exercise

January 2024 at Riverview!

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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

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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!

 

 

September 2021 @ Oak Valley

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September has been a great month for us all at Oak Valley. We welcomed back our term-time children & had many new starters joining us to begin their nursery journey! We have loved welcoming our parents back into the building to see our newly decorated rooms & the exciting activities that have been taking place!

Baby Room has been exploring words & sounds this month. We have been singing nursery rhymes in English & French, creating sensory music bottles to use at group time, & using our ‘Words of the Week’ to explore. The children particularly enjoyed fruit tasting & baking with lots of different textures & flavours.

Toddler Room has been making the most of the warm weather & spending as much time as possible outdoors. We have enjoyed an outing to the park to play games, & taken part in our monthly Super Star Sport session! This month we focussed on football; the children practiced their gross motor skills & hand -eye coordination, while running around getting lots of exercise & fresh air.

Rising 3’s have been especially interested in role-play this month. The children have created a post office area where they have been busy writing & sorting letters, serving customers & answering the phone. After working really hard, the children decided they need a break, & went on holiday on their aeroplane to lots of exotic destinations!

Rising 3’s have also enjoyed making sensory playdough, drawing shadow pictures of their favorite toys & exploring different countries, to name but a few activities sparked by the children’s interests (which never fail to interest us!)

To finish off the month, Pre-School have been for an adventure into the woods to collect leaves, conkers & sticks! We then made some lovely Autumn pictures to show what we had found.

Some of you may have seen our Early Years Care & Education bear on the Sheffield Bear Trail in aid of Sheffield Children’s Hospital. Keep your eyes peeled, as he’ll be on his way to spend some time with us at Oak Valley :)

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July 2021 at Riverview!

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What makes us unique

The children in our Pre-School room started the month by discussing what makes them unique. They talked a lot about what they had in common, and also what differences they have. They made faces out of playdough and, at the mark-making table, they drew themselves.

It’s coming home

For the Euros, we had a special football party before the tournament final. The Pre-School children worked together to create a big England flag that we hung up in the garden. In Babies, they experimented with the colour red by playing in red spaghetti, and making lots of marks in the sensory tray with red paint.

Good luck school graduates

July saw us waving goodbye to our first ever Pre-School graduates, and what a lovely bunch they were! We’ll miss them all dearly. To celebrate them finishing at Riverview, we had a ceremony where each of them were presented with a certificate. We then had ice-cream in the garden and some party games to celebrate their achievements.

Sports day fun!

Pre-School also had their very own sports day. Simon from Super Star Sport came in to deliver a session for us and the children had a great time running around, playing with the footballs and participating in the physical challenges. Afterwards, we talked about why exercise is good for us and the effect it has on our bodies.

Tooth Brushing club

As we will soon be starting a tooth brushing club, we have introduced the children to the importance of oral health, and what they can do to look after their teeth.  In an activity to promote good oral health, the children used toothbrushes to clean dirty marks off the teeth model.

We’ve been growing!

As well as brushing teeth twice a day, eating a balanced diet can also help promote good oral health. In the garden, we have had our first harvest of green beans. The children have been enjoying eating these at lunchtimes. The children love watering the plants and learning what makes them grow. Toddlers and Pre-School have both done experiments to see what happened to bean/pea seeds under different conditions. We have found that the seeds that have water and sunlight grow, whereas the seeds without will not.

Our ant world

Toddlers have been looking after their own colony of ants in their ‘ant world’. They enjoy observing the ants in the nest, watching them dig and crawl around.  They watch them walk down the tube of the ant world in the viewing container, where there is food for the ants to eat. We have talked about the types of food ants like; we have found they like sugary fruit and vegetables as this gives them lots of energy.  

We are looking forward to more fun in the sun this summer, and to welcoming our families old and new back in the new term.

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.