2-3: The Discovery Hub

We have had a lovely week in nursery with lots of learning opportunities! The children have continued to explore their favourite areas in the indoor and outdoor environment and continue to find new interests. This week the children have enjoyed a range of activities which support learning across the Early Years Foundation Stage while following current interest’s.

Active Learning:

Open-ended resources, such as cardboard boxes have been very popular this week. It was lovely to observe the children using the resources in different ways, for example, some of the children enjoyed singing who is in the box 🎶, others played peek-a-boo and some built cars. Open ended loose parts such as cardboard boxes provides children with a wealth of opportunities as they encourage physical play as the children move them, stack them and climb inside them, which supports children developing their co-ordination, balance and physical manipulation skills.

As the weather has become a little nicer this week the children have shown more of an interest in exploring water play opportunities. Throughout this activity the children are developing their hand-eye coordination skills, experimenting with quantities, and are beginning to develop an understanding of mathematical concepts such as full and empty.

Outdoor Learning:

In the outdoor environment the children have enjoyed exploring season changes with some children beginning to notice wildlife in the form of birds, squirrels 🐿️ budding flowers 🌷 and new leaves on the trees 🌳.

To help explore spring and extend the children’s learning we have also been on a lovely nature walk around the adjacent community centre gardens. During the nature walk the children sang lovely nature songs, turned into angels of the north angel, and looked closely at new budding flowers, birds and and tall trees. Throughout the walk the children pointed at the different flowers, identified the colours, smelled the beautiful fragrances and used describing words such as small, medium and big to describe sizes of the tree and flowers. When walking around the gardens the children spotted some watering cans this allowed the children to experiment with contrasting weights while listening to key vocabulary such as heavy, full and empty.

Sand activities have also been popular in the garden this week with lots of children using the sand to empty and fill containers. While playing the children are practising sharing the tools while working together to create beautiful masterpieces.

Communication and Language:

This week the children have enjoyed completing lots of fun educational activities which promote communication and language skills. When observing the children on the nature walk lots of key vocabulary was used to identify the new flowers and explore spring concepts. This was then later discussed in group time using the images taken on the walk to share with friends and encourage communication and language.

As part of the children’s education encouraging literacy opportunities is always a key focus within nursery, this is shown when the children request favourite stories and then re-created the story within free play opportunities. This is lovely to observe as the children often use story props and toy animals from within the nursery environment to communicate with others and recreate parts of the story.

“I will huff and I will puff and blow your house in little pigs 🐷🐷🐷🏠🐺”

Song of the week: Little Peter Rabbit 🐰