Kirkley Nursery& Centre of Excellence

We would like to give a huge thank you to Lowestoft Men's shed. We really appreciate their hard work and woodwork skills. Earlier on in the year we got in contact with Lowestoft Men's shed as part of our community engagement. We asked them to make planters for our garden so we could grow vegetables, herbs and flowers with the children. We have had a great crop of strawberries, radishes and potatoes which the children have already sampled. We have also currently got pumpkins and sweetcorn growing and some cosmos and marigolds. In addition we asked the men's shed if they could build us some tough tray stands which doubled as fantastic storage. They have also made us a wooden sand pit with lid too. We are working hard to enhance our garden provision and the planters and tough tray stands have made a great difference.

For the Hedgehogs, this has been their last week of reading 'Baby Sunflower!' Whilst reading this story, the Hedgehogs have learnt a variety of new language as well as participating in lots of new, engaging activities. The Hedgehogs have been watering their own sunflowers which have now started being sent home as well as other plants in the garden, developing their fine motor skills in the water trays, painting, counting and continuing focusing on the colours yellow and green. Some of our Hedgehogs also started their transition sessions this week and we are all proud of how well they adapted to a new room, routine and faces!

This past few weeks the Squirrels have been finishing the core text 'Jack and the beanstalk'. They have really enjoyed this story and have been able to recite it back to adults! Their favourite sentence has been ' fee fi fo fum' This week we started our new core text ' Way Down Deep in the Deep Blue Sea' . This week we also started our internal transitions between rooms. All our children have adapted fantastically and have made us all so proud

The Owls were very excited to release our butterflies this week. They even sang to them "There's a tiny Caterpillar on a leaf" as they flew out of their net. The children have thoroughly enjoying the experience of having caterpillars and watching them grow and develop into beautiful butterflies.

This week, the Hedgehogs have continued reading and completing activities based on our story, 'Baby Sunflower'. We have been fork painting, using our yellow/green crayons in the garden to create our own flower drawings, explored with the soil and mini plant pots, made our own gloop as well as watching the progress of our sunflowers we have planted!

The Children in the Owl room have had a great week learning about the life cycle of the Butterfly. Our caterpillars that had turned into Chrysalis began hatching on Thursday so the children were able to watch the butterflies exploring their net enclosure. We had some very excited children!

The Hedgehogs this week have continued reading the story 'Baby Sunflower!' We have had a very exciting week as we have planted our sunflower seeds and have been taking it in turns to water them! We have been using language such as grow and big and have continued focusing on our colours, specifically yellow and green! We have also participated in painting with lemons and exploring in the sensory tray filled with shaving foam, pipettes and flowers!

The past few weeks the Squirrel's have been looking at the core text ' Jack and The Beanstalk' . We have been exploring different sensory trays filled with sand, cotton pads, leafs, animals, cereals and beans! We have also been learning a new song called ' I'm a little bean'!

The children in the Owl room have had a very exciting week looking at our caterpillars, watching them grow bigger and bigger until they have spun into their chrysalis. Hopefully next week we will watch them hatch and see the transformation into beautiful butterflies!