characteristics of effective learning

Festive fun during December at LSH

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Firstly, congratulations to Loretta who was our December Employee of the Month. Loretta won the award for making sure that she checked in on her colleagues, cheered them up if they were feeling a little low and supported her team when the Rom Co-ordinator was off on holiday. Thank you, and well done!

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Olivia gained her Level 3 Qualification in style passing her End Point Assessment with a distinction grade. Olivia worked hard to achieve this and we’re all very proud of her. Well done Liv!

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On Friday 15th December, we held our Pre-School Christmas Concert at St. Chad’s Church. The children did a fantastic job singing Christmas Carols, using props that they had made, and Makaton that they had spent time learning. Afterwards, they were rewarded with a lovely treat hot chocolate station – yum!

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Toddlers held a Christmas workshop in December that parents, children, and staff all thoroughly enjoyed. We had a range of different activities; children enjoyed creating their own baubles for their Christmas trees at home, decorating their own biscuits (which most of them ate before the icing had set!), making some reindeer food to sprinkle outside on Christmas Eve, and even making reindeer hats and paper plate wreaths to take home.

It was Christmas Party Day in December too, and we had lots of fun playing Pass the Parcel with our friends. We did some dancing and played musical chairs. We didn’t have a ‘normal’ nursery lunch on this day, instead we enjoyed lots of yummy party food! Once we were ready to go home, we got a special present to take home and put under our tree.

 

On Monday 18th December, our Baby Room enjoyed having their very own Elf Day where the staff and babies all dressed up in their elf clothing and had lots of fun taking part in different elf activities.

 

All the children enjoyed a Christmas lunch cooked by the lovely Abi in the kitchen. The children enjoyed eating their lunch while listening to Christmas songs, and having different conversations about what we would like Santa to bring us for Christmas.

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We also held our termly staff training sessions. We spent time refreshing our knowledge on the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning, before spending time on Loose Parts. As always, a great opportunity for quality practice sharing and bonding across the branches.

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We loved wearing our Christmas jumpers for Christmas Jumper Day, supporting the charity Save the Children. We designed our own Christmas jumpers on paper and decorated them with different creative resources.

We enjoyed our session of Superstar Sports, where we played different games with the balls. One of these games was rugby, where we balanced the rugby ball and kicked the ball so we could see if it was different from kicking a football. We then played a game of What Time Is It Mr Wolf? to end the session.

That’s the end of our December, and the end of 2023! We can’t wait to see what 2024 brings for us!

April at Highgate

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During the month of April Highgate has been blessed with a multitude of visitors! We started with Donald and his community engagement ambulance. He talked to the toddlers and Pre-School children about his role and what it entails. They learnt about what an ambulance is for, what it does and how it helps people. The children got to actually sit inside the ambulance and even try out the siren! Possibly their favourite part of the visit was the opportunity to try on the uniform that Donald brought. We ended the session by colouring in some pictures that he’d also supplied.

Zoolab came to bring their exotic wildlife for the children to see. The children were able to handle creatures such as a snake, a giant snail, rats, mice and even a gecko. The Zoolab representative explained to the children where the animals come from, where they live and what they eat. We found the session really encouraged the children to ‘have a go’, even when they weren’t very keen at the beginning!

Last but not least we had our monthly enrichment of ‘Mini Movez’. One of the lovely ladies came to Highgate to lead a fun and expressive session themed around what the children were learning. The sessions are always lively and energetic and the Toddler and Pre-School groups take full advantage of this opportunity for active learning which really gets their hearts pumping!

Aside from visitors, there’s been plenty more exciting things happening within nursery. Our Pre-School children have been learning about life cycles this month and have focussed on frogs. We introduced a tank of real tadpoles & the children explored them using magnifying glasses to examine them. At each stage of development, they’ve made efforts to draw observational portraits.  They are very excited that the tadpoles are now developing legs and are eager to see when they will turn into a frog.

Monday 23rd April saw us celebrating St George’s Day. This date marks the anniversary of the English patron saint’s death. According to legend, he was a soldier in the Roman army who killed a dragon and saved a princess. Rather than re-enacting the legend (!) we decided to mark the day by holding an afternoon tea party. The children made flags using a variety of different art and craft methods such as colouring, sticking and painting. We then used the flags to decorate the table where they ate scones with clotted cream and jam – yummy!

Throughout April our babies have been experimenting with different sensory experiences. We took advantage of the warm weather, stripped the babies down to their nappies and let them explore ‘gloop’, shaving foam, water, cereals, sand and even ice! We focussed on several of the ‘characteristics of effective learning’ with each of these – ‘playing and exploring’, ‘active learning’ and ‘creating and thinking critically’. It was great to observe the different ways they investigated the different mediums and their textures.