The children enjoyed celebrating Year of the Pig, they made Pig Plates to take home and decorate the hall with. They used their cutting skills to make paper lanterns. We listened to the story of the Chinese Zodiac and learnt how the animals took part in and won the race. We had Prawn crackers and sweet and sour dip for our snack and played in the home corner with the chopsticks and noodles – it was quiet tricky pinching the noodles with the chopsticks and tweezers ! Everyone also took home a lucky coin in a traditional red envelope.

On Monday and Wednesday we had a Christmas stay and play morning for our parents. All the children and parents took part in a variety of Christmas crafts which they thoroughly enjoyed. We created lots of Christmas crafts such as trees, baubles, cars and trains in snow and lots of paint and flour play. The children and parents had a fantastic morning which we are sure to do again in the New Year! Merry Christmas everyone.

We created lots of events for our parent’s and children to take part in to raise as much money as possible for such a great cause. On Monday we all dressed up in a mixture of colours and Tuesday we decided to have a fancy dress day, all the children had lots of fun and was very creative with their outfits.

On Wednesday we had our very own ‘Blossom Bake Off’ each room created cakes and biscuits to sell to our parents at the end of the day. We would like to say a huge thank you to all the parent’s who sent in lots of yummy treats for us to contribute in our bake sale.

Thursday was great fun! We set up our very own Coffee and Tea shop where parents could come and take a hot drink on their way to work or on their way home. On Friday we had a pyjama day and a teddy bear’s picnic, all the children came in wearing lots of funky pyjamas and their favourite cuddly toys to share with their friends.

Many thanks to all our children and parent’s for taking part and being such a big support.

We have been very busy at Blossom Years Nightingale Lane, this Christmas season. The children enjoyed singing all the songs they had learnt to their parents and carers, in our Christmas Show, we then enjoyed some time in preschool with our families. The children have learnt the story of the Nativity and used their crafting skills to make a Nativity scene, which we have displayed for everyone to see. We have been very lucky to have some parent helpers in to do some extra craft activities with the children, they have done things such as making letter decorations, baubles, Christmas pudding crafts, decorating trees for the backdrop for our show, making Christmas cards and decorating Tree biscuits. The children have also enjoyed activities such as counting baubles onto the trees, making snowman playdough, using our pen control skills to write letters to Father Christmas, which the children then walked to the post box to post…..I wonder if we will get a reply from Father Christmas ??

I was fortunate to be able to attend a ‘Little Explorers’ session last Wednesday. I was pleasantly surprised at how thorough and detailed the session was. The children learned a number of valuable life skills without realising. Skills such as listening, sharing, patience and awareness. They each contributed to the session and had a very good rapport with Mandy, their Forest School leader.

Mandy was enthusiastic, full of energy and able to hold the attention of the group. I was so pleased to see how engaged my 3 year old daughter was. In the past she has been anxious before attending the sessions but Mandy and her music drum won her over. She now talks very positively about her Little Explorers sessions after nursery on a Wednesday when I collect her.

As a mother of three young children, two of whom are in primary school, I appreciate how important it is for children to experience outdoor learning and to learn about the environment around us.

MS

The children really enjoyed going into the dark den maths area and using the light up mark making boards to practice their pen control skills and number writing. They are now looking forward to using the boards for letter writing and pattern drawing.

Diwali at nightingale.

The children listened to the story of Rama and Sita for Diwali and used made Diwali candle holders to take home out of salt dough,. they also used their pen control skills to draw patterns on pen control sheets in Rangoli patterns, along with using coloured rice to create colourful rice pattern plates.

Spooky Halloween fun at nightingale !!!

The children had great fun for Halloween, lots of children dressed up and joined in the fun. They used their number skills to match ghosts to the right numeral, played in the spooky house and dressed up. We did some pumpkin carving and found out what is inside a pumpkin. The children also had messy fun using tweezers to get the spiders out of the jelly spaghetti. They practiced their ball rolling skills to knock the ghost cups over. In the garden they had a potions workshop and made mud potions with mud and glitter.

Graduation and leavers party.

Today we said goodbye to our school leavers …… all 32 of them !! Good Luck in Big School we are sure you will all be fabulous. We had lots of party food and dancing then we had our graduation where the children were presented with their learning journey books.

We are so proud of our leavers who have grown in lovely reception ready children. We had lots of parents and carers in who helped organise the party with us and serve the food as well as joining in with the celebrations.

We now look forward to Sept and welcoming New and old friends back to preschool.

Painting on Clingfilm

The teachers put Clingfilm around some upside down tables to create a ‘clear’ paper for the children to paint on and be creative, the children took turns to paint pictures on the Clingfilm, we had flowers, dinosaurs and many other things. A lot of children who don’t normally enjoy painting really loved this different way of painting.

We all went on a bus trip to our local bus garage. The children walked beautifully down the road to the Bus Stop where the bus was waiting for us. We were met by Nigel our friendly driver and two Police ladies. We went upstairs and sat down, and sang Wheels on the bus and Big Red bus on the way. We could see lots of things from the top of the bus. When we got to the garage we had a talk from Nigel about what bus drivers do and what police officers do. Also about how to keep safe. We then took it in turns to have our picture taken in the drivers seat and with the police ladies. We then went through the bus wash twice !! It was really exciting and we have learnt lots about buses and everyone really enjoyed our trip.

Renée
Pre-school Manager – Nightingale Lane

To help us learn some more about Ramadan two parents came into preschool to talk to the children about what happens at this time of year. They spoke to the children about fasting and looked at a prayer mat. They also brought in a headscarf for the children to try on along with traditional hats and clothes. The children also learnt about the different foods that are eaten such as Dates, they even tried some.