Investigation Hub, Discovery Hub and Sensory Hub at Deckham

There has been so much excitement and engagement in nursery this week as we have continued to learn about the lifecycle of a butterfly. As you know, the children have eagerly observed our once tiny caterpillars all the way to their cocoon stage. This week brought about a very exciting development! The children were delighted to see that five of our butterflies had emerged from their cocoons!

The children carefully observed the butterflies and showed wonderful curiosity throughout, asking questions, sharing their ideas and expressing their excitement with friends. It has been a fantastic opportunity for the children to develop their understanding of the natural world through first-hand experiences, while promoting observational skills, communication and a sense of awe and wonder.

Their comments included:

How do they eat the orange? 

Why are they not flying? 

Look, that one is climbing to the top! 

Will they open their wings? 

It’s orange and black! 

We enjoyed reading The Colour Monster, by Anna Llenas this week. This lovely story introduces ways to describe different emotions and talk about how we feel. As our young children experience big feelings, it is helpful to give them the vocabulary and understanding to begin to acknowledge and label their feelings. 

Inspired by the book, some children chose to decorate their own colour monsters with different colours to represent feelings. This led to discussion about how the children were feeling. Some children expressed an interest in wanting to cut around their monster or cut pieces of the collage materials to make them smaller. We got out scissors and looped scissors for the children to use, differentiating according to their individual skills in handling them. The children always enjoy opportunities to safely use scissors, and they are a fantastic tool to develop their fine motor skills.

The children also used natural resources to create faces showing a range of emotions we have been exploring. It was lovely to hear them discussing different feelings and sharing their ideas as they carefully arranged the materials to represent each emotion.

Outdoors, the children created ‘emotion potions’ using coloured water and foam, pipettes and test tubes. 

As the children mixed their potions, adults talked with them about the different emotions the Colour Monster experiences, such as happiness, sadness, calmness, anger and fear. The children showed some fantastic recall of the story, and again spoke about their feelings as they played, for example, “I am using lots of yellow ‘cause I’m really happy today!” 

These discussions through play encouraged the children to recognise and name their own feelings, develop their emotional vocabulary and understand that all feelings are important.

Story of the week: The Colour Monster 

Song of the week: If you’re happy and you know it

Sign of the week: How are you?

Just to remind you, nursery is closed tomorrow for staff training.

Have a wonderful weekend.

The Nursery Team