Halloween

With Halloween on Tuesday, this week we have learned through lots of Halloween activities in nursery. There has been a Halloween focus in many areas in nursery including pumpkins in the garden, making spooky things out of play dough and looking for shadows in the garden, just to name a few.

We chatted in simple terms about how and why some but not all people celebrated Halloween or All Hallow Eve and as part of our Right Respecting Schools curriculum clarified that it is everyone’s right to celebrate or not celebrate depending on their beliefs. Linked to this we even looked at some posters saying no trick or treaters here as some people don’t celebrate or not to be involved and we reinforced to the children that that in fine and their right to do so.

Importantly as part of our safeguarding curriculum we talked to the children about safety surrounding the tradition of Trick or Treating. We discussed who should trick or treat, who to go with and what to do or not do to make sure that you are safe and also the responsibility of our grown ups to make sure that we are safe too.

Following on from last week’s Colour Monster story and our ongoing priority to raise children awareness of their own emotion and ability to talk about how they feel (increased emotional literacy) we played some famously scary music to the children and then discussed how it made them feel (this was obviously preceded by a chat with the children to remind them that they were in a safe and secure environment and that we could switch off the music or give them support if they didn’t like it) We had some really interesting responses which showed the children’s growing awareness of feelings and how to discuss them.

Bonfire Night

Although we will be doing lots more learning about Bonfire night next week as part of our SMSC curriculum, including recalls of the children experiences and lots of colourful and exciting Bonfire Night activities, at the end of this week we talked about the key aspects of safety in preparation for the children’s celebrations this weekend. This included discussion about rules and boundaries, also part of our British Values curriculum and our parents carers responsibility to keep us safe and the children’s responsibility to follow the rules to take responsibility for their own safety too.

Finger Rhymes

We’ve started this week to have an even bigger push on improving children’s finger strength and finger isolation (being able to hold up one finger at a time) by introducing some new finger songs and rhymes. Theses are really fun…the children loved them and we talked to them about how these fun rhymes were going to help them with using their fingers to write too.

Fine motor skills are so important and are the first steps to helping children to improve their pencil grip and be even better writers. We always have lots on interesting and exciting fine motor activities in nursery and will continue to increase our use in new and exciting rhymes to support the children’s finger strength.

If you have a child at our nursery, ask them to share the rhymes and songs they have learned at home.

Baking

We re introduced a baking session for our children this week which was a huge success!

Baking is not only lots of fun but also a fantastic learning experience for children in the early years. It helps children’s learning and development in all areas of the curriculum

Follow our Special Learning link below to find out the many ways in which baking benefits your child’s learning.