Small Wonders Nursery - Stamford

Happy Mother’s Day!!

Commonwealth Day
Earlier this week we explored a variety of flags for Commonwealth Day, looking at the similarities and differences between the flags.

“I found our flag”, said child F.
“This one has blue on it too”, said child E.
"This one leaf, this one star”, said child H.
“These flags have our flag in the corner”, said child F.

We also looked at the globe, looking to see if we could find any more countries we knew and comparing the sizes of the countries.

"This us!" said child H.

Mother’s Day
This week we have enjoyed a variety of Mother’s Day activities; creating crafts, a Mother’s Day takeaway breakfast and discussions about our mummies.

We have enjoyed taking it in turns to create a card; using some glue, paint sticks and some cupcake cases to create some cards for our mummies.

"My Mummy likes flowers”, said child F.

"My Mummy has flowers in our kitchen”, said child A.

We also invited our mummies that dropped off on Thursday to collect a takeaway breakfast, offering a range of treats for everyone such as bacon rolls, sausage rolls, croissants, pain au chocolaut, cupcakes and a tea or coffee.

We have enjoyed reading different stories about mummies, joining in with conversations about our favourite things to do with them.

"I like going to the park with Mummy”, said child F.
“I like playing with her”, said child E.

We explored the dolls house, helping the people to move around and "get their jobs done."

The children used the dolls to show who lives in their house with them and spoke about any pets they have too.

"I got Mummy and me a shadow”, said child F.
"I got my Mummy and Daddy and me”, said child A.

We talked about how everyone’s families and how all families and the people we live with are different, but equally important.

We would like to wish all of our families a Happy New Year!!

Christmas Jumper Today, is Christmas Jumper day!!!!

We all came to nursery wearing our Christmas jumpers and we spoke about how we raise money to save children around the world by wearing our Christmas jumper. We enjoyed showing each other what we had on them.

Child F said "mine's got gingerbread man on."

Child O said "mine's got Rudolph on."

Child E said "mine's red."

Together we explored our tuff tray, where we created our own Christmas t shirts. We used pens, glitter, glue, feathers and shredded paper.

Child F said "I draw a snowman on this one and add glitter to make him sparkly."

Child O said "I draw a Christmas tree on mine."

Stick Man

Recently, we have been exploring the Stick Man story. We sat together and read the story of the Stick Man. We then set up some activities linked to the story.

Firstly we enjoyed creating our very own Stick Man.

Child F said, "he has 2 arms, 2 legs and a head.”

Child A said, "we need a long stick for his body firstly."

Child E said, "we can use the leaves as his head."

In the story it talks about the Stick Man living in his family tree, so we then sat together and made our own family trees. We took it in turns to listen to who each child lived with.

Child A said, "Daddy, Grandad, Grandma and me."

Child H said, "Mummy, Daddy, (brothers name), and me."

Child F said, “Mummy, Daddy, me and (pets name)."

26th November…

Phonics
Today we were looking at different letters, trying to see if we recognised any of them.

“That is in my name”, said child A.

“I think this is a ‘s’ for Santa”, said child F.

The children then decided they wanted to try writing some of the letters themselves.

“I think I can write my name, I need an ‘a’ and an ‘o’”, said child A.

“I need a ‘f’ first, what's next?” asked child F.

“Please can we write a letter to Santa”, said child F.

We sat down with some of our friends and wrote a letter to Santa.

“Can we ask him how he is and if his reindeer are good”, said child A.

So we added that to our letter.

Child F asked, “can we ask Santa to bring us a Santa bauble for our Christmas tree please?”

We added that to our letter too.

When we had finished our letter we posted it in our special postbox which is where we post all of our letters to Santa.

“Will he reply to us?" asked child E.

A practitioner told the children that we will check the postbox tomorrow and see if our letter has gone, but Santa is very busy at the moment so it might take a while.

“He will like all the different letters we used in our words”, said child A.

The Monkey Puzzle

After showing an interest in different stories, we have enjoyed exploring one of our favourites, ‘The Monkey Puzzle’.

To extend our interest, we decided to set up a monkey puzzle tuff tray to retell the story. The children were very excited to explore the tray and see all of the different animals. We also looked through the storybook to see which order the animals appeared in.

Child A said, “there’s the monkey!"

Child F said, “I can see the parrot and the bat!"

Child A said? “what's next?" as they turned the page.

After we hadplayed in the tray, we all read ‘The Monkey Puzzle’ together and identified each animal we saw and used different tenses such as past and next/future.

Child A said, “first we saw the elephant!"

Child F said, “next it’s the snake!"

Child AW said, “the Monkey finds his Mummy and Daddy at the end”.

The Gruffalo’s Child

Written by Rachel

Today we have been exploring another favourite story, ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’.

The children enjoyed exploring all of the characters in the story and looked at the different pictures in the book, helping them to act out the story in order.

“The Gruffalo’s Child find the snake first”, said child O.

"Then he sees me, the Owl”, said child A.

"When he sees the mouse, he runs away because he's so big”, said child F.

We then looked inside the book to see if we could see anyone else we recognised.

"I see Stickman in his hand”, said child F.

“There's the Fox. He lives in the underground house”, said child A.

"I see footprints in the snow", said child O.

"Whose are they?” They are the mouse prints”, said child F.

Antarctica Day

Recently, Child F came into nursery and told their friends that they had seen some Arctic animals in a book they had read with their Mummy. The children were excited to hear this and were curious to identify other Arctic animals. To extend our interest, a practitioner set up an Antarctic tuff tray with penguins, polar bears and seals.

Child A said, “look!! It’s a Polar Bear!"

Child F said, it’s a penguin, like in my book!"

Child E said, "Seals can swim in the water."

The children enjoyed making the penguins slide in the snow, the polar bears swim in the water and seals eat the fish. After we played in the tray, we looked at the globe and some Artic animal books. We discussed where the artic animals lived and how it is different from where we live.

Child E said, "wee! My penguin slides!"

Child F said, "Seals like cold water the best!"

Child A said, "I think polar bears live here", as they pointed at the globe.

🎄🎅🏼🎄Christmas Messy Play!! 🎄🎅🏼🎄
Last week we invited our friends to come in with their parents to join us in a messy play session.

We enjoyed exploring a variety of activities that were set out for us; a snowy arctic tray, biscuit decorating, Christmas chalk drawing, peppermint playdough, Christmas decoration light table and Christmas stories.

We had so much fun exploring that we invited the friends that couldn't make it to join us and play today.

“Wow, look at all of these activities”, said child A.

“I think we should ice the biscuits first now we have clean hands”, said child F.

The children took it in turns to decorate a biscuit and chose some different coloured icing and sprinkles to put on the top. We then put them into a bag to take home and share with our family.
We then went around the room exploring the other activities.

We helped the Polar Bears and Penguins to find their homes in the snow. We also had the opportunity to draw some family pictures, with the chalk, adding on the different features for each person. We also enjoyed reading Christmas stories, talking about the different characters we could see in the books.