The Nest/The Den

This week has been full of vibrancy as we explored a range of learning experiences based around colour within the Nest.

Physical Development:

The children have enjoyed investigating some coloured pasta stars this week which has created some brilliant opportunities to scoop, pour and sprinkle which has been appreciated greatly by children! This provided lovely opportunities for the children to explore filling and emptying and using utensils as they scooped up the stars, but to also share the objects and exchange smiles and babbled with their peers!

A sensory opportunity to explore a tray of water with added boats, nets and coloured voile was also greatly enjoyed by the children in the warm weather this week! The children used their hands to create large splashing motions which provided lots of smiles and excited noises! As the children manoeuvred their bodies to reach for the nets and boats demonstrating their growing hand eye coordination, by scooping either the nets and- even managing to scoop up the boats! The children showed high levels of concentration, as they remained fully focused on what they were doing.

We catered a sensory tray containing coloured voil and cardboard tubes so the children could develop their fine motor skills. The children demonstrated great concentration as they sat for extended periods, focused on pulling the voil through the tubes.

Communication and Language

The children were so intrigued as we set out a tray containing unusual fruit for them to explore – we added a pineapple, a mango, a dragon fruit, some kiwi fruit and allowed the children to use their senses to smell, touch and taste the fruit! This offered lots of communication opportunities as we labelled the fruit and its texture and other properties “spiky” “smooth” “soft” “big” “small” the children created lots of babble sounds in response to this, with some of our older babies making fantastic attempts to copy the new language they heard. Following on from this, we repeated the activity and further developed it by adding some ice, scoops, metal bowls and baking trays, this allowed the children to demonstrate their skills further by scooping, transporting and filling. Whilst the children explored all the different textures, the used language such as “Mmmm” and “wow” It was brilliant to see all the children so willing and engaged as they participate in new activity that offers new opportunity’s.

Outdoor play:

We have had some fabulous weather this week, so we have been making the most of the cooler mornings and exploring the garden. We took some water and paint brushes outside so the children could ‘paint’ using the water. We encouraged them to dip the brush in the water, speaking “dip dip”. The children copied this phrase and used it correctly as they dipped the brushes into the water. They ‘painted’ the wall and were fascinated by the marks left behind. We spoke about how the water was dripping down the wall and how it was “cold” when we squeezed the brush in our hands.

Staffing Updates:

Sarah is on Annual leave all week

Anna is on annual leave Monday, Thursday & Friday

Parents as partners:

Parent observations:

Please feel free to share some special summer experiences you have been getting up to with your child via ‘parent observation’.