We hope our whole Jolly Family have had an amazing Christmas time and we’d like to wish each and every one of you a happy, healthy, peaceful, love, laughter and fun filled 2024….

As the New Year begins we turn 19 and we’d like to thank each and every one of our Jolly children and their families and our wonderful staff team, both past and present, for being part of our journey throughout all those years… Here’s to making lots more Jolly memories together and here’s to fabulous fun, love, laughter and learning in 2024…. xxxx

Our older children have been tackling the padlocks and keys recently… They showed us that they had lots of perseverance and drive to problem-solve as they exhibited extreme determination and focus throughout when they tried to find the matching keys for all the different locks.

Our children were so excited and proud of themselves when they placed the keys into the locks and they fully turned and opened the padlocks!! They initially found this motion quite tricky though, as they had to use their hand/eye coordination to get the keys into the locks and then their physical manipulation and strength and their fine motor skills to then turn them to release the padlocks!

We love to develop our children’s skills and further their learning and understanding by playing with traditional toys, but also with ‘real life’ objects… we all love the strange, crazy, creative, quirky and unusual as these are the things that can spark little minds and truly help to unlock potential!! Xxxx

Recently Stephen made some ‘clipboards’ using cardboard and pieces of coloured card and attached them to the edges of the table with sellotape. This created a blank canvas to create a modern masterpiece on, but very much one with a difference…

As his children painted, their boards MOVED! They swung backwards, forwards and side to side depending upon how firmly they were pressed and how brushes were manoeuvred! Yet our children were not perturbed by this, in fact they loved it and mostly rose to Stephen’s challenge of trying not to use their hands when controlling their board whilst they painted!

We saw some amazing concentration throughout this very tricky painting activity, some superb skill, patience and perseverance, as well as same great body control and physical (core) strength all being exercised as painting positions were found and maintained.

Afterwards our children enjoyed sharing details of exactly what they had painted and created too as they had all had a purpose in mind! They were little artists on a mission and it had proved to be quite a funny one too! We heard lots of giggles as they created their wibbly-wobbly paintings together!! Xxxx

You can tell it’s almost Christmas by Imogen’s hair….

There’s a Rudolph on her head…. a red-nosed reindeer on her head….. whatever next?!?!

We love, love, love Imogen and her crazy, amazing Christmas hair!! Xxxx

…….And the exciting Christmas events keep on coming as today we’ve had our first Jolly Christmas Dinner Day.

The tables were decorated, the crackers were pulled, the hats were worn and the most delicious yummy food was eaten!! Our children even tried their sprouts (as some thought they just didn’t like them!) and for some it was a ‘yuck’, but for others it was a ‘more, more, more’…

Huge thanks to Emma who has been busy preparing this year’s Christmas Dinner (along with Lauren who is also stepping in to cook) until poor James is able to return after his recent operation.

Emma and Lauren proved excellent chefs during Covid when James had to shield and they are once again stepping into the breach until James is back up on his feet again and we thank them for their help, dedication and excellent food!!!!

Here’s to Christmas Dinner Number Two next week…. Eeeeeek just so exciting!! xxxx

We had a VERY special visitor yesterday at Jollies… with a jingling of bells and a ‘Ho Ho Ho’ the big man in red appeared to bring all our children and Team Jollies a special present.

We are officially excited! Thank you Santa (and Elf Helper Katie too) for taking time out of your busy North Pole preparations to come and say hello to us here at nursery xxxx

Recently Laura made some very exciting sensory bags for her babies!!!

They then used their fingers and toes to touch and feel all the different textures within them; from paint, to crazy foam, to feathers!!!

All her children were very focused and they spent ages touching and feeling the variety of bags with their very different sensory textures contained within… xxxx

Little fingers got working and strengthening recently when our children used their hand/eye coordination to practise their threading on a metal dome.

They had to make decisions… which colour would they choose next? They had to investigate… how long was the piece they were using and how much could it be pulled before it came out? Which holes could it be woven through next and where did they have to place their fingers to enable them to grasp the ribbon to pull it back through?

Lots of choices to be made, lots of problems to be solved… lots and lots of beautiful ribbons to be interwoven to create a masterpiece!! We love the ‘randomness’ of the early years and how there’s method behind the madness in every unusual, wonderful, exciting invitation to play Xxxx

Christmas is all about the preparation… Santa and the elf are busy making a list and checking it twice!! Xxxx

When the frost and ice arrived outside recently Natalie saw this as the perfect opportunity to extend her children’s interests (as they had shown their natural curiosity on their journeys into nursery) so she found some books to reflect the weather outside and they shared a little group storytime about snowmen and wintry weather all together whilst they were all super cosy in the warm!!

The whole group loved listening to the story and they maintained focus really well and all enjoyed taking turns to explore the different textures they could excitedly touch and feel. They waited so patiently for their individual turns and they shared so well!

The favourite book was definitely the snowman puppet one and they were all transfixed upon this and watched so very carefully as Natalie made them all smile and giggle…

The magic of sharing stories is simply wonderful and so vitally important for young children’s development

Later on our children braved the cold themselves and got all wrapped up and ventured outside to explore the REAL ice and frost… They enjoyed feeling the textures and used a paintbrush and their fingers to make marks in the frost!!

Natalie showed her children some pieces of ice and they loved to (briefly!) experience the (very different and exciting!) cold feel upon their hands…

They all loved exploring and walking around in the icy frost. We were so very impressed with their stomping manoeuvres and their balance….they were very sturdy on their feet considering the very new and unusual conditions underfoot…

They were very excited little people on a serious wintry mission!!! xxxx