Our children have been obsessed with trains for weeks and we’ve painted with them, built tracks for them to race along, made trains out of crates and wheels outside in the garden, turned our room’s chairs into a train across the room, made up stories and songs about going on a train journey, been out to visit the Scarborough Spa Express when it last passed through, completed train puzzles, crafted train pictures and today WE WENT ON AN ACTUAL TRAIN!!!!!

We had a wonderful morning and our little Elephants certainly made us feel proud! They had their best listening ears on and they took in every new experience and encounter they could from the moment we sat at Woodlesford Station waiting for our train to arriving back at Jollies…. (tired and ready for James’ scrummy lunch!!!! )

We met some lovely, kind people…. the conductor gave our children their own tickets, then another train station person gave us more!! (So they can take one home and we can now keep one as a memento in their memories books too). Passersby smiled, train drivers waved and one person even explained their role in ensuring the train leaves the station safely when it’s time to go and showed our children their paddles and explained how they blow the whistle to say it’s time to depart!!!

We bought a packet of choccie biscuits in M&S and had those with banana and a drink at the station and then we watched trains galore, looked at information screens, spotted platform numbers, listened to announcements and enjoyed every wonderful moment at Leeds Station!!!

Choo-chooing days and feeling super proud of our children ways spent bringing learning to life here at Jollies xxxx

Following our children’s interests and obsessions but enabling them to play, learn, build, explore, plan, risk-assess, create, imagine, negotiate and share on the HUGEST of scales….

They are basically like the biggest magnatiles you have ever seen!!!! Sooooooo brilliant for constructing as they click together with satisfying ease and then imaginations can run free as friends collaborate to create!! xxxx

Some see mess…. we see WONDERFUL creativity at its best!!!! xxxx

Like this!!!

What a wonderful ‘car shop’….. complete with panels at the bottom to stabilise it, but also provide multi-use as they turn into ‘roads’ and ‘ramps’.

We love it when a plan comes together!!! Xxxx

Today Terrific Twos combined their two most recent interests of ‘cars’ and ‘water play’ to do something spectacular on a HUGE scale……. They all got to work as a team to wash Emma’s car!!!!

They loved dipping their giant sponges into the buckets of soapy water and got focused and busy scrubbing away any dirt they found on Emma’s Mini.

In the end it was super sparkly clean as they’d worked together so magnificently as a team to remove every single speck of dirt they found on the car!

They had such fun stretching and reaching and balancing and crouching and scrubbing and squeezing and rinsing on this HUGE scale and it was sooooooo much more fun than washing toy cars in the water tray within the room.

Bringing learning to life and adding excitement is just the Jolly way of doing things and our children love it!!!!!! xxxx

……….. We bet you didn’t have a crazy daisy decide to sneak up behind you to try to give you a fright before deciding to jump upon your back to take them for a donkey ride?!?!!

No? We thought not…. Yet it’s all in a day’s work for our practitioners here at Jollies xxxx

……. When your imagination is the only limit the exciting possibilities are infinite!! xxxx

We are loving seeing how the sunflowers our children planted at Jolllies are growing…

They tended for them so carefully here after planting their seeds and when the seedlings had grown they transplanted them into their gardens at home and they have been excitedly filling us in on their progress! Thank you to everyone who has sent in an update so far

It is wonderful to see them comparing heights and talking about how tall they all are now and what better way to learn about maths concepts and begin to understand the world around us and how to care for our environment than watching these beautiful flowers grow and blossom?!? xxxx

Our oldest Jollies who are soon to be leaving us for their next BIG adventure into school life went to to the Memory Cafe at the Two Pointers today to say goodbye to their friends there.

It was a flying visit as the cafe were having a picnic and we wanted to leave them time to eat in peace, so we sang a couple of traditional songs with Pauline (‘pat a cake’ and ‘I’m a little teapot’) before Tracey read us all a quick story about the teddy bears’ picnic and then we had our own little carpet picnic with a drink, biscuit and some satsuma before heading back to nursery.

We had a quick detour though as we wanted to post a thank you letter to Swithens Farm for our recent amazing farm trip. The helpful staff in the local shop confirmed the stamps we’d need for our letter and then we popped it in the postbox What a wonderful afternoon we’ve had…

A huge thank you to the Memory Cafe for inviting us up…. We’ve loved making new friends there and we hope that this will be a tradition we can continue from time to time with our next group of Free-Flow children.

Teddies and Jollies over and out!! ….for now…. Goodbye everyone, we’ve loved our time with you all Xxxx

We have seen limitless imagination as creations have emerged after a collaborative and cooperative process between friends in Free-Flow.

Ideas have been shared, plans made and adapted and negotiations were naturally occurring as designs were refined and scenarios developed.

Watch this space for some amazingness coming this way soon…. xxxx