From planning, building, measuring and constructing under the canopy, followed by sharing stories together in the book nook, to testing out our physical skills on all the equipment in the playground…. Our children have simply had it all going on during their outdoor play today!!!

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Sian has been busy adding the finishing touches to our construction cabin…

What a wonderful space and wow, wow, wow what an invitation to play it ever we’ve seen one…

Our vision for a much improved outdoor space is coming together. It needed resurfacing and our fixed climbing frame was slowly falling apart, so this then led us to evaluate what we truly wanted from this space….

We wanted a more versatile space; so the addition of freestanding slides and a spinning seesaw (still with the climbing wall element rather than steps…. so still drawing upon one of our children’s current favourite things to do!) gave us the freedom to move and change the space based upon the desired play chosen on that particular day.

We wanted to enable continuation of indoor play, passions and obsessions (such as building!) but outside and on a much larger scale and we wanted to provide a space that could be accessed whatever the weather so as well as utilising the new buildings we have improved the canopied area by giving it a proper purpose and focus as extended builds can naturally spread out from the construction cabin.

We are hoping these spaces will allow for total immersion and have a huge impact upon learning as our team model, scaffold and encourage imaginations to truly run free and we can’t wait to observe as our children explore and learn through their play… watch this very exciting space!! xxxx

It’s fifteen years since Natalie (our very lovely Nat Nat) lost her dad and St Gemma’s were wonderful and supported the whole family through a devastating time. So to make her Dad proud and to say thank you to St Gemma’s Natalie has organised a purple day today here at Jollies.

Thank you to the whole team and all our children and their families for showing their support and joining in the purple fun!

We hope to raise lots of pennies for St Gemma’s so please do make sure to see Natalie to buy some raffle tickets and/or pop a donation in the purple box in the entrance hall as we want to raise as much as possible to support this cause very close to Natalie’s heart… we’ll leave the box there for a few days as we’re sure that some of you who may not attend on a Thursday may also wish to make a donation too….. Thank you everyone xxxxx

A HUGE thank you to our lovely friends from the new MHA group for today’s ‘Acorn and Oaks Story telling session’ held up at The Two Pointers.

It was lovely to meet you all and share the lovely stories and story sacks. We love a natter and we books so it was the perfect combo!!!

Thank you for letting us be a part of this inter generational story session.

Thank you to our children for being superstars too, you did us a proud and were excellent ambassadors of Jollies. We hope you all enjoyed it and had lots of fun!!! Xxxx

A HUGE thank you to the group of children who visited the Memory Cafe up at the Two Pointers today for their patience, their great chatter and their brilliant listening ears!! They did us all proud as there was a little delay at the cafe today with the pancakes for the ladies and gents and it meant that our children had to wait a while for these to be eaten before the memory games could commence….

Our children sat and had their snack and a drink whilst waiting for the ladies and gents to finish up and then they got together and had a natter and played some games. It was so lovely to see this cross generational interaction and our children loved to meet and make some new friends.

We also picked up a raffle prize for Nat Nat’s purple fundraising day next week for St Gemma’s as Viv very kindly donated a bottle of sparkly for Natalie’s raffle in memory of her dad.

What a wonderful afternoon!!! xxxx

Combining paint with cars was the perfect combination for Exploring Elephants today…. They whizzed their vehicles through the different coloured paint to create track marks of their cars differing journeys! There were extra challenges involved as tinfoil boulders were obstacles that needed to be navigated!!

Early years play combines so many areas of learning and development in the most natural and holistic way. This simple activity strengthened little fingers as vehicles were grasped, it encouraged hand/eye coordination and tracking as cars journeyed along their individual courses, spatial awareness was developed as boulders were avoided! Colour recognition and mixing was touched upon as painty tracks were discussed, intrigue was fostered around the different marks being made, collaboration naturally occurred as turns were taken and vehicles were swapped and shared, language development occurred through chatting about the activity together, imaginations were sparked as scenarios were played out and sound effects were created, but most of all it was simply FABULOUS FUN that derived from our children’s current HUGE interest in cars… and you know we just love to feed and fuel our children’s interests here at Jollies!!!!! xxxx

Then… as if today wasn’t exciting enough…. We then had pancakes for our tea as it’s Pancake Day!! After sharing stories about making pancakes and role-playing creating our own pancakes we got to experience the real deal thanks to our ‘Pancake Queen’, Sian, who made them for everyone’s tea…. We had both savoury and sweet ones and most of us thought they were very yummy indeed xxxx

What a wonderful day we have had here at Jollies celebrating and finding out about Chinese New Year…. We have explored the traditions that surround this very exciting time of year and we have enjoyed James’ yummy sweet and sour chicken at lunchtime complete with pancake rolls and prawn crackers and we even had a go at eating it with chopsticks… some of us showed off some very impressive skills!

We want to say a HUGE thank you to one of our little ones as they very kindly brought in a treat bag for all of their friends within their room…. This was such a lovely, kind thing to do and we all hope you have an amazing time continuing the lunar celebrations at home together too xxxx

We have ed being with our friends this week at nursery, but we also the weekend and we our families, so we are hoping for the perfect weekend filled with love and loveliness for everyone within our whole Jolly Family!!!

Happy Valentine’s weekend one and all xxxxxxxxxx

We Team Jollies…. Sian and I got a little Valentine’s treat for our team to remind them that we love them all and are grateful for everything they bring to our Jolly Family…

Wishing everyone lots of love and happiness, not just this month but always!!!! Xxxx

(We know the way to their hearts is through their feet and their tummies ) xxxx