Week Ending 23rd of January

What a wonderful week we’ve had in Gems Nursery as we explored the lovely story “Owl Babies”! 🦉✨

In our finger gym, the children became owl carers, carefully using tweezers to feed the baby owls some wiggly “bugs.” This activity was fantastic for developing hand strength, coordination and focus. 🐛🤏

Our sensory tray was filled with rice and painted owls of different sizes. The children enjoyed transporting the rice from one place to another, comparing big and small owls and talking about their sizes — linking beautifully to the characters Sarah, Percy and Bill from our story.

In the creative area, the children loved designing and making their own owls using a range of materials. Each owl was unique, and the children took great pride in their creations. 🎨🦉

Our Little Gems had lots of fun moving like different owls — using big, wide movements for Mummy Owl and tiny, gentle movements for the baby owls. This helped them explore body awareness, balance and changing positions in a playful way.

Our Big Gems learned about nocturnal and diurnal animals, discovering that nocturnal animals come out at night and diurnal animals come out during the day. The children enjoyed sorting and talking about which animals belong in each group. 🌙☀️

In phonics, we had lots of laughs with our Silly Soup game, learning about rhythm and rhyme. We also enjoyed our favourite books “Oi Dog” and “Oi Cat”, and had so much fun rhyming our own names:
“Mrs Barnes sits on yarn. Mrs Bray sits on hay!” — lots of giggles all around! 😄📚

Week Ending 16th of January

This week, our book focus was “Bear Snores On”. The children loved learning about hibernation and discovering what animals do during the colder months.  Our Little Gems enjoyed the book “What Do You See in Winter?”, where the children helped find and count different winter-themed objects — a great way to develop observation and number skills. ❄️🐻

In our creative and fine motor areas, the children explored mark making in flour, using their fingers and tools to create different lines and shapes. They also enjoyed winter animal footprint painting, learning to distinguish between different marks and patterns made by various animals. 🎨👣

The children worked on pattern making using counting bears, showing great focus as, they created repeating patterns. In our finger gym, they had lots of fun creating bear faces, strengthening their hand and finger muscles through playful activities. 🐻✨

For our “What’s in the Box?” activity, we discovered bird feeders and fat balls. The children were excited to hang them up outside and use their bird checklist to spot and identify birds visiting our outdoor area. This led to some lovely discussions about caring for wildlife in winter. 🐦🌿

We also enjoyed playing the “Don’t Wake the Bear” game, where the children carefully passed jingle bells around a sleeping bear, trying to be as quiet as possible. Lots of giggles and great listening skills were on display!

To finish the week, the children moved through our obstacle course, pretending to be hibernating animals. Some chose to be bears, snakes, tortoises and squirrels, demonstrating wonderful imagination and movement skills. 🐿️🐢

Week Ending 9th of January 

We truly hit the jackpot with the snow at the start of the week! ❄️ This tied in perfectly with our book of the week, “One Snowy Night”. The children were fascinated by the snowy scenes and enjoyed the anticipating of who was knocking on the door of Percy's hut each time.

During carpet times, our older children have been learning about animals that live in cold climates, talking about how they keep warm and where they live. 🐧🐻‍❄️
Our “What’s in the Box?” activity was a big hit this week too! Inside was a mystery selection of clothing and accessories for both cold (winter) and hot (summer) weather. The children did a fantastic job of differentiating which items were suitable for winter and explaining their choices — great thinking and vocabulary development. 🧤🧢👒

Our younger children have enjoyed learning about winter animals during their carpet times using the stories “That’s Not My Penguin” and “That’s Not My Reindeer”. They loved exploring the different textures and joining in with repeated phrases. 📚🐧🦌

In our creative area, the children explored tin foil painting, observing the shiny surface as they made marks. 🎨✨ Some children were even able to paint star and snowflake-like shapes, showing control and imagination.

Outside, we focused on exploring the environment safely while investigating ice. 🧊 The children discovered different shapes of ice frozen in tyres and tuff trays, and used wooden hammers to carefully chip away. Some pieces of ice had hidden objects inside, which the children worked together to “rescue” — lots of excitement, problem-solving and teamwork!