Choo Choo's Day Nursery & Preschool

Exploring jellyfish🪼
This week the children have been looking at jellyfish🪼we looked at different jellyfish facts and spoke about where jellyfish live, what they look like and if we have seen them before👀🪸. The children joined in with exploring a jellyfish tuff tray which included jellyfish made out of gelatine and spaghetti 🥰. Lastly we used our creative skills to paint our own jellyfish with paint and black card🧑‍🎨. This activity promotes communication and language🗣️, physical development🙌🏻, understanding the world🌍 and expressive arts and design🎨.

Under the Sea Sensory Play 🌊🐠
The babies have been exploring Under the Sea through a fun and engaging sensory activity! 🐚💙 They enjoyed exploring a small tuff tray filled with blue rice and blue chickpeas, with green, orange and yellow pasta representing seaweed and colourful coral. 🌿🪸
We also added fish that changed colour with heat 🐠🌈, which the babies loved watching and exploring. Around the tray, the babies had bottles and scoops, encouraging them to scoop and fill their bottles while developing their hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. Alongside our sensory exploration, we enjoyed outdoor play 🌿 and exploring lots of different stories 📚.This activity promotes communication and language 🗣️, expressive arts and design 🎨, understanding the world 🌍, sensory development, and fine motor skills ✋.

We’re so excited to introduce our new Choo Choo’s Sand Shed! 🏖️✨ Oceanna has created an exciting and fun new area🥰🙌🏻. The children will be able to learn through scooping, pouring, digging and building🪣. The children can also develop their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and physical development, whilst talking to their peers about their experiences at the beach.🐚☀️They can work together to create sandcastles, pretend to be at the seaside and share ideas.👀This will support communication and language🗣️, physical development🙌🏻, understanding the world🌍 and expressive arts and design🎨. This wonderful space encourages children to be curious, independent and confident learners through playful exploration🌟.

Dinosaur Mathematics 🦖Today, we read ‘Ten Little Dinosaurs’ 📕 where we answered questions and practised using ‘finger numbers’. The children explored the numbers on the table to see which they could recognise. We then practised using our pens to join the dots to make our numbers ✍️ Finally, we practised counting the dinosaurs on the table to match to the number logs.
This activity promotes communication and language 🗣️ physical development 🙌 literacy 📚and mathematics 🧮

🌿 Our New Sensory Shed! 🌿 We’re so excited to introduce our new Choo Choo’s Sensory Shed! 🚂✨ Elliott has created a calm and inviting space where children can explore their senses through sight, sound, smell and touch.
With natural materials, plants, emotions, mark-making opportunities and lots of interesting things to discover, the shed encourages children to pause, observe, wonder and explore at their own pace. 🌱👀👃🖐️
A wonderful space to support children’s curiosity, communication, creativity and emotional wellbeing through sensory exploration. 💚

At the beach! 🏖️🌊☀️Today, the children have been exploring a beach sensory tray. 🐚🏝️ The children enjoyed talking all about the beach, discussing whether they have been to one before, if they’ve been in the sea, 🌊 and what sand feels like. 🏖️The children then began exploring the sensory tray, moving the different animals around 🐠🦀 and enjoying feeling the seaweed. 🌿 They loved exploring the different textures and using their senses through this fun sensory experience! 👋✨ This activity promotes Understanding the World🌍, Communication and Language🗣️ and Expressive Arts and Design🎨✨

Lizard Mosaics! 🦎 This week the children have enjoyed learning about Lizards. We started off this activity by discussing what we know about lizards. 🙌🏼We spoke about what they eat, where they live and what they feel like. The children discussed how lizards have scales which feel bumpy. We then moved onto making our Lizard mosaics. 🎨We used glue and covered our lizard outline. We then added our mosaic pieces to the glue which created a colourful and scale like pattern! This activity promotes communication and language, 🗣️understanding the world 🌎and expressive arts and design🎨.

Sandcastle mathematics🏖️🔢
This week the children have been taking part in “Sandcastle mathematics” 🏖️ First we started the activity by counting to 10 using our fingers and then had a go at recognising the numbers on the sandcastles👀. The children collected the right amount of shells and gems to match the number to the sandcastle in front of them🐚. Lastly the children used their fine motor skills and had a go at writing the number onto a sandcastle template themselves✍️. This activity promotes communication and language🗣️, physical development🙌🏻 mathematics🔢 and understanding the world🌍.