Kirkley Nursery& Centre of Excellence

What a lovely stay and play session we had today. The theme was the story of "The very hungry caterpillar". We had lots of lovely activities for our families to enjoy.

What a busy week we have had in the Owl room this week! The children have been playing lots of letter matching games. Learning the sound "aaa"and recognising the letter A. The children have been matching compare bears and following patterns, and using the tweezers to pick up the bears. We also created the swirling whirling snowstorm with cornflour and shaving foam.

Hedgehogs Stay and Play, The Very Hungry Caterpillar

This week in the hedgehogs we have been enjoying our VE Day activities, including learning lots of colours and tasting some lovely snack party outside with our friends.

We have had a lovely week enjoying the sunshine in our Owl room. The children have really enjoyed having the water tray out with opportunities for lots of water play. This week we have been continuing to focus on the letter "S" and the sound ssss. We have been working hard at recognising what the letter S looks like by play "I spy the letter S". The children have enjoyed some bear hunt themed arts and crafts such as making the bear cave. The children have also been loving the jumbo sized chalk using them to draw on the pavement.

Over the past few weeks, the Hedgehogs have continued reading and exploring activities based around their core text 'Oh Dear!' It has been lovely watching the Hedgehogs engage with this story, they have all learnt the context so well, identifying what comes next and now being able to name the animals as well as making the sounds! We have been exploring lots of sensory based activities, such as with colourful spaghetti, using the tweezers to pick up the animals to develop our fine motor skills, created our own sensory bags, 'milked' our own cow as well as lots of messy play and also garden play!

The Squirrels have had a great first few weeks back. We have been busy exploring all activities based around the farm. We have had different sensory tuff trays, been discussing where things come from e.g.milk and eggs and have been using pencils to trace our dot to dot pictures. These last few weeks we have seen a big development in the Squirrels role playing. They have been looking after the babies, digging for fossils with 'axes' in the mud and been talking on our train track telephones! We have also been enjoying all of the lovely sunshine. We have been watering our plants, reading books in the sun and developing our gross motor skills on the climbing frame.

We have had a lovely week in the owl room. Our children have been making " long wavy grass" pictures from our bear hunt story. We have been practicing our phonics, focusing on the letter "S" sound. We played " silly soup", and got a giant piece of paper where the children played a drawing game where they had to copy the letter S and point to things that Zoey had drawn beginning with an S. The weather has been lovely so we have had lots of fun playing Hopscotch, incorporating our number recognition and counting skills, and hopping and jumping skills.

We have had a really busy first week back after our Easter holidays. The children in the Owl room have started our new book "we're going on a bear hunt" the children have been retelling the story with our tough tray. During our phonic session this week we introduced the children to the sound "s" the children have taken part in "silly soup" sessions when each child takes out an item from the bag which begins with an s they then have to say what it is with emphasis on the "sssss"sound. We were very fortunate to have been donated an amazing woodwork bench and tools for our role play area, the children have loved exploring this resource pretending to go around fixing things. The children have been practicing their fine motor skills with the pegs and peg boards, making some beautiful patterns with the pegs. We also reopened our grass area and the children were able to use our new slide and climbing apparatus which they were very excited about.