Harvest and Autumn Activity Day: 18/10/16
Today we’ve had a very busy Harvest Activity Day. We had a wet morning which didn’t deter our children and families from doing lots of exploring outside and the sun came out this afternoon for lots more outdoor fun. We had a fantastic time and welcomed lots of parents and carers, grandparents, siblings, friends and governors to take part in our Harvest and Autumn activities in nursery and the nursery garden.
Before our Activity Day started we did some learning together about the autumn harvest and about growing food to feed ourselves and others. We looked at how it is harvested and talked about how some people choose to celebrate the autumn and the harvesting of food with a Harvest Festival or Autumn Equinox celebration. We also discussed the importance of giving and sharing food with others who do not have as much as we do.
During the activity day, our children and families enjoyed cutting vegetables and tasting healthy vegetable soup on the snack table …they enjoyed it so much that lots of them asked to have it again at home. In the Long Room we exercised our fingers by rolling our orange and yellow dough to make pumpkins for the tractors to carry. We also drew round and cut out our hands, to make autumn trees and hedgehogs. Outside in the nursery garden we did really good looking to find lots of autumn treasure, collecting leaves and nuts to thread onto our strings. We also carefully used hammers to hammer nails into giant pumpkins…which was great fine motor practice…we had to do really careful looking to make sure that we were safe. Back in the big room we used lots of different vegetables and paint to make beautiful vegetable prints and in the Sensory Room we dances with leaves, listened to autumn stories and songs and smelled autumn Wow! What a busy day.
At the end of the session we all went together into Long Room to sing our Harvest Table song and to chat to our special visitor. Jayne Middlebrook who is one of our past parents and another of her colleagues came to tell us all about their work for charity with ‘Gears of Goodwill’.
Over the last few weeks we have been collecting many donations of food and toiletries which ‘Gears of Goodwill’ will use to help people who are homeless or those who are in need. The children were able learn about helping those who are less fortunate than us and talk about how our donations would make others happy. Jayne took away a whole car full of the things that we had collected… ‘Gears of Goodwill’ were really pleased to have so many gifts to help them with their very important charity work in Derby city.
Many thanks for all the donations, your generosity is much appreciated.
For more information about the work that ‘Gears of Goodwill’ look them up on Facebook and Twitter.
Activity days are always lots of fun and a really good opportunity to share our learning with our families at nursery. Many thanks to all who came to join us on this enjoyable day.
We hope you enjoy looking at the photos of all the things that we have done today.
