February Fun at Highgate!

Send a Letter to a Friend Day!

At the start of February, the older babies celebrated “Send a Letter to a Friend Day”. They enjoyed drawing pictures for their friends, practicing their fine motor, and hand-eye coordination skills. When choosing the friend they wanted to make a picture for, some of the babies chose their peers who had recently moved up to the Toddler Room. They loved knocking on the door and giving cuddles when it was time to deliver them!

                                                                           

 

 

Toddler Room Workshop

Toddler Room hosted a story-themed workshop for their lovely parents and carers to attend. As World Book Day was approaching, the activities were all based on their favourite books. They dug through oats in the sensory tray to find the story board pictures and re-create their own story, made ‘Elmer’ elephants using milk jugs and tissue paper, and finished off by exploring natural materials to plant their very own beanstalks!

 

                       

 

 

Superhero Sid

The Pre-School children introduced a very special superhero – Superhero Sid! Sid will spend his time going on fun adventures with a different child each weekend. Sid’s backpack is filled with lots of key information from Start Well Sheffield and Change for Life. He gives lots of useful bedtime tips, and shares his favourite banana muffin recipe!

 

                                                                                     

 

Pancake Day

On Pancake Day in Rising Threes, the children helped to make their own playdough creating their very own playdough pancakes. Using the role play pots and pans, the children made big pancakes, small pancakes and even dinosaur shaped pancakes. The children used their imagination to create the pancake of their dreams! As a special afternoon treat, the children had pancakes to eat with a range of yummy toppings to choose from. We discussed how all of the different fruits were grown, and then looked at the fruit packaging to look on our globe and find where the fruit had been delivered from. We had bananas from Costa Rica! The staff also enjoyed creating some delicious looking pancakes from the pancake station on their lunch break too!

                                                                                                    

 

September fun at Highgate

This month, the babies have enjoyed celebrating ‘International Read a Book’ day and ‘National Teddy Bear’ day. They incorporated the two celebrations by bringing in their favourite teddy bear and favourite story into nursery, which they enjoyed sharing with their friends throughout the day! For lunch, they enjoyed a picnic, alongside their teddy bears!

Rising 3’s celebrated ‘National Fitness Day’ by learning some new exercises! They all enjoyed joining in & burning off lots of energy!

 

Finally, Karrissa was our Employee of the Month for September (as voted for by her colleagues).  Well done Karrissa!

 

 

Highgate’s April Antics

April started off with our Easter celebrations here at Highgate! The children enjoyed taking part in lots of Easter themed crafts & activities. Rising 3’s used potato mashers with the children to paint & print Easter eggs pictures, we did lots of baking activities, including chocolate Easter nests & chick biscuits. We finished off our celebrations with an Easter Egg hunt in the garden for all children to search for some Easter treats.

In Toddlers, we have been looking after some caterpillars! Once they had made their cocoons we put them into their butterfly net. We then waited patiently for them to develop, talking about what we thought they may turn into. We read our story of the week which was ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ & learnt that they will turn into butterflies. We were very excited when our butterflies came out & enjoyed watching them learning to fly. We fed them some apple & nectar water. When they were strong enough, we went on an adventure to the park to set them free! 🦋🐛🍎

The Pre-School children had so much fun at our Eid party! We danced to traditional music, wore our traditional/party clothes & had a big Eid dinner. ⭐🌙♥️

The staff were also treated to a delicious Eid lunch, thanks to Alisha & Uzma who work in the Pre-School room!

Fun at Highgate in November

We started November with our Parent’s Evenings; thank you to everyone who attended!

Rising 3’s celebrated Bonfire Night with lots of fun and bright crafts.

The children all celebrated Remembrance Day by decorating and painting poppies. The children in Pre-School made a poppy wreath and walked to the church to lay it.
The children really enjoyed taking part in a homelink activity. They were given a bag to collect Autumn ‘treasures’ and went on adventures with their families finding acorns, leaves and conkers. The children then used their ‘treasures’ at nursery to explore and investigate.

June at Highgate

We started the month, like the majority of the country, by celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee; children, parents & staff enjoyed a lovely afternoon tea. The children made crowns too, & wrote letters to the Queen, telling her all about their celebrations!



The Babies have enjoyed visits from ‘Rhythm Time’. They made lots of noise to the music using different instruments, & clapped & smiled right through until the end!


Also this month, the Pre-School had the opportunity to meet Albert the hearing dog! The children really enjoyed meeting Albert & finding out lots of information about him & other hearing dogs just like him. Thank you to Sarah and Albert from Hearing Dogs for Deaf People for coming to visit!

January fun at Highgate!

Toddler Room have enjoyed exploring their ‘All About Me’ loose topic this month. They have been learning about different hair colours, skin colours and facial features, and looked at some different multicultural pictures from around the world. They have used their creative skills and curiosity to create their own people on the craft table, all choosing their own resources independently. They worked as a team to make some playdough and decided to make it pink! They then used the playdough to create different facial features; they counted how many of each feature they needed to put on their face, and tried really hard to put them in the right places! They really enjoyed learning about differences between people – something to be celebrated!



Rising 3’s have been trying out different science experiments this month. They showed high levels of energy and fascination, and as a team they made a rainbow explode! They also blew a balloon up with different ingredients. The children all took part and contributed towards the activity, and predicted what was going to happen before they carried out the experiment!



Meanwhile, in Baby Room, they’ve had lots of fun baking. Once their biscuits were made they showed their concentration skills, as well as their creativity, by decorating them. No baking activity would be complete without a little ‘trying’ of the product of course!!


That’s it for January! We can’t believe it’s 2022 but we look forward to sharing more exciting news from Highgate again soon :)

August 2021 @ Highgate

In July, we welcomed the Early Years Care and Education bear! Thanks to the amazing fundraising efforts across the Company for the Sheffield Children’s Hospital Charity prior to the first lockdown, we were lucky enough to sponsor one of the ‘little bears’ in the Bears of Sheffield trail. The children have enjoyed finding our bear over the summer and were very proud when they received their certificates!


Toddlers have loved using their senses to explore this month! We enjoyed getting messy in our rainbow bubble foam and talked about what colours we could see! We made some great observations such as “it looks like a rainbow colour” and we decided that it felt soft! We also enjoyed smelling the lovely aroma of the foam. We were all willing to have a go and all had lots of fun exploring!



Rising 3’s had a fantastic time exploring in the woods! The children collected lots of leaves, sticks and pinecones to use in the loose parts and investigation area back at nursery. They then stopped at the park on the way back to nursery and had lots of fun on the equipment!



The children have enjoyed helping to prepare healthy snacks this month too. They used their fine motor skills to have a go at cutting their own bananas, watermelon and strawberries. We were all willing to have a go at this, trying really hard! We also made our own choices about if we would like milk or water to drink to keep us hydrated. We all tried our snack and found our fruit very yummy! Rising 3’s also had lots of fun making their own fresh bread for snack. Each child made their own pattern on the bread roll before we put them in the oven to bake. The best bit was eating them at snack time!

We’re now looking forward to starting the new academic year; we wonder what it will bring…

March @ Highgate

At the beginning of March the children enjoyed dressing up as their favourite characters for World Book Day & helped raise money for new books through our sponsored listen event! A big thank you to everyone that got involved.

Our Baby Room have been busy doing lots of sensory activities this month, from playdough & painting to baking. They had so much fun exploring all their senses by touching, smelling & tasting.

The children in Rising 3’s have been learning all about Baby Bear’s travels to Italy! They helped to make pasta neapolitana, garlic bread & pizzas from scratch and then ate them for their dinner – yummy!


We’re now looking forward to celebrating Easter. We’ll be back soon to fill you in on more exciting Highgate activities :)


October at Highgate

We know it’s been a while since you’ve been inside nursery, so we thought you might like to hear about all the improvements that have been going on behind the scenes over the last few months! We have had new windows, new flooring, a new outdoor play area, lots of decorating & the staff have been busy getting creative & doing a bit of upcycling in the rooms! Our nursery looks fantastic and if you would like a sneaky peak – please see our 3D virtual tour!



We have had lots of fun celebrating Halloween this month! The children enjoyed making Halloween monster biscuits and have thought of new ideas about how else they could make monsters. They decided to make playdough monsters using the loose parts! The children were so proud of their creations and enjoyed achieving what they set out to do! On Halloween, the children took part in a pumpkin hunt in the garden as well as taking part in our fancy dress competition. We saw lots of fantastic fancy dress costumes and all the children looked amazing – well done to all the children who took part!


March Activities & Events!

It was a busy month at Highgate during March!

We started the month by celebrating Pancake Day on 5th March. The children enjoyed making & eating some yummy pancakes at snack time.

We then took part in a sponsored listen to celebrate World Book Day on 7th March & everybody came to nursery in dressed up as their favourite book characters. A massive well done & thank-you to all the families who took part in the sponsored listen & raised over £150 for us to buy new books for nursery!

Pre-School 1 went on a little trip to Weston Park Museum on 14th March. They had a great time, dressing up & playing in the role play areas. They even had time to feed the ducks, before returning back to nursery on the bus.

On 15th March the children & staff came to nursery wearing items of red clothing & made a donation towards Comic Relief.

The Babies hosted a ‘Stay & Play’ event. We invited their grown-ups to come along & join in the fun of morning play time. They enjoyed group time together; choosing song spoons & singing their favourite songs, whilst joining in with the actions! They then took part in a sponge painting activity & a sensory activity with squelchy, slippery, multi- coloured spaghetti! The children & their special guests had so much fun & we had some great feedback. Thank you to everyone who came along & took part.

The children in Toddler Room also had a wonderful ‘Tea Party’ with their Mummies & Nanans in celebration of Mother’s Day. They ate some delicious scones with jam & cream, they sang some of their favourite songs & then took part in some fun creative activities! They made flower bookmarks using lollipop sticks & buttons. They decorated plant pots & then planted some seeds in the soil to grow some beautiful flowers. Finally, they decorated mugs with beautiful hand drawn pictures for their accompanying adults.

After all that we’re now looking forward to April – Easter, the start of a new term & plenty more fun activities!