Week Commencing 21st September 2026

The Nest

We have fully embraced the seasonal changes that autumn has brought within the Nest this week and a lot of our planned activities have reflected this!

Physical Development:

As part of our autumnal theme, we have provided some sticky tape and autumn resources like leaves, sticks and pine cones. This provided the opportunity for our children to further practise their fine motor skills focusing especially on their hand eye coordination showed by placing the resources onto the sticky tape .It was a great opportunity for the children to test their own strength as they attempted to pull the resources off the sticky tape, watching them fall onto the floor. The children pulled various facial expressions showing his curiosity and engagement, and created lots of babble sounds and gestures by pointing to different objects they wanted to explore. The children showed some lovely interactions towards each other by offering each other resources and attempting to sharing the resources.

Exploring edible paint has been a big success! The children had such a brilliant time exploring the edible paint (greek yoghurt & food colouring) alongside staff and their peers this week – they all showed such happiness through smiles, laughter and babbling with delight! The children showed no reluctance to begin exploring, quickly putting their hands or paintbrushes into the greek yoghurt and then taking them to their mouth. “Oooh!” they spoke and repeated this action. The sensation of the edible paint was thoroughly enjoyed by the children as they felt it with their fingers and spread their hands onto the paper, watching the marks it left behind. They were all fully engaged in this activity for an extended period of time, thoroughly enjoying this experience!

Communication and Language:

As our new children showing increasing adaptability to out routine, this week we have reintroduced a small group singing session at the start of our sessions. We take this opportunity to sing Hello to each of the children and then offer them the opportunity to each choose a song prop out of the basket which corresponds with a familiar nursery rhyme. The children have sat, listened and been so engaged through this small group time, showing some lovely babble sounds, and lots of smiles as we have sang which has been fantastic!

We have also explored a tray of autumn coloured rice, leaves, pinecones and wooden utensils. The children demonstrated enthusiasm while transferring rice into pots and found pleasure in grasping the rice, examining it with keen interest, and observing it as it fell on the floor. It was lovely to witness the children enjoying the vibrant rice while creating facial expressions, producing various sounds and babbles. The staff used language to label the children’s actions such as “pour” “scoop” and “sprinkle.”

The children have shown joy and curiosity in exploring our Woodland animal autumn tray set up, alongside “Thats not my.. squirrel” and our new sensory bottles. This tray has been a fantastic opportunity for staff to model new language such as “pumpkin” “leaves” “squirrel” “owl” “fox” “autumn” as well as singing “Shakey, shakey, shakey, shakey, shakey all around and put it on your.. head!” Which has been a brilliant opportunity for us to label our body parts, with some children anticipating this!

Staffing Updates

Rachel is on Annual Leave next week – if you need to contact a member of the team, please message “The Nest” or Kelly Keating in my absence.

Parent Partnerships

As we enter into Autumn, we are going to begin adding some new autumnal songs within the Nest. We have attached a copy for you to sing with your child at home too.

As the weather changes and gets cooler, could we please ask that your child comes to nursery dressed for the weather and has appropriate clothing to access the garden. If your child is non-mobile you may like to send an all in one puddlesuit to keep them warmer & dry as they explore the garden. Please speak to a member of the team if you would like to check your child’s basket to see if you need to update the spare clothes we have for them now the season are changing.

We have also attached a guide for completing parent observations from home, we love to see what your child gets up to at home & learn more about them! This doesn’t need to be anything fancy – could be a walk, a new milestone, sharing a favourite story or a day out. If you need any more support completing this, please speak to one of the team, we’d be happy to help.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!