Kirkley Nursery& Centre of Excellence

The Hedgehogs this week have enjoyed creating some Valentines themed crafts! We have made some pictures for our loved ones, explored with the jelly in our sensory tuff tray and developed our fine motor skills with the play dough! This has also been our last week reading 'the wheels on the bus', all of our Hedgehogs have thoroughly enjoyed this story, creating their very own vehicle wash this week! We have watched them all continue to develop a great deal this first term back after Christmas, wishing you all a lovely half term!

It's has been another busy week in our Owl room. On Tuesday some of our children enjoyed visiting Kirkley Manor care home, playing and chatting with some of their residents. We have been practicing using scissors to snip play dough, the children were taught how to correctly hold the scissors in order to be able to cut up the play dough. We have been using coloured owls to make continuous pattern, asking the children to continue the colour sequence. We have been doing lots of valentines themed activities making special pictures for our families. And the children have also been practicing their counting and matching number to quantity.

The children in the Owl room have had a very busy week. They have been using role play in the hair salon, styling each other's hair. We have continued our winter theme, exploring ice and rescuing the penguins frozen in the ice, and fishing out the penguins hiding in the bubbles. The children have also had fun junk modelling using their imagination to make robots, rockets and monsters.

The last few weeks the Squirrels have been exploring the core text ' The wheels on the bus'. Alongside this we have been looking at 'People who help us'. We have also been focusing on fine motor skills

Over the past few weeks, Hedgehogs have started reading their new core text, 'the wheels on the bus!' All of our Hedgehogs really love singing this song at group times as well as now reading the story alongside. They have become very familiar with the actions to the lyrics and carry them out with 100% effort.They can also now recognise the pictures being described. We have been exploring with our sensory bags, focusing on the specific colours red, yellow and green, drawing our own roads to ensure our cars/buses stay on track, created our own roads in the garden to ride our cars/bikes around on, getting messy with paint and jelly as well as most of all having fun whilst we do so!

We have had a lovely week in Owls. We have continued our winter theme by making polar bears, exploring a snowing sensory tray of ice cornflour and artic animals. We have been practicing our fine motor skills by threading pasta, we have been focusing on pencil control and practicing using the tripod grip. We also made bird houses to go with our book "No two Alike".

We have had a very busy week in the Owl room. The children have been getting very creative making penguins and robins. Practicing our scissor skills, cutting out snowflakes. The children have been junk modelling making bird houses to go with our winter bird theme. Some of our owls have also been working together to construct a giant train track.

The last few weeks the Squirrels have been exploring the story ' That's not my Owl' We have been busy making bird feeders, comparing different owls into size order and created a handprint tree! The Squirrels have been enjoying their 'dance breaks' and have been showing us all their fabulous dance moves! Next week we start our new core text, 'The Wheels On The Bus'

Over the past few weeks, the Hedgehogs have continued reading our core text, 'That's not my Owl!' We have been participating in lots of sensory based activities, including creating our own owl garden, placing resources in here which represents the words seen in our story. We have also been watching the birds in the garden and listening to the noises they make. The Hedgehogs have also made their own owl nest cakes as well as handprints, with our older children describing the textures and noises an owl makes. Over the past few weeks also, we have been watching some of our Hedgehogs hit special milestones, such as their first steps! This has been hugely rewarding moments for all of us as practitioners as well as family's at home, what special memories we all continue to make together!