Chinese New Year Celebrations and other Activities in the Nursery during the Week Beginning 23rd January 2012
Upper Nursery
The children have been celebrating Chinese New Year this week. On Friday the classes got together for music and celebrated the Year of the Dragon Chinese by playing instruments to Chinese songs and roaring like dragons to Chinese music. The children particularly enjoyed making Chinese dragon puppets and learning the story about the animals of the Chinese zodiac.
The teaching focus for the week has been ‘shapes’. The children cut out 3D shapes to hang in their classrooms, cooked flapjacks which were cut into rectangle shapes and cut out three circle shapes of different sizes to make a snowman. They made shapes out of clay which they will paint when they are dry. The PE session this week was ‘warm up with the sticky kids’, focusing on the ‘circle songs’.
Lower Nursery
This week the children have been looking at animals that live in cold places such as penguins and polar bears. The children enjoyed doing threading and used various materials including snow glitter, cotton wool balls and created their own penguin pictures.
Toddlers
This week the toddlers in the Elmer Room were encouraged to think about winter. Staff read winter stories to the children and the children’s favourite was “The Snowman”. After all the rain we had, the children got dressed up warmly, put on their wellies and went outside splashing in the puddles. On Thursday the children enjoyed looking out of the window at the hailstones!
The toddlers in the Winnie the Pooh Room experienced their first art week. The children have enjoyed exploring and experiencing new materials and finding out the variety of ways to use those materials. The children were pleased to see their finished art work going up onto the display board.
Babies
The little ones in the Peter Rabbit room have enjoyed experiencing mark making with coloured paints and felt tip pens this week. They also enjoyed music time and doing lots of actions whilst shaking musical instruments.
The babies were helped to explore the concept of space using different sized containers and filling them with pom-poms and matchsticks, looking at how many fit in the containers and what noises they make when shaken.