The Investigation Hub at Sidney Grove

Week beginning 1st June 2026

Characteristics of Effective Learning

Investigating Water – Motivation- Being involved and concentrating

Creative and critical thinking- working with ideas

With the rainy weather conditions this week the children have tuned into different types of water play. On Monday, there were lots of drips falling from the gutters and the children became engaged in catching the water in metal containers to hear the sound it made, filling buckets and transporting the water down to the water tray and then problem solving to move containers to catch drips in the right location. As a further provocation we added corks into provision and children quickly became interested in sliding the corks down the guttering, using water to flush them down.

‘It’s like a waterfall!’

‘It looks like flying water…they’re flying!’

Parents as Partners

This week we explored books about ladybirds, learning key facts about them. One of the children thought they had seen a purple ladybird so we did some internet research and discovered that the brighter the ladybird the more toxic they are! They looked closely at a variety of ladybirds discussing the colours, patterns and number of dots they saw.

The children developed some mathematical thinking, practising counting spots onto the ladybirds carefully, saying one number for one dot. In small group time we have followed the children’s interests, making tropical smoothies and making puppets!

Outdoors Learning

The children have been closely observing a variety of mini-beasts outside this week. On Monday, they were fascinated to see a group of snails on a wall and watched closely, talking about the ‘shell’ ‘feelers’ and ‘trail’ . On Wednesday which was quite a rainy day we pulled back some small pieces of artificial grass in the garden and the children were so excited to see worms including one which had to be named ‘Super Worm!’ This prompted some lively discussion about what the worms were doing and how to know which part was their head and which part was the tail! Some children were singing ‘’Wiggly Woo’ and we recited the Super Worm rhyme together.

Next week: We have had a special delivery! We have 5 creatures to take care of in Nursery. We might need your help to name them. We think they might change quite a lot when they stay with us! Can you guess what they could be?

As part of our transition programme for children starting school in September we will have Reception teachers visiting children over the next weeks. We look forward to sharing how amazing the children are with their new teachers! Could you please let us know if your child has a visit to their new school and may arrive to Nursery late for their session or need to leave early. Many thanks and have a lovely weekend!