Springing into March with Oak Valley

1st April 2024 by Katie

As the the days are getting longer, and the weather is getting (a little bit) warmer, Oak Valley welcomes Spring and all it has to offer!

Seeding Change for a Greener Future!

Pre-School welcomed March, and the slightly warmer weather, by spending some time in our new vegetable garden. The children loved talking about the seeds they were sowing, and watering them. They drew pictures of the vegetables, and loved reading stories in the garden. The Pre-School council also cast a vote to call it ‘The Secret Garden’.

Celebrating Mother’s Day

Here at Oak Valley, the children enjoyed making their mums feel extra special on Mother’s Day. The children sent home a special keepsake and there was even a little gift for them too.

The science of today, is the technology of tomorrow

For British Science Week (8th-17th March) the children loved experimenting and exploring different science experiments. Toddler Room created their own potions, mixing lots of things together to see what they could create. Rising 3’s made a Skittles rainbow, using coloured sweets and water. While Pre-School created their very own lava lamps, using oil and coloured water.

Recycle Today, Save Tomorrow!

For Global Recycling Day, the children in Pre-School talked about the importance of recycling and reusing materials. They reused some cardboard, and their imaginations, to create some wonderful creations.

Celebrating Easter

Toddlers welcomed their parents in to celebrate Easter and to encourage them to ‘Ditch the Dummy’. There was lots of fun had by all and the staff talked about the importance of ‘ditching the dummy’ for promoting speech, as well as lots of Easter activities.

Springing into Spring

With Spring finally here, the children in Rising 3’s have been creating daffodil paintings. They have enjoyed exploring the colours and smells, and using their fine motor skills to create their very own masterpiece!

Babies are on the hunt

The babies have loved having their very own Easter egg hunt. This activity encouraged the babies to explore their surroundings, develop their motor skills and be engaged.

You

You make a difference everyday

Last but not least, we want to congratulate Caitlin on winning ‘Employee of the Month’ for March. Caitlin has great creative ideas, is always happy to help and has built some great bonds with the babies in Baby Room. Keep up the hard work and well done!

Kingswood In March!!

5th May 2022 by Emma

We have been getting very busy this month here at Kingswood. Starting with Pancake Day and Ash Wednesday where the children got to experience yummy pancakes for snack and a vegetarian corn beef hash for lunch. We incorporated this into our healthy eating by adding fruit and talking about how the fruit and vegetables keep us healthy.

HEY AWARD – Here at Kingswood we have been working towards our Healthy Early Years Award, between the Deputy Manager Chloe (who is currently on maternity leave) and the Acting Deputy Amy, they have provided staff with the HEY Toolkit, making them more aware of the correct portion sizes, exercise goals, bottle feeding best practice, safe sleep best practice and many more that is included. The beginning of March saw us have our HEY inspection and we are now awaiting our result.

World Book Day came next. The staff and the children enjoyed dressing up as their favourite characters and raising money for the Crackerjacks Children’s Trust. We managed to raise a grand total of £120 – huge thanks to all of those who contributed. The children engaged in story making activities, read their favourite stories and set up book-themed tuff trays. We also promoted our lending library for children to take them home.

Science week stemmed some great exploration, the staff helped the children explored in many different experiments. From bubble wrap painting to volcano eruptions. We continued this on water day talking about the water cycle and conducting an experiment to help explain this cycle.

Comic relief saw the children come dressed in red! We talked to the older children about what comic relief represented and asked questions about how they think people could help. We focused some of our activities around the theme incorporating it into the children’s interests.

We have generally had lots of fun outside, especially the week running up to mothers day where the sun started coming out for Spring.

Mother’s Day the the children did some planting, we talked a lot about what plants need, the beginning of Spring and the cycle of plants. I hope all had a lovely Mother’s Day and we will see you next time our blog comes along.

March at The Little School House

23rd April 202023rd April 2020 by Beth Softley

Before the world went crazy over the corona virus we managed to pack in lots of fun activities in & out of the setting…

Each of our branches had a charity takeover week to raise money for Sheffield Children’s Hospital. The plan was to theme as many of the activities around bears, as the hospital is tying it in with the Bear Hunt that’s planned around the city over the Summer. During our chosen week we held a raffle (with some amazing donation prizes – thanks to all who contributed), guessing games to wind a prize and even took the children on a sponsored bear walk, as well as completing lots of bear-themed activities in their rooms with their friends. We want to thank all of the staff, children and parents for their support and donations for this fantastic cause. The week was very successful week and we raised over £800!!

We don’t think our annual celebration of World Book Day would be complete without giving the staff and children the opportunity to dress up as their favourite characters. We saw the likes of The Gingerbread Man, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan and many more! The children loved taking part in reading their favourite stories and making up their own book character, although perhaps their favourite part was enjoying some of the yummy cakes and buns from our bake sale!

Our termly staff training session was held early in the month. Lisa and Anna (Area Manager and Quality Practice Manager) decided to base the first part of the session around a recommendation from our Ofsted inspection (January 2020); the report suggested that we should ‘build on the good planning for adult-led activities to ensure that all participating children are fully challenged.’ So we spent a portion re-looking at what the activities we’re planning to meet the next steps of the children, how to extend them for the more advanced children, what we provide in our areas of continuous provision and how to support the children in order for them to access and achieve things more independently.

We spent the latter half being introduced to a relatively new teaching strategy called ‘Word Aware’. This tool is designed to support practitioners in the provision of effective vocabulary development and it’s aim is to shorten the ‘word gap’ between children from different backgrounds. We discussed how we can implement the strands into our daily practice and how it will work best for the different age groups. We’re looking forward to putting all this into action once things are back to normal!

Our Pre-School Room went on a trip to Weston Park Museum and they used public transport to get to and from. This was a big experience for some of our children, who had not been on a bus before! They enjoyed learning about the different parts of Sheffield’s history and playing in their role play areas. The children loved looking at the animals after enjoying a yummy picnic for lunch.

Now the weather is starting to get warmer, we’ve been enjoying more sensory activities and activities in the garden. The Baby Room have really enjoyed splashing and playing in the sensory tray with all of the water and bubbles – they had lots of fun splashing the staff too! It’s been great having picnic snacks and lunch in the garden with our friends, and made us very excited for the Summer weather!