What’s been happening at Kingswood this November?

Bonfire Night

To start the month off we explored lots of different colours in all the rooms, and talked about bonfire night and firework displays. The children all enjoyed painting their own displays.

 

Remembrance Day

Here the children explored different textures and paints to interpret their own poppies.

Children in Need

We had such huge support this year from the local community to help organise a raffle with some fantastic prizes.

We managed to raise nearly £400 for Children in Need, and we also all got to come to nursery in our pyjama for a whole week!

Here are some of the prizes we had on offer, and also some of the activities we did to help support such a fantastic charity.

Winter weather

To get us ready for the run up to December and Christmas, we even experienced a nice frosting of snow. The children loved to explore and make different marks in the snow. It was great to then come inside and make our own ice and snowflakes too.

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!

March activities at Oak Valley

 

We have had a busy month at Oak Valley Day Nursery. March has seen us raise money for charity on World Book Day – the children came to nursery dressed up in fancy dress and we had a picnic lunch whilst listening to our favourite stories! Our Baby Room also marked the occasion by visiting the local library for a story telling event.

The children have picked the theme of fire engines as one of their topics this month; their interest in a passing emergency vehicle led us into making our own fire engine and the children dressing up and using hoses to put the fire out! We are going to visit some fire engines in the upcoming weeks so the children can sit in and pretend to drive them!

Even the ‘Beast from the East’ failed to stop our fun as we enjoyed building snowmen and making snow angels. Parenta magazine even featured the Company in an article they ran on snow days as we manged to brave the weather conditions and open nursery every day.

Baby Room hosted a sensory ‘Stay and Play’ session for parents and carers to attend and get messy with them. They explored shaving foam, water, coloured pasta and feet painting. A fun time was had by all!

Toddler Room had their Easter workshop where we joined in with baking, crafts and even made bird feeders for the garden. Meanwhile Pre-school had a sports day to raise awareness for Sport Relief by taking part in the egg and spoon race along with an assault course and playing various other garden games.

Bertie our Pre-School Bear has also had a busy month – he has been having adventures at the children’s houses and has been on many day trips. He has recently returned from his holidays in France! We have loved reading about what he has been up to.

For Mother’s Day, the children have been pot painting, decorating mugs and coasters for their Mums. This is something the children enjoy doing throughout the year and often decorate keepsakes to bring home

The children showed an interested in the distance of things and how far objects could travel, so we spent one sunny morning making aeroplanes. The children then took them outside into the garden and flew them. We used markers in the grass to see how far our aeroplanes could travel and had races to see which could go the furthest.

 

To top off our busy month we had our routine environmental health inspection which saw us keep our 5* hygiene rating.