If you go down to the canal today you’re sure of a BIG surprise….

If you go down to the canal today you’ll never believe your eyes !!!

Our local canal certainly did not disappoint when Exploring Elephants went for a stroll along there recently…

They were obsessed with transport within their room, so they decided to all go on a little walk in the hope of discovering some real boats. It was soon mission accomplished along with many, many other exciting finds:

Boats

Ducks

Horses

Gruffalo

Beautiful flowers

Wonderful alfresco snack

What a perfect morning walk they had before coming back to Jollies to enjoy James’ scrummy home-cooked lunch …… that was after they’d fed the ducks their lunch, of course!! xxxx

……….. this was our question when we all walked past this HUGE delivery in our entrance hall!

…………EXCITING……………..

……. It was a marvellous, magical new bubble tube complete with a huge interactive colour changing ‘die’ controller…. Our children literally roll, or turn it over, and watch as the bubbles change to match the colour shown on the top!!

We are literally bubbling over with excitement here at Jollies!!

Making friends up at the Memory Cafe…

Today we enjoyed our fourth Jolly visit to our local Memory Cafe which is held up at The Two Pointers on the third Thursday of every month.

It was great to see our friends again and we enjoyed drawing them a picture, playing dinosaur dominoes, completing Peppa jigsaw puzzles and playing the Gruffalo balancing game!! We also had a drink of water, a satsuma and a biscuit up there too. We looked at some of their books about things from the past and how life has changed and we also explored the ‘twiddle blankets’ they had there too.

It was so lovely to see cross- generational friendships being formed and to listen to all the conversations occurring.

Our children love life, love friendship, love playing games and love to go on a little adventure so a mini walk up to The Two Pointers for a Memory Cafe visit was the perfect way to spend an hour on a sunny Thursday afternoon…. xxxx

At Jollies we love our daddies (and grandads!) to the moon and back…. and way beyond actually!!!!

We hope you all have a wonderful Father’s Day and please know that your little ones appreciate everything you do for them xxxx

Recently Terrific Twos visited the mini beast hotel on the grass verge opposite Jollies in small groups with Katie. We love that ‘Woodlesford in Bloom’ created this for everyone in our village to enjoy!

They used their magnifying glasses to search for real mini beasts who had checked in for a quick stay (and a few toy ones that Katie had hidden in the hotel who were just making a very fleeting visit!!).

Once they had found some bugs they then had a conversation about what the bugs might like to eat for breakfast?!?!

Katie gave them a bowl to go on a little hunt with to find and collect some breakfast supplies to feed those hungry bugs!!

The breakfast was a feast complete with foraged leaves, grass, flowers, sticks and stones. They then used the breakfast they had collected to create a tuff tray inside nursery to continue their newfound love of bugs and insects and all things mini-beastie related!!

This sparked further conversations about where the bugs might live and how they might move around and further information was then sought from books about mini beasts as we all wanted to find out more, more, more….. Following and extending our children’s interests… it’s just the Jolly way!! xxxx

minty/lemony/muddy loveliness!!

Welcome to our Jolly Cafe where the food is highly seasoned and looks delish…

Mud, water and herbs were the main ingredients selected today and our children enjoyed exploring all the different dishes they could make with these. There were some very strong smells emerging as they carefully and creatively mixed in lots of fresh mint and lemony mint! Yummy!!

Mud kitchen days and fun recipe-following ways spent cooking together here at Jollies xxxx

and the tower grow taller and taller!!!

These two were super collaborative as they worked out which stacking cup to place on next to make their tower grow…. The cups were studied closely, working out which one to place on next, before being carefully added.

Determination, negotiation and focus filled the room as these two friends worked together to complete their self-selected mission xxxx

Evie gave some of our Cheeky Monkey gang a VERY BIG task…… to prepare their own snack!

It was certainly a challenge for the children, but they all gave it their very best efforts.

The children loved to use a knife to chop their banana and then spread their humous on their rice cake too.

Before attempting this they all spoke about how knives can be sharp and we have to be very careful when using them.

Our children also had a go at pouring their own cups of milk too!

We had very few spillages……. Go Team Monkeys…. You little independent superstars, you!!!

Independent ways and feeling very proud of ourselves days spent preparing snack together here at Jollies xxxx

Run, run as fast as you can!!

Quick… let’s bake a gingerbread man!!

Sooo much yummy fun has been had this week in Pouncing Possums xxxx

Emily had loved observing her children and their complete space obsession incorporating jigsaws through to small world play…. So she thought about a way to extend this interest to further develop their number, letter and shape knowledge… which they are also VERY interested in!!

Continuing the theme but adding in another dimension she made a ‘matching up’ space tray for her children to explore. They could match the shapes, or the numbers and letters. Maybe even both! She’d also written some keywords around the tray for her children to look at too as they love to spot the written word within the environment around them

Our children mostly completed this little challenge with focus and speed! Most of the children were on it with matching numbers and letters and quite a few completed the challenge with not a single tile mistakenly placed!

Some numbers and letters, such as b and 9 needed to be focused upon a little further and looked at super closely and carefully, but most children only took a few seconds to think about this before putting them down correctly within the tray.

Emily was super impressed with her little gang and how very well thought out this challenge had been by them all and how they had zoooooooomed through it in the end!!! What super they all truly are!! Xxxx