January 2024 at Riverview!

All About Me

At the start of each term we spend two weeks learning ‘All About Me’; the children are given opportunities to explore their life story and how it may be similar or different to that of others. Pre-School have been learning all about each other’s families, and some of the children have shared photos of their trips over the last few months. We spent time talking about who lived in our houses, what our bedrooms look like, and we even talked about different foods we like to eat with our families. The children then took time to draw pictures of their families.

Rhythm Time

‘Rhythm Time’ is a great opportunity for the children to join in with songs and rhymes. During our session this month, the children in Toddler Room explored animal noises, and how they could move like animals. The children also enjoyed making music with a range of instruments. They explored the different sounds they could make, and explored different ways to use them. They really enjoyed using the scarves when dancing, and popping the bubbles. Their favourite part of the session was the stretchy Lycra. The children all held a part of the parachute and saw how high they could make the items bounce.

Babies and Maths

Babies have chosen to focus on improving the children’s mathematical development this half term. In the Baby Room we focus on numbers 1, 2 and 3, this is to create a foundation for future learning.  The Baby Room have really enjoyed making playdough, exploring quantities and using words like, ‘less’, ‘more’ and ‘lots’. The activities that have been set out to enhance the children’s learning, have promoted filling and emptying containers; this has encouraged the children to using their fine motor skills, and will aid in the development of their hand-eye co-ordination.

Nursery Council

The nursery council gathered towards the end of the month to discuss upcoming events, and how they might be able to celebrate. They decided that they would like to celebrate Shrove Tuesday (pancake day), Valentine’s Day and Kindness Day. Some suggested that they can make cards for their friends and families for Valentine’s, and taste pancakes with a variety of topping (such a strawberries, bananas and, maybe, a small helping of chocolate!) for pancake day. For Kindness Day, we talked about the Pre-School rules, and what more we can do to be kind to others.

The children are also aware that Ramadan and Mother’s Day are to follow in March.

Employee of the Month

Impressively, January was Georgia’s first month at Riverview, and the staff have been really impressed with her enthusiasm and ability to use her initiative; enough to vote her as Employee of the Month! Georgia has made an excellent first impression; we are very excited to see what more she has to offer. Keep up the hard work Georgia, and well done!

National Storytelling Week

The Baby Room have been all about storytelling in the last week of January to celebrate National Storytelling Week! There have been an array of different exciting activities, set up to ignite children imagination and curiosity. The Babies have enjoyed getting messy in the tuff trays, and building in the construction corner. The grown-ups have been telling stories, and narrating their play. They have used books that follow the children’s interests to spark the children love of books. They have chosen to read books containing repetition to encourage the children to join in the familiar phrases.

 

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!

 

 

An Active August over at Riverview!

Check out what our Babies, Toddlers and Pre-School have been up to during this busy month at Riverview!

What has our local community got to offer us?

We had an extremely exciting and busy August here at Riverview! The month started off with our Babies and Toddlers taking a trip on the tram, into the local community, heading to Hillsborough Library. They had a great time exploring, and listening to the stories being read by our staff team who accompanied them. Once we got back, the children also enjoyed colouring pictures based around the books we had read. We love watching the children become more familiar with their local area; we will continue to visit the community and everything it has to offer.

                             

Makaton Awareness Week

August was home to Makaton Awareness Week, so we made sure we made the most of it throughout the nursery! Makaton is a language programme that uses symbols, signs and speech to support language development. All rooms joined in practicing their key signs, and continued to learn all about Makaton at group times. They practiced the Makaton song of the month which was ‘1,2,3,4,5, Once I Caught a Fish Alive!”

                            

Crazy Science!

In Pre-School we’ve been carrying out lots of science experiments; our focus was things that fizz! We explored with bath bombs, vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, and lime/lemon juice. We heard lots of interesting sounds as we tested all the different materials out!

                         

A little bit of sunshine…

Although August was meant to be our last summer month, we didn’t really get our fair share of sunshine. However, on the odd days we did have some sun, our Babies enjoyed splashing about in the water play area to keep cool.

                       

Artists in the making!

Our Babies also spent lots of time this month exploring different textured paint, and different ways of mark-making. Our garden area got a new makeover thanks to our artistic Babies and their impressive painting skills!

                       

Architects of the future?

Toddlers also enjoyed exploring different aspects of the garden this month, and had their own means of contributing to it’s makeover; they used blocks and panels to build new stations and objects in the garden, including our very own car wash! They then used their new creations to help develop their balancing skills and range of movements. They too were also very creative with the painting when decorating these creations.

       

What did August teach us?

The main thing we discovered here at Riverview this month, was that you don’t need sun to have fun!

 

Summer Fun at The Little School House!

We had a jam-packed July here at The Little School House, with plenty of fun and exciting activities taking place!

Congratulations, The Little School House!

We started July off super-proud as we received our official Day Nurseries Award, placing us in the top 20 Nurseries in Yorkshire & The Humber! We were over the moon to get this award, as it is a great reflection of our hard-working staff and management. Thank you too all parents and carers that voted 🙂

Goodbye Pre-School!

Next, it was that time of the year for us to a say a very sad, but extremely heart-warming goodbye to our amazing Pre-Schoolers who are off to ‘big school’ in September. We had a red carpet and balloon wall set up in the garden, as well as personalised t-shirts and graduation caps for all our little stars to wear. It was an emotional day for us, and the parents (!), but we are all very proud to wave them off onto their next chapter – we know they’ll all do so well!

Before we said our final goodbyes, we thought it only right to treat them all to a bit more relaxed fun. First we took a trip to the farm; we saw lots of animals, including goats and alpacas – what a fun day out!

We had to throw in one more party before we could let our Pre-Schoolers go so, lastly, we hosted a leaving party at The Jungle Indoor Play Centre. They had lots of fun climbing and exploring the play equipment as well as enjoying a cooked lunch before getting the bus back to nursery.

Forever exploring in Baby Room!

In Baby Room, we love to explore! So, this month, our Babies explored new foods during a food tasting day. They tried a range of new things, including prawn crackers, onion bhajis, samosas, olives, and even lemons and limes! They really enjoyed trying different textures and flavours, the samosas in particular went down a treat!

And they didn’t stop there! Also in the Baby Room, they additionally took part in Rhythm Time! Our Babies got to sing songs, play instruments and have a good old boogie together! They also got to discover bubbles and different materials. It was so much fun!

How tall are our Toddlers, and how well can they bake???

Over in the Toddler Room, they’ve been measuring how tall they are, against our ‘How Tall Am I?’ wall. They found this to be super interesting; they compared heights with their friends, and checked to see how much they’d grown by the end of the month! Our staff are always keen to incorporate Maths wherever possible and this was another perfect opportunity. It provided the chance, not only for recognising numbers and counting, but also for comparison and discussion of ‘bigger than’ and ‘smaller than’, as well as differences.

Although July is supposed to be Summer, I think we can all agree that we haven’t had much of the weather we would expect! Although they’ve still spent plenty of time outside this month, Toddlers also decided to make the most of the time they spent indoors by baking! They helped measure out and mix all the ingredients together, before rolling out and cutting our cookies. Then they got to decorate them with icing and sprinkles – how tasty!

Learning something new every day…

It’s not just the children who have the opportunity to learn, we also like to continuously update our staff team’s knowledge too. July was the month where we hosted the fifth and final Company in-house training session of the term. This session was dedicated to reviewing updated Company policies, with a real focus on safeguarding. Carefully prepared interactive activities took place, with lots of opportunities for all our staff, of all different branches, to demonstrate their wealth of knowledge. A very pleasant, informative and successful evening of training!

We’re looking forward to seeing what August brings now…

June here at Kingswood!

Summer time fun!

We kicked off June here at Kingswood with our summer themed Toddler Room parent workshop! We were over the moon with the turnout of all those who attended the event that we held outdoors in the garden. During the workshop, Toddlers enjoyed taking part in lots of arts and crafts activities, such as painting pictures and getting messy! They also enjoyed some cutting and sticking with lots of different texture materials – how exciting!

Father’s Day at Kingswood…

June also consisted of lots of lovely Father’s Day celebrations. We carried out many Father’s Day themed activities, including making personalised cardboard plates!

Healthy eating at it’s finest!

Our Pre-Schoolers took control of Healthy Eating Week, holding their very own ‘Kingswood Council Meeting’ where they talked about what changes they could make to have a healthier diet! Some of the alterations they cleverly came up with included changing their lunch to a healthy stir fry – which went down a tasty treat! They also decided to add fruit to their water – we think this might have been their favourite invention of all, as they then discussed if this was something they’d like to do all the time! Toddlers also tried lots of new and exciting tropical fruits during snack time. To finish off Healthy Eating Week, Pre-School created their own pizzas, using their new wealth of knowledge to add plenty of healthy toppings!

 

Kingswood’s efforts to be more sustainable…

During June, we introduced new recycling bins outside, in an effort to be more sustainable and make a difference to the environment! We talked about why it is important to recycle, and how it can help our planet before our Toddlers helped pick up cardboard and other recyclable materials, and then carefully put them into to correct bins!

To finish off June…

We ended June by celebrating the second and final Eid of this year! We had a super fun day learning all about the festive celebration, as well of doing lots of different Eid related activities, such as dressing up in traditional clothing and designing our own henna tattoos!

May Activities at Oak Valley

At Oak Valley we started off May with the Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. We enjoyed celebrating to mark this special occasion. The children did lots of themed activities including crown making, decorating biscuits and even had our very own tea party. We listened to the National Anthem and dressed in red, white and blue.

As part of our HEY Award (Healthy Early Years), Pre-School have been promoting the importance of oral hygiene even more than normal. Alongside their daily toothbrushing club, they have been talking about the value of brushing your teeth twice a day, and joining in with different toothbrushing activities.

In Rising 3’s we have been doing some recycling using our recycling bins in the entrance hall, and categorising the items into the correct bin. We talked about the importance of recycling and looking after our planet, as well as talking about the different materials. We then used these materials to take part in junk modelling – we made dinosaurs, princess castles and rockets!

Toddlers have been exploring different sensory play and textures this month. We made some marks with various tools in the clay, and talked about the wonderful efforts we had made. We also used some soapy water and paint brushes to make patterns on the nursery wall.

With the weather getting warmer, and the sun starting to shine, Babies took part in ‘Sun Awareness’ activities. They talked about the importance of putting on our hats and wearing sunscreen. They did various activities to get these messages across – putting sunscreen and hats on dolls, and making a sensory sun out of coloured rice and paper to name a couple! We had so much fun exploring this!

March at Riverview

World Book Day

On Thursday 2nd March the children enjoyed coming to nursery dressed as their favourite character. The Pre-School particularly celebrated Julia Donaldson classics, including ‘Room on a Broom’, with all the staff dressing as a different character. Toddlers took the opportunity to share their favourite book ‘Dear Zoo’, whilst Baby Room had a ‘Wizard of Oz’ theme.

Snow day

There was a little bit of disruption to our usual schedule in March, caused by the weather!  Snow is a wonderful experience for the children and we hope that all of our families that didn’t make it to nursery had a good time exploring at home. For the few children that made it to nursery during the snow days we had a very fun time. We built a snowman outside and then came inside to warm up with some hot chocolate. We took the opportunity to say hello to our guinea pig friends Neddy and Noddy; we got them out of the cage to have a closer look and a cuddle.

Science Week

Pre-School have been exploring non-fiction books, finding out different facts about the world we live in.  Did you know that most of the Earth’s surface is covered in water? Around 71% of it! And the biggest ocean on Earth is called the Pacific Ocean! Or did you know that the Milky Way is the name of the galaxy we live in?

We have also started planting this month and, with this, we have a little ongoing experiment on how seeds grow. The children have placed two bags on the window, each of which contains a bean seed. One is in the bag alone, whereas the children think some soil and water in the other bag will help the seed to grow! The children are excited to see if their hypothesis is correct.

Red Nose Day

On Friday 17th March we celebrated Comic Relief. This year there was a ‘Mr Men and Little Miss’ theme which we made the most of by dressing up as the characters, and setting up messy play opportunities in the tuff trays.

St. Patricks Day

Toddlers hunted for the gold at the end of the rainbow in the sensory tray. Babies experimented making playdough with different lucky charms to hide and seek.

Spring walk to the park

Pre-School had a walk up to the local park. On the way there they looked for signs of Spring around them. The children noticed new plants growing such as daffodils and tulips. We also talked about the sun up in the sky. On the way back we did a listening walk to see what sounds we could hear; we heard birds tweeting and lots of different vehicles on the road. We took this opportunity to talk about safe ways to cross the road.

Ramadan – Free Fruit Friday and wish tree

Ramadan is a time that we reflect on our self, to be thankful and to help others.  We know lots of our families are fasting at the moment so, for Free Fruit Friday, we provided different traditional fruits to break fast with in the evening. We also created a wish tree outside the nursery for our children to reflect on things they are grateful for.

February at LSH

Valentine’s Day

This month at The Little School House we have had lots of fun creating our own Valentine’s Day crafts to send to the special people in our lives. The children had different ideas about the cards they would like to create in each of our rooms, in Pre-School we loved trying to write our own names. On the different hearts of our cards, we wrote different reasons why we love our special people.

Mark Making in Sensory

The Toddlers and Pre-Schoolers have loved making different marks in the shaving foam this month, we used paint brushes, glue spreaders and our fingers to make the different marks. We also used different cards to try and copy the patterns we could see.

National Apprenticeship Week

In February we celebrated National Apprenticeship Week – an opportunity to raise awareness of such a great scheme & also, more importantly we think, to celebrate the hard work & achievements of all the wonderful staff we have training towards their Early Years qualifications. We hope you agree with our view that they all deserve a treat which we’ve been happy to provide! 👏👏👏

Rhythm Time for Babies & Toddlers

We loved our sessions with Rhythm Time this month, we enjoyed banging the drums that are shaped like lollipops, shaking the ribbon, and feeling the different textures. We met a rabbit this time! He was white and he sang with us.

Pre-School School Readiness

In Pre-School we have done lots of different activities, getting us ready for going to big school in September. We practiced putting on our own coats and zipping them up, washing and drying our own hands – making sure that we used soap to clean off all the germs and continuing to blow our own noses, putting the tissues into the bin and then re-washing our hands.

Babies Winter Walk

Our Babies loved the Winter season so much that they went on one last walk to look at the conkers, crunchy leaves and acorns that were left over before the seasons changed and Spring began.  We also kept our eyes peeled for some squirrels but unfortunately we didn’t see any.

December at Oak Valley!

We started off December cheering on England in the World Cup! We used the children’s interest in this to learn about the countries taking part in the tournament & the different cultures. The children enjoyed designing their own football shirts, making flags & even made their own role play football pitch where they predicted the score!

The Baby & Toddler rooms have been particularly exploring the sensory trays this month. They have enjoyed using shaving foam, cereals, flour & ice to investigate.

We then began our festive activities, stating with our Christmas Jumper Day! We enjoyed wearing our favourite Christmas outfits & taking part of lots of themed activities! We also had a yummy Christmas dinner & pulled crackers with our friends!

Every year, Hallam FM run the ‘Mission: Christmas’ campaign as part of their Cash for Kids charity. Mission: Christmas accepts donations of cash & toys from members of the public so that they can support hundreds of organisations & the children they help. This year we decided to get involved. Instead of doing ‘secret Santa’, the staff decided to buy gifts for the cause instead. With parent donations & bake sales, we really managed to make a difference this Christmas! Well done & thank you to all involved!

Sparkles the Elf returned to Oak Valley this year to see the children! He got into quite a bit of mischief & the children had to remind him of our golden rules! Sparkles then copied the children’s good behaviour & earnt himself lots of stickers. Well done for learning Sparkles!!

Pre-School enjoyed inviting their parents & grandparents into nursery to watch them in their Christmas concert! After enjoying mince pies & the children’s singing, we then took part in a Christmas-themed workshop! We made melted snowman biscuits, wrote letters to Father Christmas & made snowflake decorations. Thank you to everyone who came to support us!

We finished off our Christmas celebrations with our annual party! We danced, played games & had a party lunch with our friends! We enjoyed lots of craft activities & even recieved a special present from Father Christmas! What a fun year we have had. We can’t wait to see what 2023 brings!

September 2022 at The Little School House

Now the weather is getting cooler again, we have really been focusing on our activities linking into the new season of Autumn; take a look at some of them – this includes crafts, as well as the children putting on their outdoor clothing themselves – well done to our Toddlers for learning to put the puddle suits on!

Super Star Sports

In September, we had the lovely Simon from Super Star Sports come to show us some football activities. Our Toddler Room & Pre-School children spent lots of time learning to balance the ball with their feet, legs, hands & on their heads!

Rhythm Time

Our Babies enjoyed a Rhythm Time session; they danced with fabric, banged on drums & shook tambourines to the music. They also learnt some new nursery rhymes with actions. We showed the teacher our Makaton songs too.

Toddler Parent Workshop

Our Toddler Room held their first parent workshop since Covid. It was so lovely to have parents back inside nursery. The children & their parents experienced messy sensory activities, leaf printing, & making playdough. Lesley also demonstrated our group time; they enjoyed a story that linked to our Word of the Week. Parents gave us some lovely feedback; they really enjoyed seeing examples of what their children get up to at nursery. Thank you to all of the parents who attended.