This week in Meadows we have been exploring the cold weather and particularly …Storms! Our story, Storm by Sam Usher, took us on a wonderful, windy journey where a little boy and his grandad decided to go kite-flying. But where was the kite? Searching for it brought lovely memories of previous adventures together!
At our Collections table, the children had the opportunity to play with loads of dinosaurs and learned many facts about them! Did you know that NOT all dinosaurs were big or that some of them could perfectly balance on their tiptoes?
With the term’s topic being ‘The Past and the Present’, we thought it would be lovely to look at children’s baby photos and discuss how they have changed throughout time. Discussing about similarities and differences between things that occurred ‘then’ and ‘now’ helps children develop a sense of time and sequence, especially when they can link it to their own life experiences. Please send us a baby photo of your child, if you haven’t done it already, so we can further extend these conversations with the children.
This week we have also been practicing showing fingers 1-5 to represent the number of things or ideas around us e.g. ‘How many things have we learned about dinosaurs so far?’ Playing finger games with your child is a fun and interactive way to develop hand-eye coordination, enhance maths skills and exercise the muscles in these little fingers which are so important for tasks like writing! We encourage parents to sing number rhymes like 5 Little speckled frogs and ask their children to show 1-5 fingers when e.g. tidying up, setting the table or simply going for a walk to master all the above skills!
Outside, we did some litter picking in our forest area to promote the children’s environmental awareness, how exciting! We also talked about the 5 main layers of soil and created a mini soil profile in plastic bottles. The children got engaged in using their spades to dig as deep as they could and got surprised to see that below the grass and mud, the soil has different colour and texture!
With Lunar New Year approaching, we would love to invite you to join Meadows in celebrating on Wednesday 29th January 2025 from 10.15-11.15 am and 2-3 pm.
If you and your family are celebrating Lunar New Year, we would love to invite you to bring contributions of traditional food (strictly no nuts or sesame seeds), perhaps wear traditional dresses, maybe teach children some traditional writing and painting and speak to the children about what your celebrations typically involve. If you have any music, photos, short video recordings or other resources you would like to share, these are welcome too.
Have a lovely weekend!
The nursery team.