We’ve had a fantastic and very busy Harvest Activity Day today. The weather was kind to us and we were able to explore, play and learn both inside and outside in the nursery garden. We had a great time and welcomed lots of parents and carers, grandparents, siblings, friends and governors to take part in our Harvest and Autumn activities.

During the activity day, our children and families enjoyed a wide range of fun activities to help them to learn about the season of autumn and about harvest both in this country and abroad. During the day we chatted about the autumn harvest growing food to feed ourselves and others and about the things that happen during the season of Autumn. Our activities included cutting vegetables and tasting healthy vegetable soup on the snack table. Building homes in the construction area for our british wild animals. Some children really concentrated for a long time to make homes with many rooms. Also in the Big Room we enjoyed harvest songs singing and dancing in the Sensory Room and we looked at lots of different fruit and vegetables from around the world, talked about which countries they grew in and found the right place on the giant floor map. We had some really interesting conversations about where the fruit we enjoy comes from and how it gets to England ready for us to eat. In the Long Room we exercised our fingers and decorated twigs by wrapping the autumn coloured wool around them, we also used lots of Autumn leaves to print onto the play dough and talked about the patterns we had made. Outside in the nursery garden we did really good looking to find lots of autumn treasure, collecting leaves and nuts to make sticky pictures. Wow! What a busy day.

At the end of the session we all went together into Long Room together. The children helped to put lots of food, which our families had donated, onto our harvest table and we talked about the food going to help people who had less than us and were very hungry and the importance of helping others. The charity “Gears of Goodwill” will be taking all of our donations to Derby to help the homeless in the city who are very grateful for our help and support. Many thanks for all the donations, your generosity is very much appreciated. For more information about the work that ‘Gears of Goodwill’ look them up on Facebook and Twitter.

We also took the opportunity at the end of the session, whilst everyone was together, to sing to sing our Autumn leaves and Harvest Table song, to further reinforce the days learning.

Activity days are always lots of fun and a really good opportunity to share our learning with our families at nursery. Today was no exception with huge amount of cross curricular learning also including many elements which directly link to our rights respecting school agenda, our teaching on British values and of course our community work with local charities. It was a really valuable and enjoyable day. Many thanks to all who came to join us.

We hope you enjoy looking at the photos of all the things that we have done today.