When the tongue comes out you know our little ones mean business……

Threading ways and fine motor skill developing days spent concentrating here at Jollies

(This is what early writing skills look like in Early Years as you can’t hold a pen if you haven’t got the finger strength and you need the hand/eye coordination to be able to make marks and control your drawing and writing… so there’s method in the madness in every ‘seemingly strange’ thing we do!!! ) xxxx

Last week we posted about how we had bought some lovely new games for our Free-Flow children to play with after our friends at Midland House had given them some money as an Easter gift.

Our children loved their new games so much they wanted to say thank you, so they wrote them a letter and on Friday Free-Flow took a walk over to Midland House to post it through their letterbox.

How lucky we are to have such kind friends. We hope they enjoyed opening their thank you letter from all their friends here at Jollies

Community spirit and friendship makes our Jolly world go round!! Xxxx

From gigantic sandcastle making, trip-trapping across the wooden bridge, ‘horsey-horsey don’t you stop’ riding, peekabooing through the tunnel, to rolling and catching a ball… life outside is varied and amazing and EXHAUSTING!!!

We think our children will definitely sleep well tonight after a VERY busy week…

Happy Weekend Lovely Jolly People xxxx

Just before Easter weekend Free-Flow took a walk over to Midland House to visit our fabulous friends there. We took them a crocheted basket of Eastery treats and we sang some songs with them and had a drink, a biscuit and a natter.

Whilst we were there some of our very kind friends gave us some money and so Free-Flow decided what they would like to spend their pennies on when they came back to nursery…. It turns out they were desperate for the ‘teeth game’ (as one of our friends had brought theirs in from home for show and tell earlier in the week and they’d all loved it!) and also ‘unicorns’….

So with a very specific brief Tracey went on a shopping mission last night and hopefully these lovely group games and activities will fully live up to our children’s exciting expectations…

Thank you, lovely Midland House friends, your kindness means so very much to us all and you are going to bring such fun to our room. xxxx

Having that special someone who is always looking out for you and understands you completely is what Jollies is all about.

Our children have such strong bonds with their key people and this means they know that they are always there for a reassuring glance, a high five, a snuggly cuddle, a simple explanation, a demonstration, a supportive smile, a funny joke, a shared tale and just generally to make their day just that little bit brighter!!

Strong bonds make our Jolly world go round and support the most excellent learning and development possible.

We thank both our children and our staff team from the bottom of our hearts for being so open and receptive and making these bonds possible and so very effective. Also, we are thankful for our parents/carers too as they complete this key person relationship; as only by having a true partnership approach does the magic happen.

Here’s to the next day of fun and the next adventure… let the Jolly learning journeys continue!! xxxx

No, it wasn’t, but it was most definitely Fiona’s!!

Our Jolly children were so lucky yesterday as Fiona brought her lovely bunnies in to see them all. We were still bunny obsessed after our surprise visit from the Easter Bunny last week when he hopped in and delivered us all a chocolate egg, so Fiona thought why not extend this current interest in the most exciting of ways!

Their visit went down a treat and our children loved listening to Fiona’s bunny tales and how she cares for them, what they eat and what they need and do etc… fascinating stuff!!

Such gentle hands were observed as those that wanted to stroked the bunnies. Some just liked to look, but some of our children liked to get more up close and personal Afterwards Jade and Latisha’s children even created their very own fluffy bunnies as they’d enjoyed the visit so much!

Thank you Fiona for coming in and sharing your wonderful bunnies with us all xxxx

At Jollies our children are at the heart of everything that we do and their interests and passions drive our environment and the learning taking place and this ethos of taking their lead and letting them take the driving seat was illustrated beautifully recently when Kirstan’s children created their very own display.

This was an entirely child-led display and they were free to create anything they wanted to!

Their creativity flowed, the paint splodged and splatted, the lines formed, the swirls and squiggles swished and the gigantic masterpiece emerged!! xxxx

Easter egg matching was lots of fun for Fiona’s children last week. They had to find the different halves of patterned eggs on the magna tiles and match them together to make the full egg!

After some initial demonstration our children were soon running away with this task; they loved finding all the different patterns and talking about them and then carefully matching them together. Some children loved the challenge of having ALL the patterned tiles to match up and some children needed to match from a reduced group of tiles, but all looked very closely and all brains were definitely whirring!!

We hope your Easter weekend was as excellent as our children were at matching up the patterned eggs?!?! xxxx

Making marks?!? Jade noticed her children being obsessed with mark-making inside, so she decided to extend their interests outside too, but not in the conventional way…

Exploring Elephants also love mud and naturally gravitate towards our mud kitchen when outside, so Jade combined marvellously messy mud with mark-making as she added water to the mud and ensured there were a range of paintbrushes to make marks with close by.

The result: with a ‘tuff tray’ as a blank canvas there was no stopping our budding artists as they created their muddy masterpieces!! Xxxx

Well we have all been very lucky with the weather today as the rain held off whilst the whole nursery went out on a walk together, parading up past Woodlesford School and then we congregated in the basketball court to sing some Easter songs together!

We had a fabulous chicken leading the way and he got very excited during our singing and flapped and danced around!! All the mummies, daddies, grandmas, grandads and Jolly friends who came to join us joined in too and we definitely brought Easter cheer to Woodlesford.

Free-Flow then paraded on to Midland House and we met up with all our friends there who were having a coffee morning. We went through our repertoire of songs and the ladies and gents even joined in with some of them too. We gave them a hand-made basket full of biscuit treats and we then had a treat ourselves as we had a drink and a biscuit before walking back to the park.

We played for ages on the park in the lovely Spring sunshine before walking back to Jollies just in time for lunch. We had a HUGE surprise when we arrived back at nursery as the Easter Bunny had hopped in whilst we were all out and about around the village and had left a pile of Easter eggs on the stairs for us all! He was a pesky bunny though as on the way in he’d clumsily knocked over a bottle of white paint so as well as leaving eggs he’d left bunny footprints all over the entrance hall. We definitely forgive him though as he did leave us an Easter treat after all…

All in all we had an EGGcellent time and our children made us so very proud with their sensible, fabulous walking and their superb singing. A huge thank you goes out to our fabulous staff team and all our helpers too as getting a whole nursery out on a walk in one go is no mean feat! How lovely to have such brilliant supportive families and such an AMAZING local community too… Happy Easter one and all xxxx