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
These two friends were spotted sitting down and doing some singing together. One was the ‘daddy’ and one was the ‘mummy’. They then enjoyed singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to their baby and, of course, to Humpty Dumpty too! They were giggling away as they worked their way happily together through their repertoire of songs as a family!
These moments simply make our hearts melt here at Jollies xxxx
Chloe observed her children closely and realised that they were all LOVING the transport area whilst also being obsessed with solving jigsaws too!! So she thought why not mix the two together and have a go at matching up all the transport pieces to their corresponding insets!!
The children worked together and did this with their friends, so this activity then also encouraged them to share and take turns; which can sometimes be quite a tricky thing for young children to do, but with a few gentle supportive reminders this was soon occurring
Every time they correctly matched a transport piece to its corresponding hole, it made the sound of the vehicle when it was fully inserted and so Chloe’s children then loved trying to recreate each different sound that they could hear themselves.
As well as experimenting with sounds they also developed their vocabulary and we heard words such as, “car” “fire” “neeee nawww” ” beeppppp” and Chloe then carefully encouraged their conversations together.
Fine-motor days combined with listening and sound creating ways spent puzzling it out together here at Jollies… xxxx
After absolutely loving the roadway inside Fiona, Blue and Kirstan’s children were enabled to follow their interests outside, but on an even larger scale!
Together they assembled and explored their very own ‘road’ and it provided a wealth of challenge, as not only was there a roadway to balance upon, but also the roadway encompassed differing heights!
Challenge, challenge all around and all this derived from our children’s very own interests…
It’s why we love the Early Years so much, as we never quite know where each day’s learning will take us to next as we never quite know what our children will suggest, be fascinated by and totally obsessed with.
Creative ideas twisting and turning through our children’s development and learning here at Jollies xxxx
Little bodies get to move on the largest of scales as balance is tested, capabilities are explored, spatial awareness is developed, core strength is improved, movements are honed, decisions are made, challenges are set, imaginations are fired up, collaboration grows and creativity oozes from every role-playing moment!
You’ve just got to being outside and all the marvellously imaginative ways in which you can play with some of your most favourite people…
Every day is different and offers a new way to play and our children’s passions, obsessions and brilliant imaginations drive their play and learning forwards as observant and responsive practitioners ensure the necessary resources are available outside to enable our children to thrive! xxxx
Well… in Beth’s case she became a ‘bus’ as her children ‘drove’ away to go on their ‘holiday!’ The group bounced up and down whilst pretending to go over speed bumps and leaned whilst ‘going around corners’… Such fun is the life of the Early Years Practitioner… welcome to Jollies!! xxxx
xxxx
