Celebrating Holi…

Leave a comment

Hello Everyone,

We’ve had a great week this week learning about Holi, exploring watercolour’s and celebrating our love for our mummies.

Instead of going on Muddy Morning, we wanted to give all the children the experience of learning about Holi together, as a full class. Holi, a Hindu festival, is a celebration of colour and of good triumphing over evil and also the arrival of Spring. And so, we went outside, to side of the Town Hall and used powder paints to throw at a white sheet, as this is how Holi is traditionally celebrated. We also read a non-fiction book about Holi and Anaya showed us her family pictures and video of her celebrating it at their temple. For the children to extend their learning further we added it to the Curiosity Cube to encourage further discussions.

As Mother’s Day was approaching we read ‘My Mum is Fantastic’ by Nick Butterworth. The children then told us why they thought their mummy was fantastic and they said lots of lovely things, including helping them with their pyjama’s and giving them the best hugs. Thank you to all the mummies (and granny!) that were able to make it for our Mother’s Day Afternoon Tea. You may have seen on our Instagram reel that the children had a lovely time and there was definitely a lot of love in the room!

The children have been exploring mixing colours with the watercolour paints. We have added them to our Creation Station so the children can use them when they wish.

In our Phonics development we have started introducing the children to segmenting and blending (chopping the words up and sticking them back together) We played ‘I hear with my little ear, something that sounds like….. p-i-g, b-o-x. This is the final aspect of Phase 1 Phonics before we start introducing the children to the first sounds of Phase 2 phonics. If the children can segment and blend orally, this will help them with their early reading skills. We also enjoyed reading some new ‘Oi’ books and the children joined in with the rhyme.

On our Conversation Station we have included some signs of Spring, including numbered chicks to 10. At Circle Time, each of the children were given a number and they put the numbers in order then counted up, counted back and then took one away each time, when the children weren’t looking.

Next week we will be going on the bus and visiting the pet shop in Timperley village on Wednesday so please send your child in appropriate clothing. 

Have a great weekend.

The Green Room Team

Superheroes Assemble!!

Leave a comment

Hi Everyone!

We’ve had a great couple of weeks of dressing up in different costumes, making puppets and looking for signs of spring!

On Muddy Morning we headed to John Leigh Park and we were talking about the buds on the trees, the different flowers that were growing and learning the names of them including daffodils, snowdrops and crocuses. And John Leigh Park did not disappoint, finding carpets of crocuses in different areas of the park. We had snack at the highest point in the park and, as it was a glorious day, we could see the hills in the distance.

The children then used sticks to explore what was hiding underneath the leaves and they found 3 wriggly worms which they named Mummy worm, Daddy worm and baby worm. After our exploring we headed for the big equipment in the park, to really use those gross motor skills and build confidence. The steps on the equipment in John Leigh Park are quite challenging so some children needed support to get started.

Parks are not only great fun to visit but when the children are using their gross motor skills they are strengthening the muscles in their arms and shoulders which is helpful for them in developing their early writing skills, as when they write, not only are they using their fine motor skills to grip the pencil, but they use their whole arm and shoulders to move the pencil. When we got back to nursery we used our fine and gross motor skills to make observational paintings of daffodils.

It was World Book day on the 2nd March and the children looked rather wonderful in their costumes, worn to celebrate their love of books and reading. The children spent the day talking about their costumes and linking them to characters in stories, reading and discussing their favourite books.

In conversation, Jo shared with them that when she was a child she told stories using a puppet show, so in true Jo style, they made one! The children got busy making their own puppets to tell their own stories.

Another wonderful creation the children made came from the catalyst of stacking some junk modelling boxes together. What started as a castle, became a monster, as more bits were stuck on and then, with the addition of feathers, the creation was finalised…as a bird!

This week, to support the Paint Altrincham Pink campaign, we dressed as Superheroes and took part in a Superhero obstacle course in our Stretch-n-Grow session! We also read Supertato and added the different veggies from the story to the Conversation Station. 

Very excitingly, when the children came back to the room, from completing their obstacle challenge, they found a letter had been sent to us from the Evil Pea! It told us he had taken all the veggies and we would never see them again unless we followed the clues and used our rhyming skills to find them. The veggies were rescued one by one and then we found the Evil Pea hiding and the children wanted to put him in ‘jail’ to prevent anything else happening to the veggies.

This really captured the children’s imagination as they were talking about it between themselves over lunch and in their independent play too! We also played ‘I Spy’ with Superheroes to help reinforce the initial sound in words, including Hulk, Chase, Wonder Woman, Spiderman and the Flash.  You can always play this game in the car, rather than I Spy (as I’m not sure we’d see many out of the windows!) I am thinking of a superhero (or anything the child is interested in) that begins with a ……

Another book that we read that created a lot of conversation this week was ‘Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World’, which we read to celebrate International Women’s Day. We discussed in brief how the expectations of women have evolved over the years and what amazing achievements have been made by women over the years including Jane Austen, Amelia Earhart and Coco Chanel.

This week we introduced the children to a website called topmarks.co.uk where you can select Early Years games from the drop down list. The children have been playing a range of number games, taking turns and passing it between their friends. They have really enjoyed these games and it gives them a different platform to practice their number skills if you wanted to have a go at home too.

And finally, as you may have already seen on our Instagram page, the children’s completed artwork for our ‘Altered Books’ project with Manchester Grammar and Oldfield Brow, was taken to Altrincham Library for everyone to enjoy. We hope you got chance to go and have a look yourselves, don’t worry if you didn’t, we will display it in nursery for you to see. The children are very proud of this collaborative project and we got so many lovely comments about their innovative artwork too.

Next week we will be learning about the festival of Holi.

Have a great weekend!

The Green Room Team

Wellbeing Matters…

1 Comment

Hello Everyone!

We’ve had a lovely week in Green Room, we have been to Stamford Park, having a spa day and learning about Picasso.

On Muddy Morning, we went to Stamford Park to use the play equipment to not only use their gross motor skills but to support their understanding of manage risk. When we go to the park, we don’t want to discourage children from doing something they want to try but we teach them about how they can do it safely. The children wanted to climb and balance along the climbing frames so they were supported by an adult to do this safely. Some children also wanted to jump on and off the roundabout so again, they were shown how to do this safely. The children were also making their own games and playing hide and seek which is a great way of them developing their co-operative learning skills.

As it was Children’s Mental Health Week, we decided to treat the children to a spa day. The children came in in their pyjama’s and the Sensory Room was set up with warm, bubbly footbaths, refreshing cucumbers for their eyes, fresh juice and soothing music. They could also request a hand or a foot massage too. The children loved being pampered and we loved showing them how much we care.

The children have been taking a real interest in castles, so we decided to cut up one of our big boxes to make one! The children have been loving crawling through the castle door, peeping over turrets and even a telescope to spot enemies approaching in the distance!

From the sales of our Christmas cards, we were given some money to spend on resources, so we bought some different sized measuring cylinders for the Water Tray for the children to fill and empty.  We also added some food colouring to the water to make it more obvious to see through the different measuring cylinders.

As we continue to embed our understanding of shape, we read a book called ‘Shape Shift’, which uses shapes in different ways to make objects such as putting a rectangle and a triangle together to make a rocket. So, after reading the book, the children had a go at making their own pictures using the 2D shapes provided. They also used their gross and fine motor skills to draw round shapes.

This week we have introduced the children to the works of Picasso, as we have been asked to take part in an art project with Manchester Grammar School for World Book Day. The aim of the project is to combine an old book with new art work added to it. We decided we would use the art work of Picasso to inspire our interpretation of his take on self portraits. So the children used cut up features from newspapers and magazines to make their own portraits. Here is a sneak peak of the masterpieces they created and all of the portraits will be on display in Altrincham Library in the first week of March to coincide with World Book Day.

We have introduced to our bathroom a door bell to enable the children to ask for help if they need it when they are going to the toilet. Obviously, we only want the children to use it when they need help rather than for fun, so this was explained to them. It has quickly become know as the ‘poo bell’ between them which they think is hilarious!

Developing our rhyming skills, we read ‘Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy’. The children showed a real interest in these stories so we got out all the stories we had by Lynley Dodd, and the children discussed their similarities and differences, because some have dogs and some have cats. They also love pretending to be us and reading to the class too!

To support our accuracy of counting we played a game with a dice. The children rolled the dice and then counted how many spots were on the dice, before then choosing to do an action eg, 5 star jumps, 2 claps. To add a bit more to the challenge, we then added another dice to the game to develop their counting on skills and counting accurately to higher numbers.

Last week we introduced playdough to our provision and the children were making cakes and pizza so this week we decided to make pizza in real life! The children had a choice of different toppings, using their chopping and sprinkling skills and then they got to eat them too! Delicious!

Next week we are looking forward to seeing you at Stay and Play at 10.30am on Valentines Day and therefore we have moved Muddy Morning to Wednesday.

Have a great weekend.

The Green Room Team

Boxes and Beebots…

Leave a comment

Hi Everyone!

We’ve had a great week this week, telling stories, exploring the playdough station and learning about programming.

On Muddy Morning we went to John Leigh Park in the glorious sunshine, although it was still a bit chilly. The children were spotting numbers on the way there, following the zigzags, balancing, swinging and running around playing in the fresh air. We are not only developing all these skills when at the park but we also focus on developing the children’s conversation skills as we walk along to the park, chatting away, talking about what we see, things we like and our experiences and families.

During the week, we moved our Water Tray to a more central location in the room, so that it could be accessed from all sides and we also added some porridge oats to it. The children have been using it in lots of different ways including, using it to tell the story of the three bears and even putting the babies in it too.

So, at Circle Time, we read ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and discussed the different versions of the story and the children had a go at doing their best bear voices for the different characters. Before they went for lunch, they told me their favourite character in the story.

As we have been talking lots about stories, we added our story cards to the Conversation Station, so the children could make up their own stories in their own time. We also included a sound button to the area to help the children to start their story off “Once upon a time…”

As the children loved reading ‘You Choose’ last week, we read another story by the same authors, ‘Just Imagine’. The children loved looking at the pictures and making their choices creating lots of conversation! We also read the story ‘The selfish Crocodile’ as one of the children had said their favourite animal was a crocodile. We discussed the word ‘selfish’ and what it means, the children also made predictions about what would happen next in the story.

The children have been enjoying our sharing library, reading and swapping a range of books. So, please feel free to have a look and take one home to share.

To reinforce our learning about shape last week, we named our 2D shapes and then had a go at making an alternating pattern using 2D shape cards. The children had to work together to make an alternating pattern that Kate had modelled for them.  Then they were given the opportunity to do it themselves in the provision too. If you wanted to have a go at home, there is an interactive game you can play here https://www.topmarks.co.uk/ordering-and-sequencing/shape-patterns

This week we introduced the children to the Beebot, which is a programmable robot that looks like a bee. The children had to press the buttons to tell the Beebot where to go eg, forwards, backwards, turn right , turn left. After the children had had the initial introduction to the Beebot and had a go, we set up a maze to navigate the Beebot around. The children were then given the opportunity to play with the Beebot in the provision too, being encouraged to adapt the maze and experiment with bridges.

We have also introduced a playdough table to the room this week, giving the children the opportunity to use their fine motor skills to manipulate the playdough and we took the chairs away from time to time to give them the opportunity to use their gross motorskills too, standing up to roll the playdough. All of these skills will help develop their shoulder, arm and finger muscles to help support them with their early writing skills.

A very popular area of our room is the deconstructed Role Play area. We have added a range of different boxes to our role play area so the children build, play and explore different ways of using them. The children have enjoyed making dens, building trucks and sitting in them to read books. With this in mind, if you have any large boxes that you have finished with at home, we would welcome them with open arms.

Jo vey kindly brought in her Karaoke machine from home for the children to try. We moved it in front of the mirror in the Sensory Room so the children could watch themselves perform in the mirror! As well as having great fun, this also encourages them to use their voices and explore making different sounds which benefits their speech development.

Outside our room you may have already seen our Love and Positivity tree, which has been made by Jo (isn’t she talented!!?). As we lead up to Valentine’s Day, feel free to share the love and add to the tree.

This week Avi got to choose his favourite meal to share with his friends and he chose spaghetti bolognaise and brownie. It was delicious, good choice Avi!

On the 14th of February, between 10.30-11.30am we will be having a Valentines Day Stay and Play which we would love for you to come and join us if you are able.

Have a great weekend!

The Green Room Team

The Aliens are Coming!!

1 Comment

Hello fellow earthlings!

This week we have had a great time learning about space!

On Monday the children took part in a Space Mini Me Yoga adventure, flying in a rocket to the moon and hiding from aliens. Lucy created a space-inspired Exploration Tray to support the children’s interests of filling and emptying different sized containers. Many of the children have a Next Step of being able to read their own name and so, to create more of a challenge, the children had to find the letters in their names and put them in the correct order to make rockets, using the language uppercase/ capital letter for the beginning of their name and lower case for the other letters in their name. They then decorated around the rocket to create a space scene.

To give the children opportunities to strengthen their fingers to support their early writing skills, the children used the Connex shapes to make aliens. Some also made flowers for their role play too. At Circle Time we read ‘Here Come the Aliens!’ by Colin McNaughton, which the children were fascinated by. The story used lots of descriptive language to describe the aliens. Following on from this, we asked the children to draw their own aliens and, as you can see, they were very creative, describing them as they drew and even giving them names!

During Circle Time this week we practiced our number ordering skills and talked about which numbers come ‘before’ and ‘after’. The children took turns to pull a rocket out of the bag before putting it where they thought the number should go. When we had all the numbers in the correct order, we counted back from 10 and pretended to be rockets flying up to space for lift off. We then added the rockets in the Conversation Station, so that the children could have a go at re-ordering them for themselves.

As the children have been talking about space, they have talked about some planets too, so to develop this learning further, we put the initial letter of the planet on the board and the children were asked “can you think of a planet that begins with ‘m’?” and so on. The children used their phonic skills to have a go, as some were a bit tricky. We then talked about their different features, using adjectives to describe them including ‘biggest’, ‘hottest’ and ‘largest’. We then used this new vocabulary in to a party game, instead of ‘corners’ we played ‘planets’. When the music stopped, the children had to stand by a planet. If the planet was said by Kate, they sat down.

Another opportunity to practice counting beyond 10 (which can be a bit tricky when trying to get those teen numbers correct!) is to practice when washing hands. We had noticed that some of the children put the soap on their hands first, which then just gets washed off with the water down the sink. So, Kate modelled the correct way to wash our hands to optimize the opportunity to kill germs. We gave the children the choice of either counting to 20 or singing the ‘This is the way we wash our hands’, a song which you can find here to practice at home too. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0Sf9efNOhiQ  It’s had 26k views!!

This week you may have noticed our Book Sharing Library in the Reception area. We are encouraging the children to borrow a book from the sharing library and if they want to keep it they can, replacing it with a book from home that they have finished with. We aspire to foster a love of reading and we hope that you enjoy sharing the books together. We want to thank Jo for setting up the Sharing Library and her efforts have been celebrated in her being awarded our Juice Nursery Staff Member of the Month, and it is well deserved! The children love Jo and if she is in the room, the children love to be involved in whatever she is doing as she makes it so engaging and imaginative for them.

One day, during lunch, the children were talking about what they wanted to be when they grow up. So we decide to record their ambitions in our Big Book. As one of the children said they wanted to be an engineer, we supported this idea by reading the story ‘Rosie Revere Engineer’ and we are looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the collection to inspire our children further.

Another book that the children have enjoyed reading is ‘Find your Happy. Following our reading this together the children decorated rainbows, using the colours that they felt most represented how they were feeling.

We were very kindly donated some Stethoscopes by one of our Juice colleagues, and the children have been trying to listen to each other’s hearts, talking about the sounds that our hearts make.

As we look ahead to Muddy Morning next week, as there is potential for snow, we would ask that you please ensure that you send you child appropriately dressed for the weather.

Have a great weekend!

The Green Room Team

Here’s to 2023!

Leave a comment

Hello Everyone and a very happy New Year!

We hope you enjoyed your time at Christmas and New Year! We have hit the ground running this week, as the children have been very keen to make words and numbers with magnetic letters and writing on whiteboards.

After such a busy time at home, and spending time with family, it is sometimes difficult for the children to re-adjust to life back at nursery, so we have been helping them get back in to routine, including offering an extra cuddle if needed.

Well done to the children (and parents) who have made progress with toileting over the holidays. We know it can be tricky but the sooner the children can be independent with their toileting, the more they can practice in a familiar environment before starting big school. Obviously, there aren’t as many staff with in the room at school and there is an expectation that all children can go as independently as possible.

Whilst playing in the garden the children were very interested in writing on the chalk board. So we played ‘guess the name’, with Kate writing the name and the children guessing. Some children wanted to write their own names too. So, when we got back in to the room we got the magnetic letters out on the Conversation Station and the children were keen to make their names and names of family members too. The children then wanted to use their skills to write words on the whiteboards. Very impressive!

While the children were playing with the letters, they started singing the Alphabet Song, so at Circle Time we sang the song. They took turns to take an alphabet letter out of the bag and match it with the corresponding alphabet card. As we were playing, we discussed children’s names and other objects that begin with the same letter.

During independent play, one of our children was using a robot voice, so at Circle Time we played ‘I spy with my robot eye’. Kate would say the sounds in each word (like a robot), eg, ‘h-a-t’, ‘p-i-g’, ‘f-o-x’.  Then the children had to blend the sounds together, orally, to guess the object. You can also have a go at this at home too, maybe by showing them the pictures of the objects we used.

Some of the children’s Next Steps have been to use positional language correctly, including, ‘on top’, ‘next to’, ‘behind’, ‘in front’ etc. So Kate set up a scene with animals in it that were in different positions. The children were encouraged to use positional language to describe where the animals were and not just say “there”. The next day we developed this learning further by creating another scene, including a bridge and stepping stones to a house. This was then used to tell a story, incorporating positional language, to give the children a real experience of how we would use positional language in a ‘real life’ context. The children loved joining in with the story and couldn’t wait to tell their own stories after, too. The modelling of stories is really important in laying the foundations of the children telling their own stories which we will be doing very soon, using an adult as a scribe to write them down.

Next week, we will be going on Muddy Morning on Tuesday and taking part in a space odyssey!

Have a great weekend!

The Green Room Team

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Leave a comment

Hello Everyone!

We hope you have been keeping warm this week! It’s definitely been a chilly one but we’ve been keeping busy , having a great time wrapping presents, learning about Hanukkah and visiting the theatre.

On Wednesday we went to Sale Waterside Art’s Centre, travelling by tram, to watch the ‘The Man Who Wanted to be a Penguin’. The children loved being on the tram and were very excited to watch the show. The children were laughing out loud at the man who wanted to be a penguin, as he visited Antarctica, met an explorer and helped the penguins lay their eggs. When we came out, the sun was shining and everyone was ready for their nice warm lunch when they got back to nursery.

To support the story of ‘The Man Who Wanted to be a Penguin’ we set up a winter landscape small world with Santa, Rudolf, penguins and snow covered trees. We got crafty making our own penguin puppets to tell stories with too. We also read a story about penguins called ‘And Tango makes Three’. 

As Christmas is approaching, we set up a little Elf Wrapping station. The children chose different objects, some more difficult that others to wrap, with a staff member on hand to help them.  They used lots of different skills to wrap the presents including maths skills; estimating how much paper they would need to cover the object, how much sellotape they would need to stick the paper together, whilst using the language ‘longer’ and ‘shorter’. The children also used their fine motor skills to hold the paper in place, fold it, cut ribbons and tie them around the presents. They also had a go at writing and sticking on gift labels too, as well as writing their own Christmas Cards. So, if you need so extra help wrapping at home, the children have been in training! The children’s interest then led them to wanting to turn the wrapped parcels in to handbags, and don’t they look fetching!

During the week, the children have also been very interested in using the little cutting stampers to decorate the edges of the paper for them to write their messages to Santa and post them in the post box.

Not only is it an exciting time of year for Christians, looking forward to Christmas but for a member of Green Room, from the Jewish Faith this is exciting time as his family look forward to celebrating Hanukkah. Avi very kindly brought in one of his books from home to help us learn about Hannukah. On Friday we watched a clip from Let’s Celebrate on Cbeebies all about Hanukkah which you can watch here too  https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/my-first-festival-hanukkah To support this learning further, and to give Avi an opportunity to share his knowledge with his friends, we set up pictures on the Conversation Station, as well as a Menorah in the Curiosity Cube. 

In Stretch-n-Grow, the children enjoyed using their whole bodies to go ice skating (on paper plates!) and collect snowballs, balancing them very carefully on snow shovels.

The children were again using their shoulder strength to scoop bird seed and carefully poor it in to the bag for reindeer food, to scatter on the lawn on Christmas Eve, so that the reindeer know where to land. 

We hope you all have a happy and healthy Christmas and we look forward to seeing you all in the New Year!

The Green Room Team

It’s Our First Christmas Play!

Leave a comment

Hello everyone!

We’ve had a very festive week making Christmas cards, exploring an arctic world and we loved performing our Christmas Play for you too!

We have to start by saying a massive “Well done!” to all our children for taking part in the Christmas Play. They sang their hearts out and it can be quite daunting in front of a big crowd, but they did amazingly well, we were so proud and I’m sure you are too.

We spent the rest of the week getting festive! The children have been using their cutting and mark making skills to create beautiful Christmas cards and cut out pictures from toy catalogues to sick on our stockings. They have been enjoying writing on gift tags and writing letters to post in the post box too. The children have also been creating decorations for the tree, using paper, clay and paint. Before the children leave nursery for Christmas, you will receive all these goodies to add to your decorations at home, and hopefully keep them for many years to come.

As part of the festivities, Jo set up an arctic world to help develop the children’s communication and language skills by talking about what they can see and encouraging them to tell stories using the figures in the tray. The children really enjoyed playing with this and coming up with new stories with their friends.

We have been reading lots of festive stories, one of them being ‘The Christmas Jolly Postman’. The children were very intrigued by the game that was in one of the envelopes in the story. So we enlarged it on the photocopier and played the game as a small group. We took turns to role the dice and the children were supported to count the numbers on the dice accurately, to jump along the board and follow the instructions. Playing these sorts of games at home such as Snakes and Ladders, will really help your children develop their number recognition and counting skills further but in a fun way. And it is really beneficial on a personal and social level to model taking turns and having fun together. If you are very creative you could involve them in creating your own Snakes and Ladders board, asking them where they would like to put the snakes and the ladders and counting and writing the numbers in order. If you are interested in creating more play opportunities at home, we recommend the Five Minute Mum website for inspiration   https://fiveminutemum.com/games-and-activities

As a follow on from the children’s learning last week, we added a Christmas themed ‘I Spy’ to the Curiosity Cube in the provision. We added objects beginning with ‘s’ and some that didn’t. So at Circle Time the children had a go at spotting things that began with a ‘s’, including a snowflake, Santa, snowman, sleigh, star and a stocking. The children were then asked if there was anything else they could see in the room that began with a ‘s’ to add to the cube, and the children found a seal and a snowball.

Next week on Wednesday the 14th we are visiting Sale Waterside Arts Centre to watch ‘The Man Who Wanted to be a Penguin’ https://watersidearts.org/whats-on/3189-the-man-who-wanted-to-be-a-penguin/  We will be leaving nursery at 9.30 so we will be having snack at 9 o’clock and will need all the children in so we are ready to leave by 9.30. We will be taking the tram to Sale and crossing over to the theatre which is next to the canal. We will be back at nursery for around 12.15/30 for lunch.

Have a great weekend!

The Green Room Team

It’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas…!

Leave a comment

Hello Everyone!

We’ve been getting into the festive mood this week, decorating for Christmas, introducing our advent calendar and taking part in our dress rehearsal for you all next week! 

On Muddy Morning we went to John Leigh Park and on the way we were looking out for numbers. The children found them on signs, number plates, road signs and bins! When you tune in to the idea of numbers, they are everywhere! When you are next having a walk, especially through somewhere like Altrincham, see how many you can spot and send us a picture on eyLog too!  

There has been a continuing enjoyment of exploring the idea of Pirates. Based on this interest, we provided the children with pirate props such as ships, maps and dressing up. The children have been using the sandpit as their small world area to explore telling stories.  

As you may have seen, our room has been decorated for Christmas! Not only do we enjoy this as part of a festive tradition but it is also a great activity for the children to do as they have to use their fine motor skills to hold the string to hang the decorations on the tree.

We also added festive pictures to our Conversation Station and, at Circle Time we played an ‘I Spy’ game, introducing the sounds ‘s’,’r’,’h’,’t’ and ‘m’. When we are saying these sounds we try not to say then with an ‘uh’ at the end, eg, ‘s’, is like a snake sound not s-uh. The ‘h’ sound is like you are trying to steam up and window or mirror, not h-uh. It is really important to support the children as much as we can to say the sounds correctly as it will help them with their early reading skills.

Quite often, as adults, we were taught slightly differently and it is usually a bit of a surprise to hear how different they sound to the alphabet names.  Here is a link to all the letters of the alphabet being said as sounds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlTw0oiLNys The Gentleman in the video has a YouTube Channel with lots of Phonics videos exploring different sounds with Geraldine the Giraffe puppet if you wanted to explore further https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqh11DN6jmbCsIPschffPaxvCdS9d6qPN

We have introduced the children to our Christmas Advent countdown! In each of the bags there is a card from the Kindness Fairy asking them to do something kind for someone else and a yoga pose. The children will take turns to open an advent bag. We have also been sharing Christmas stories with the children and noticing similarities and differences between our Christmas play and the nativity play, the children were taking part in in the story. We also discussed the main characters, Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus as well as angels, shepherds, kings, camels and a donkey and talked about the fact that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas.

Here is a sneak peak of the children at the dress rehearsal! We are very excited to be performing for you next Wednesday at 10am. On arrival at the Town Hall, we will be upstairs in the Chambers and the chairs will be set up with the children’s names on them. Have a look for your child’s name on the chair and then you can choose where to sit to get the best view of your child. We will bring the children over when everybody is sat down at 10am and we have asked the children, that on arrival, to wave and blow kisses and then at the end of the performance they can come over to you and have cuddles and kisses. 

We look forward to see you there.

Have a great weekend!

The Green Room Team

The Big Ship Sails on the Ally, Ally, Oh!

Leave a comment

Hi Everyone!

We’ve had an excellent week in Green Room singing some nursery rhymes, supporting Children in Need and jumping in puddles!

On the day of Muddy Morning the rain was pretty torrential, so we were considering if we should go out. Whilst we thought about it, we had our snack in our garden tree house, and discussed some options about what we could do. The children went with the puddle jumping option and as they say there is no bad weather just inappropriate clothing! So we embraced the rain and headed for the park! We found lots of big puddles to jump in and you can see how much fun we had on our Instagram page.

This week was Nursery Rhyme week and the children have been singing a different nursery rhyme each day. They have been singing;

·        The Big Ship Sails on the Ally, Ally Oh

·         1,2,3,4,5 Once I Caught a Fish Alive

·         5 Little Speckled Frogs

·         BINGO

·         Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Each day the children have been singing the songs and joining in with activities related to the nursery rhyme. They have made pirate hats, frog masks and twinkly stars, using a range of skills, including mark making, cutting, gluing and sticking which is all great for their finger strength. We have supported the children’s familiarity of the nursery rhymes by adding them to the Conversation Station and have used a sound button so they can listen to the rhyme of the day in their own time and with their friends.

As it has also been Children in Need this week, we held a bake sale, the children decided they wanted to make cornflake cakes with smarties to represent Pudsey’s spots. The children and staff came to nursery dressed in their PJ’s and we would like to thank everyone who made a donation. The children also enjoyed making spots with pegs attached to pom poms, as well as talking about mixing colours to make other colours.

This week it was Poppy’s turn to decide what the children would have for dinner. She decided she would like a chicken dinner, with ice lollies for dessert and it was delicious! The next person to choose will be Louis, we look forward to tasting his favourite food!

The children have been trying really hard with their Christmas play songs and we think you are going to be very impressed when you come and watch us on the 7th December. After the performance there will be drinks, mince pies and photo opportunities in our Santa’s sleigh by the Christmas tree.

We hope you have a good weekend and be sure to post your adventures on eyLog for us to see.

The Green Room Team