Royal Wedding

The week leading up to the royal wedding we the children made crowns, flags and bunting. The children learnt about what a wedding is and we looked at pictures of other royal weddings. We learnt about palaces and princes and princesses.

We began to talk to the children about weddings, special clothes , food and cakes. The children then began to make their crowns in preparation for the big Tea party we were holding on Friday.

On Friday , Sally brought her wedding dress and photo album to show the children and they were able to dress up as brides and brides maids , role play wedding games , with some children being the groom and escorting the bride. The children were really excited to be able to try on and touch a real wedding dress.

We then made iced wedding cakes and had a big tea party with sandwiches and lots of lovely treats to eat.

In the afternoon the children spent time trying to guess what the Royal brides dress would be like and what lovely food they would eat , we had lots of guesses from Fish fingers to Candy floss.

The children had a great day and extended their learning in all areas.

Three Little Pigs

The children made the Three Little Pigs houses with straw, sticks, and painted bricks. We then made a Three Little Pigs Role Play area for the children. The children played in the houses they had made, listened to the Three Little Pigs story on the CD player, looked at the Three Little pig books, Played with Pig toys and sequenced the story using flash cards.

Planting our new plants

With the nicer weather the children got busy in our growing garden – they helped prepare the earth and plant the plants ready for the summer. We planted potatoes, cucumber, peppers, carrots, peas, sweetcorn, strawberries and some flowers and herbs. The children helped to plant them and put in the labels, they then helped to water them. We talked about how they will grow and what they need to grow, as well as how yummy they will be to eat once they have grown.

Easter Crafts

The children have been very busy using various different materials to make lots of crafts this Easter, they have made salt Dough Rabbits, Play dough chicks – using feathers, googly eyes, play dough and paper, hand print chick pictures sitting on straw. The children talked about the animals that they were making and where they lived.

Easter Egg Hunt

Lots of children took part in our Easter Egg hunt. The week before try all decorated their own basket ready for the hunt. They completed a course where they had to find chicks in straw, rabbits in sawdust, balance on logs, go down the slide, look for letters of their name,find eggs in the sand jump in the hoops and crawl through the tunnel and the Easter bunny also brought an egg at the end for the children.

BLOSSOM YEARS ADVERSE WEATHER POLICY AND PROCEDURES

In the event of extreme weather (snow, storm, etc), our nurseries and pre-schools will normally remain open unless to do so would endanger the safety of the pupils, parents or staff. The decision whether to close will be taken by 6.45am each day by the Directors.

We will publish information by 7:00 am on our website www.https://www.blossomyears.co.uk about closure or amended arrangements for school opening.

During the day, should the weather deteriorate to the extent that sessions need to be suspended, parents will be informed via text or email and an announcement will be posted on the website in the Updates section.  We ask parents to be mindful of our closing times and take into consideration their arrangements and travel times, given the conditions, to ensure children are collected on time.

In the event of severe weather disruption, staff who are able to come into school safely should endeavour to do so. Staff who are unable to travel safely should notify their director and line manager.  The normal timetable may need to be suspended. In the event of staff shortages, we will contact all available off duty staff and/or agency staff and group the children differently until they are able to arrive. If we are unable to maintain statutory ratio requirements after all avenues are explored, we will contact Ofsted to inform them of this issue, recording all details in our incident file. If we feel the safety, health or welfare of the children is compromised then we will take the decision to close the nursery.

At such times, when our nurseries/pre-schools remain open, but parents decide that their child will not be attending they should inform the nursery/pre-school manager by email or telephone before the start of the session to advise that their child will not be attending.

Please ensure that children wear suitable and appropriate clothing and footwear during these times.  We will not take children outdoors where we judge that weather conditions make it unsafe to do so.

“Chinese New Year” – Year of the Dog

The children practices their fine motor skills using tweezers to move ‘noodles’ in the home corner that became a Chinese restaurant for the day. We also have prawn crackers for snack and tried some sweet and sour sauce….. some of the children liked this others didn’t ! The children listened to the story of the animals of Chinese new year and joined together to make a fabulous piece of art work. Throughout the week we carried on doing different dog themed crafts and activities, such as comparing sizes of paper bones, big, small, medium. Making dog pictures out of different shapes and decorating origami dogs.

Valentines day

The children made cards to take home, they also used some heart shapes to peg and match numbers on and we also used our amazing pinching fingers using the pipettes to carefully squeeze vinegar onto baking soda – we loved to watch it change and fizz inside the heart shapes.

Valentines Day and Chinese New Year

The children got to explore their understanding of the world as they enjoyed Chinese food at lunch time, which was then followed by Chinese New Year crafts. On Valentine’s Day, pre-school made love hearts for their Mum’s and Dad’s. Using their motor skills, they explored making different marks, using their art and design skills.

Pancake  Day and Food Tasting

Pre-school got messy making pancakes and eating them! They explored their likes and dislikes, choosing what they wanted on their pancakes. All of the children in the nursery got to taste different fruits that they may not have tried before. We talked about taste, texture and smell, further developing the children’s communication and language.

‘Santa’s Workshop’….The children have been little elf helpers, making toys and gift wrapping to help Santa.

We made edible sparklers by icing breadsticks and decorating with sprinkles and firework pictures using recycled kitchen rolls which we snipped and dipped into paint.
We also watched a Fireman Sam video about bonfire night and we discussed firework safety as a group

Halloween !!!!!
We had a spooky day today, We made potions with coloured water and glitter using our fine motor skills to move water from pot to pot with pipettes and pumped water out of bottles. In the garden the children made spooky cakes with worms inside ( coloured spaghetti !) in the mud kitchen. We had Ghost Bowling and various Halloween crafts that the children made including Bats, Pumpkins and Spiders. The children enjoyed dressing up and carving a pumpkin that we had grown in our own garden at preschool. We searched for spiders in jelly using tweezers. The story today was Room on The Broom ! Lots of messy fun was had by all.

We recently took a bus trip to Bromley bus garage.

The driver spoke with the children about boarding buses safely and the Police lady talked about safe people they can talk to such as a bus driver, policemen, fire-fighter etc. We also discussed about not talking to strangers.

The driver then took us through the bus wash to clean our dirty bus!
The children, parents and staff all thoroughly enjoyed this trip.

This week we picked the last of the summer food from our allotments. These included potatoes and strawberries.

We have also worked hard getting the allotment ready for the winter season. We have planted rhubarb, broccoli and swiss chard. Through the months we will water these, see how they grow and then pick them to use in nursery cooking.