Lots of the children explored the natural baskets with a range of materials and textures. In the role play area lots of cups of teas were made.
In our tuff tray we rolled blue playdough also using good fine skills learning to roll with rolling pins.
Our younger babies had fun with the basket of musical instruments making movements and sounds.
We have been out to our garden where sensory play was set up in the tuff trays. We explored the blue sand tray filled with chrome pots and pans for filling and emptying.
Our water trays were a blue glitter ocean sea theme filled with sparkling glitter and sea creatures the other tray was filled with water and coloured scoops and jugs.

To celebrate the Commonwealth Games coming to town this weekend and following the interest that many of our Saplings have for sports and ball games we decided to set up some of the sports in the garden for the children to try. 😊 We had lots of fun playing badminton🏸 and basketball🏀 as well as table tennis 🏓 and races through our tunnel. We learnt how to play the games we hadn't done before like passing and throwing a rugby ball!They all really enjoyed it and had a good go at everything, some did really well too and won their games (perhaps some future athletes!)🏅 🥈🥉

This week in Little Acorns have enjoyed a blue peppermint scented playdough, we used rollers and stampers to mark make onto the dough and our hands and fingers for sensory play.
We have enjoyed the wooden slope and push along toys.
The children enjoyed making sand pictures with glue and coloured sand.
In the construction area we have played with the bricks and wore our builders hats looking at our reflection in the mirror whilst dressing up, we had choice of a number of tabards and workmen high vis jackets to try on.
In the role play area plenty of pretend cups of tea and fruit have been played with for our imaginative play.
Our circle time was singing our favourite nursery rhymes and actions.

Acorns have had a wonderful week at nursery, despite it being a little too hot at the beginning of the week. We enjoyed some wonderful ice and water play, we watched as the ice cubes slipped out of our fingers, and we used our cups and pots to scoop up the coloured water and watched as we poured it back into the tray. We explored our animal names and sounds using our tuff tray filled with green sand and farm animals, we practiced neighing, mooing, and oinking! We also enjoyed practicing making lots of fun shapes with our playdough, we made burgers, sausages, and pizzas! We explored our roleplay kitchen, using our play knives and chopping boards to chop up our food and then cooked it in our pots and pans before serving up our yummy food for our friends to eat! We made some wonderful paintings using our new paint dabbers, using lots of bright colours! We also enjoyed some fun in the garden towards the end of the week as the temperature cooled down a little. We splashed around in our water tray, we climbed up and down our ramp, and we pretended to talk to our friends on our phone tubes. We read some books in the sunshine, and we practiced our facial expressions in the mirrors!
We also had some new additions to our room this week, Caterpillars! As next week we will be looking at The Hungry Caterpillar as our book of the week, so we have got some caterpillars to help nurse into beautiful butterflies! Stay tuned to see how they turn out!
See you next week Acorns!

The Saplings have had a lovely couple of weeks in their room and in the garden😇 Last week we were still reading the three little pigs as our book of the week, the Saplings helped Charlotte and Faye create one of the three little pigs houses and then used the foam bricks to mark make with paint on the outside of the house🏠 We created a tuff tray full of lots of different sensory play to make the pigs farm the Saplings loved this especially getting messy with the angel delight mud🤩 The children also decorated their own three little pig houses with straw and glitter! Our book for this week is ' Down by the cool of the pool' so we have lots of water play and animal activities🏝 A lovely way to cool down on one of the hottest days was having ice play out, we filled a tray with ice water and lots of frogs and fish🐸 The Saplings cut out their own frogs and then had a frog race with eachother which was so much fun! We also had a lovely tuff tray In the garden with lily pads, a fountain, nets and frogs , they had so much fun with this trying to catch the animals with the nets and it was really enjoyable for a hot day🥰🌞

This week in little acorns we have been exploring the coloured sand and the marks we can make it using the paintbrushes. We had lots fun exploring the marshmallow moon dough and testing out the textures and shapes we could make. We kept cool this week by exploring ice cubes, and splashing as they melted

It is going to be another hot week ahead please can we remember to apply sun cream to your child each day before nursery. Can you also remember to bring their water bottles to keep them hydrated 🔥 🌞

The Saplings have had a brilliant week we have been busy exploring our story of the week the "Three Little Pigs" the children have been building houses using straw, bricks and sticks. To support the children with their mathematics we have been measuring and using different shapes to draw our own house designs. We loved using our senses to play with the pigs in chocolate mud 🐷
We have been practicing our "huff" and "puffs" using straws to make bubbles and then later in the week making huge bubbles with hoops!
During our circle times we have been looking at our new sounds and learning how to re-tell and act out the story of the three pigs.
Amy has been helping us play bingo which has been a huge hit and a game that we keep asking to play again and again 😃
On Thursday we even made a house so big we could fit inside! We then decorated this using our role play bricks to print with paint!
Enjoy the weekend and we will see you all next week.