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Pumpkins and gourds create a sense of wonder and curiosity in young children. Their hard, textured exterior, their slimy fibrous innards, and the vines they grow on spark scientific inquiry in even our youngest learners. As well as being great fun, carving pumpkins and exploring winter vegetables can help the children develop many skills. These include developing muscle strength, problem-solving, creative designing and testing theories, to name a few! The children have enjoyed helping carve the pumpkins and they've really loved our pumpkin potions trays!
The children always enjoy their PE and Music & Movement sessions. They learn to negotiate space and obstacles safely, demonstrating strength, balance and coordination. They love to move energetically - running, jumping, crawling, dancing, hopping, skipping & climbing. Create an obstacle course with them at home, it's fun and free!
Our preschoolers have loved their Forest School sessions since the start of term. They've been climbing trees, making dens, making conker people, making acorn necklaces and lots of 'soups', 'stews' and mud 'pies'! As the term goes on they are looking forward to building, making and using tools, foraging, and cooking in the fire pit.
We're so lucky to have apples and blackberries growing on the school grounds, the children had lots of fun foraging for fruit this week. Once we had a big basket full, the children washed the berries then peeled and chopped the apples. After weighing the ingredients, they were absorbed with 'rubbing-in' to make the crumble mix, before spooning the crumble over the fruit. Once it was cooked, some of the children couldn't resist eating some of their crumble before taking it home to share. Crumble is so easy to make and really yummy. We hope you managed to get a taste!
What an amazing first week of the new school year we've had, 29 two years olds have started, with the great majority coming in happily and getting straight on with their fun filled day. Our new preschoolers are thoroughly enjoying meeting up again with their friends, they are looking forward to Forest School and all the new activities they'll be doing as rising 4 year olds. How lucky we are to have such awesome children!
All of our children love gardening, this year we've grown potatoes, beans, peas, and tomatoes. We encourage the children to love nature and they've really enjoyed the responsibility of caring for their plants. Gardening engages most of the senses and helps children to develop and recognise them without even realising. It also helps develop hand-eye coordination and builds strength. Gardening is physical and requires the body to work hard digging, carrying, lifting, sieving, watering, it's fun and productive. It’s also a fact that if you engage children in growing their own vegetables, they gain a keen interest in eating them too!
What a fabulous morning we had at our Sports Day this week, with the sun shining and the majority of our 70 families taking part. The children had their very own mini Olympics. After their races they loved watching their mums, dads and grandparents race. I think the biggest cheer was for our awesome staff team, who along with the preschool children had a very funny dressing-up race, incorporating all of the races! Sports Day brings a sense of fun and comradery to the children, it helps teach them valuable skills such as teamwork and communication. We were all winners at Acorn's Sports day and we all had a great time.
We had an amazing visit to Cranleigh fire station this week. Our preschool children had a wonderful time, they tried on uniforms, climbed into the fire engine, they showed great interest in all the equipment on the engine and what the firefighters carried with them when they were called out on a 'shout'. The children loved using the hose, squirting water on the practice tower! Firefighters hold a powerful mystique for many children, so it was very exciting for the children to visit our local station and actually meet two fabulous firefighters, who told them some of the things they do to help people! We are so grateful to firefighters Jamie and Jake for giving up their valuable time to make it such a special visit.
The children have been fascinated, for over a month, watching our tiny caterpillars grow fatter and fatter, eventually creating a protective shell ( chrysalis ) around themselves. Inside their chrysalis the caterpillars begin their amazing transformation into an adult butterfly. It's a wonderful life cycle for the children to witness and is always really exciting when we release the butterflies. We've read lovely stories and made great art & crafts to mirror the stages of the life cycle. It's been great fun for us all!
Our young Catkins & Squirrels (2 & 3 year olds) were keen to make their own shoe shop after some children showed us their new shoes and how you try them on in
the shop!
Role play like this isn't just fabulous fun, it supports all areas of learning in the Early Years curriculum. The good news is that you don’t need lots of expensive toys and resources to encourage
role playing activities. You’ll find items that you already have at home (often everyday things!) can spark children’s imaginations and prompt role playing.
We've had a busy and fun week preparing for the Coronation of King Charles III. The children made flags, bunting, crowns and enjoyed many other fun activities culminating in a fabulous 'Street Party/Fair' today, which all the children loved. Then we had a picnic lunch together before the children were given a lovely commemorative medal to celebrate this moment in history! Hope you all have a lovely Bank Holiday weekend
Spring has certainly sprung! We were fortunate to enjoy some sunny weather while we dug and planted, the children all love digging and planting, it's such great fun. Gardening is a wonderful activity for children of all ages, as well as helping develop important motor skills it stimulates all five senses, children feel different textures in the soil, seeds and plants, they are able to smell the flowers, hear the bees and birds, see the different colours of the plants and taste any vegetables, herbs or fruits we grow.
Our children love being outside making obstacle courses involving running, chasing, jumping, climbing, throwing in fact all things physical! They also love PE indoors especially when we make obstacle courses for them to enjoy. Obstacle courses help young children solve problems as they learn to maneuver up, over or through obstacles. They also learn to adjust to changing conditions and memorise the fastest way to progress through the course. They are free and fun, what's not to love!
We had a lovely Mother's Day celebration on Friday for nearly all of our 70 mummies, who came along with their children. They enjoyed coffee & cake and listened to the children sing special songs they'd learnt for this special occasion. The Acorn staff team wish mummies everywhere a wonderful, relaxing day on Sunday.
The rain stopped and the sun shone, albeit briefly, for our Saturday Drop-in. We were delighted that so many of our lovely families visited us on Saturday. The children are always so excited to show their mummies and daddies around their nursery school and play with their favourite things, it's a real confidence boost for them and great fun.
We've had lots of fun joining in with the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. It's an important survey for us all to join in as it allows the RSBP to build a picture of how our much-loved birds are faring. All of our children, including our young 2 year olds, were really interested in spotting the birds in our gardens and Forest School area. They also made feeders to hang on our trees and enjoyed seeing how quickly the birds ate the food! We introduced block graphs to our preschoolers, to show which birds frequented our gardens the most. We mostly saw sparrows, robins and pigeons! We frequently hear a woodpecker but have only spotted it a couple of times. Birdwatch is a truly unique collective effort which helps us build the picture of how our much-loved birds are getting along.
We've had lots of extra stories this week to support World Book Day. Anything that makes books more fun for children is a good thing, both staff and children had lots of fun dressing up as their favourite book character, and they brought their favourite story book into nursery for everyone to enjoy. Having access to books and developing a love of reading for pleasure is vital for a child's future.
We celebrated ‘Pancake day' today. We learnt about what ingredients you need to make pancakes and that the day is also called ‘Shrove Tuesday’. We also learnt that on Shrove Tuesday some people choose to stop having food that they enjoy for 40 days, and they have to wait until Easter Sunday to enjoy them again! We read stories too ‘The Runaway Pancake’ and Mr Wolf's Pancakes. The children enjoyed whisking the ingredients together and really enjoyed tossing the pancakes. Who doesn't love pancakes especially with lemon and a sprinkle of sugar, the children certainly did at snack time with their fruit! Really yummy!
We've been celebrating Chinese New Year this week, with lots of fun activities. The children have been interested in learning all about Chinese culture, about the Chinese Zodiac and the Zodiac 12 animals. They have loved trying chopsticks instead of knives and forks, and have been fascinated by the very different letters the Chinese use. They've been making Chinese lanterns, Lucky Purses, Fortune Cookies with Chinese sayings, Zodiac Puppets, and a Chinese cafe. They've really enjoyed food play with noodles and chopsticks. Chinese New Year is a perfect way to introduce early years children to different cultures and traditions that may not be familiar to them or their families.
Acorns team, in anticipation of the cold snap right now, made ice balloons with the children. They loved ripping the balloons off in the mornings, checking if the water had frozen! They also created an ice wonderland indoors, which the children had lots of fun with. There's something very exciting about water freezing for children, and sensory play like this allows for lots of unstructured learning experiences. They loved wandering around our grounds looking for ice to paint or to break up!
Role Play is such good fun, our young 2 & 3 year olds have been busy this week being builders, photographers, cafe owners, cooks and waitresses. We even had an airline pilot, who took his passengers to Canada! Role Play isn't just good fun, it develops the children's communication skills and forms their use of language. It gives them the chance to explore, experiment and encourages imagination and creativity. You've probably got all the 'props' they need at home, no need to buy anything, their imagination is all they need!
Our first day back, after the Christmas break, was great fun for us all. The children returned confidently and were really happy to see their teachers and friends, and happy to play outside in the fresh air. We had a few new children start and they were made welcome by their new friends and settled quickly. A lovely start to the spring term.
We held our Nativity Performance and Carol Service in the beautiful St Nicolas Church today. All of our 60+ children should have taken part, but there are some nasty bugs around and sadly our numbers were lessened! It was still a wonderful event, enjoyed by a packed Church as always. Thanks to our amazing children who made us all proud, very well done all of you. Thanks to Mr Holcombe and the Glebelands School Choir who supported us this year, what beautiful singers. Thanks to Roy and Tim, our Rector and Curate for all their help and support. Thank you to those who joined us for our post performance coffee and mince pies. We raised a fantastic £197.50 in the Christmas raffle. Finally, special thanks to our awesome staff team, without their hard work we couldn't stage such a lovely performance.
The children are loving their daily Forest School sessions. They've been having lots of fun exploring, investigating and creating in our safe, natural wooded area. This week they helped collect twigs and acorns and other natural materials to help make a wonderful Nativity Scene for the display in St Nicolas Church. The first Nativity Festival will run from Friday 2nd until Sunday 4th December, opening on Friday and Saturday 10am to 6pm and Sunday 12 noon to 5pm. Don't forget to pop in to support the event, it's definitely worth a visit.
We've been talking about hedgehogs recently. That they are nocturnal, about why and where they hibernate, what they eat and why they have spikes! We made some yummy hedgehog bread, made clay hedgehogs and created hibernation homes for our clay hedgehogs! Our younger children created lovely hedgehogs pictures using a fork to create their spikes with.
We've been going 'Conkers' these last couple of weeks in Forest School! We've made Conker people and created a conker world, we've used conkers & paint to create awesome art, we've used conkers for maths activities and we've even made Conker soap! Conker soap is lovely and really softens your hands! The children loved peeling the conkers, they especially loved bashing them to a pulp, then a thorough mix into warm water. Strain them and you have a lovely, natural liquid soap and it's free! You could add essential oils if you'd like to change the already sweet cedar wood smell. Conker hunting is great fun, there are lots of Horse Chestnut trees around and lots of investigation to be done, getting the seed (conker) out of its spiky shell. A great half-term (24th-28th November) activity!
Our young 2 year olds (Catkins) have all settled now and are thoroughly enjoying themselves at nursery. They love all the autumn activities, playing outside come rain or shine, making new friends, problem solving, creating, climbing, balancing, throwing, reading, instruments, singing and much, much more. How lucky we are to have such lovely, interested and happy children.
What a fabulous time our preschoolers are having at Forest School! They've built dens, put up tents and tarps, climbed trees. They've learnt how to tie a simple overhand knot to make magic wands, learnt how to use a hammer & nails safely and had great fun learning and playing outside in the fresh air. Our Forest school sessions provide a specialised learning approach that offers our children regular opportunities to achieve and develop confidence and self-esteem through hands-on learning experiences in a natural environment. We're all excited, staff & children, that we now offer Forest School sessions every day.
Our first few weeks have certainly been busy, welcoming 31 new 2 year olds to Catkins class. They're settling-in really well and are starting to look forward to seeing their teachers and playing alongside new friends, I'm sure friendships will follow soon. They are enjoying all the fabulous and fun equipment on offer. Our 28 amazing preschoolers have quickly settled into their new class and are loving being back with their friends. They're particularly excited to be able to take part in Forest School sessions.