Whether it’s the bond between between child and key person, or the bond between friends, strong bonds mean EVERYTHING and make our nursery world go round!!!!

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What a wonderful way to learn about colours, taking turns and sharing, developing our hand/eye coordination, anticipating and responding and exploring mathematical concepts!!

There was much discussion about how many balls may fall/or had fallen… which colours had come out? Were there more of one colour than another? How many were left in the cylinder? Plus many, many, many more conversations!!

We LOVE the early years as learning is natural, connected, holistic and just brilliantly FUN!!!!

Free-Flow had a little Jolly Spa going on recently and it was a HUGE hit. They had relaxing spa music playing, a bubble bath for their feet and cucumber on their eyes and even a natural yoghurt face mask!!

The room was most definitely transformed into a chill out den when they went for a relaxing lie down with a warm face cloth afterwards.

They all absolutely loved all this pampering and as much as they managed to keep it chill there were still lots of giggles around the room too; as it was just so much fun that the giggles just couldn’t be contained!!!!

We’re not sure Champneys would approve of the giggling, but we think our Jolly spa was probably a whole lot more fun?!?! xxxx

Fortunately for our poorly patients at Jollies the other day the answer to this question was most definitely!!!

The love of all things roleplay continues for many of our children in Free-Flow…

After breakfast the children were spontaneously roleplaying looking after each other in the upstairs area of the room, so Natalie went upstairs to our magical attic and brought down the hospital roleplay box to extend her children’s interests of all things hospital.

Natalie added the doctors and nurses’ outfits, bandages, first aid kits, x-ray pictures and lots of other things so our children could create their very own Jolly hospital.

They had a bed on the floor for the poorly patient and even a waiting room, where the other poorly patients were able to sit and wait.

They took it in turns to be the doctor and the nurse and the poorly patient and they all did amazingly; being very imaginative when it came to talking about what was wrong and the symptoms they were currently experiencing, before much discussion about how they were then going to make the patient feel better!

They also had clipboards to practise their fine motor skills as they made detailed notes writing about all the patients’ symptoms and which medications they might need to prescribe. The medical teams also observed their patients closely so they could add in lots of detail as to what exactly appeared to be wrong.

They liked performing regular checks/observations on their patients; talking about their blood pressure, their temperature and also looking into ears and eyes.

This was a great activity as it derived initially from the children’s interests and was then sensitively extended to progress their play, learning, knowledge and understanding as Natalie carefully scaffolded to further their ideas in a fun way. All the children maintained focus for ages and they worked together brilliantly as they loved being imaginative together developing their play ideas and exploring different scenarios…. We think we may have some future medics in the making here at Jollies… watch this space!!!! xxxx

It was so lovely to observe our Free-Flowers getting creative recently as they explored painting with different colours and brushes. They had such wonderful conversations together as they described exactly what they had created to each other. They ascribed such meaning to their creations and they were very specific about certain parts of their masterpieces and why they had selected certain colours or created things in such specific ways… They relished the process as they explored and created and their paintings were simply awesome too!!! xxxx

We are always talking about how to keep clean and healthy and how to look after ourselves as part of our everyday good practice and routines within nursery, but we know that sometimes children can feel anxious about upcoming visits to the dentist or they may be reluctant to brush their teeth at home on a morning for their mummies and daddies!

So to help reassure them and reinforce the importance of looking after our teeth we regularly share our dental box within rooms where our children can explore books about teeth and how to look after them and find out more about what dentists do to help them care for their mouths as well as practising tooth brushing on some GIANT sets of teeth.

Hopefully this fun way of exploring dental self care reinforces this practice at home as we like to do all we can to work in partnership with our parents and carers and support and strengthen links between home and nursery

Happy brushing everyone!!!! Xxxx

Albie, our Giant African Snail, popped out to say hello to our children with Imogen today…. He was feeling a little shy at first, but he soon warmed up…

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… can life be any more perfect?!?!

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It was time for a change around in Free-Flow last week… we like to mix it up a little and we can’t wait to see our children getting busy in their new Jolly Takeaway!!!!

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When your friend makes you the best strawberry birthday cake ever!!!

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