Small Wonders Nursery - Stamford

16/07/2026

One of our friends had a trip to the Zoo this weekend!! We decided to look at some of our favourite animals.

We set up an Elephant Sanctuary to explore the different types of elephants that live in different parts of the world. We looked at African savanna elephants, learning that they live in grasslands across Africa and grow large tusks.

We investigated Indian elephants who have smaller and rounder ears that the African elephants and that live in tropical forests.

We looked at the "Rumble in the Jungle" book, identifying the different animals in the book and finding them on the table to match. The children were excited to see the different animals and enjoyed talking to their friends about which ones they had seen before.

We enjoyed looking at different stories about animals, finding our favourites.

“I seen this at Sacrewell," said child F, pointing to a peacock.
“This giraffe has a long long neck”, said child E.
"I saw a turtle at the fish museum”, said child O.

16/07/2026

Whose Tail?

Today we have been exploring one of our favourite stories, ‘Whose Tail?’ The children enjoy reading this book with practitioners and their friends, so we decided to set up a jungle themed tuff tray with all of the animals from the book. We were very excited to explore the tray and find each animal from the book. We had lots of fun making animal noises, looking though the pages of the book and lining each animal up behind each other as they do in the story.

Child E said, “ooh look crocdile”, as they spotted the crocodile in the book.

Child H said, "raaar”, as they picked up the lion.

After we had explored the tray we decided to do some mark making with the animals and cornflour. We found different paint brushes and used our fingers to make different marks in the cornflour. We used the different animals to make lots of footprints in the cornflour and showed our friends what footprints we could see.

Child H said, "stomp," as they put the zebra into the cornflour.

Child E said, “I drawing”, as they made marks with the paint brush.

05/07/2026

28/05/2026

That's Not My Robot 🤖

Recently, in the Baby Room, we have been exploring the story, ‘That's Not My Robot’. The practitioners set up a tuff tray with a variety of media inside such as cardboard boxes, wooden blocks, plastic cups and paint pot lids. The babies enjoyed using the materials to create their own robots, stacking the items on top of each other and combining them together to make their structures bigger. The babies explored different sized and coloured materials developing their mathematical knowledge and their gross motor skills.

“Bobot”, said child H.
“Big one”, said child E.

28/05/2026

Exploring the Garden

Today, we had lots of fun playing in the garden with a variety of different resources. The children were very excited to see all of the activities and were eager to investigate. We first looked at the magnet tiles and enjoyed looking at all of the different colours and seeing what we could make from the different shapes. We then looked at the Gruffalo toys and had lots of fun recreating the story, making the Gruffalo roar and making the animals meet each other.

Child H said, "Gruffalo!" As they put the Gruffalo puppet on their hand.

Child M put the magnetic shapes together to make a structure.

Child H held the bubble wand to their mouth to blow bubbles.

15/03/2026

Happy Mother’s Day!!