At Winlaton, the children enjoyed celebrating National Bee Day 2022 by making our own bees using play-dough, colouring in our own bees and dressing up as bees! We had so much fun and everyone looked great in their black and yellow clothes!

We have recently built a small rock climbing wall in our Forest School at Imperial! The children have been watching the teachers make it, excited to have a turn on it. The children have been using their gross motor skills to pull themselves up and take large steps. It has also challenged the children to problem solve as they need to decide which stone to step on, or hold onto. The children are really enjoying our new rock climbing wall!

Fun in the sun at Valeswood! Making music with pots and pans, exploring water play, jumping in puddles and joining in with construction play! Roll on the Summer- we can’t wait to make lots of memories in the sunshine!

The Toddlers at Imperial took part in exploration play, using various sized boxes to experiment and build with. The children used different materials to mark make, stick and create with! The children had lots of fun and used their imaginations!

To celebrate Children’s Mental Health week, we have been exploring emotions and feelings and learning how to express them. The children spent time drawing what makes them feel happy, sad and angry. We discussed our drawings and shared our feelings, communicating with each other.

“Promise me you’ll always remember- you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think”- Christopher Robin from Winnie the Pooh

At Imperial, a group of the older Preschool children went down to Forest School to take part in a nature hunt! The children had a checklist of natural materials that they needed to find. The children were also challenged by having to use their mathematic skills to find a certain amount of an object. We used wheelbarrows to explore the environment and hunt for flowers, worms, stones, sticks and leaves!

At Nightingale, we went on a Bear Hunt around the nursery! The children loved to act out the story and use all of the props to retell the story with their friends. It was great to hear the children joining in with repeated refrains and interacting with each other!

“We’re going on a bear hunt, we’re going to catch a big one, we’re not scared…”

At St Marys, we celebrated Earth Day by making our own planet Earth creations using paper plates and painted our hands green and blue. We all agreed we can change the world with our own hands. One little boy said “We have more seas than land on planet Earth” which means we must look after our seas as well as the land!

We even did some recycling and spoke about the different between different materials that we can recycle.

At Imperial, we were lucky enough to receive some pallets to use in our Forest School area. We asked the children what they would like to turn the pallets into. Lots of the children said a pirate ship, so we started creating it straight away! Some of the teachers got to work, sawing and hammering and building it together. The children even joined in, helping to sand some of the wood and using their own child hammers. The children were so excited when we put the pirate flag up and couldn’t wait to start using the pirate ship! We have more work to do on it, so there will be more photos to come!

At St Mary’s, we released our beautiful butterflies in our garden. We got to gently hold them before they flew around. The butterflies kept flying back to see us- it was lovely!

Later that day, we made our own butterfly paintings to take home to show our loved ones!

At Valeswood, we made shields in celebration of St George’s Day! We explored different materials as the children used card, tissue paper and glue to create their masterpieces! The children were excited to show their loved ones and was using the shields to role play!

At St Marys, we had a very precious and special delivery from the ‘Living Eggs Company’. We were so egg-cited to find one egg had hatched overnight and we watched another hatch during the day! We were so fascinated and sat beautifully whilst watching them. We can’t wait to watch them grow and hold them!