We are LOVING our outdoor area!!!!! We love the freedom of having the ability to move equipment and resources around to create the space we need to truly follow our children’s current interests and support the development of their skills as they learn through their play….

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Thank you to our whole Jolly Family for being awesome and helping raise £126.31 for Comic Relief!!

You looked amazing in red, you baked and bought and explored all things red as we all did something amazing together to help others!!!!

Have a wonderful weekend lovely Jolly people xxxx

This afternoon Kirstan and I took a little group from Free-Flow outside into the Jolly carpark armed with grabbers and bin bags and we searched for litter and carefully picked it up and placed it in our bags.

We then crossed the road and cleared the area of litter around the bug hotel and along the station wall.

Our plan is to reach the wider Woodlesford area so watch out for us having an impact upon our village environment as the Jolly Woody Litter Pickers Gang!!!

(Plus who knew that activities such as this make writing even easier as fingers get working and hands are strengthened, hand/eye coordination comes into play which helps with future reading and tracking and focus and determination are called upon to pick up the tiniest pieces of litter… plus what wonderful keepers of the planet we will all be as we learn to care for our environment!!) xxxx

A huge thank you to ‘Woodlesford in Bloom’ for our gorgeous pots and for all their hard work in helping to make our village so beautiful

These amazing volunteers bring a smile to our faces when we see all these beautiful blooms around reminding us all that spring is sprung!!! Xxxx

We had a lovely time taking a hamper of Easter goodies to our friends at the Memory Cafe held at The Midland today!

Our children were super sensible on the walk there and back and they were so very careful when we had to briefly walk next to the very busy main road.

We played Easter snap, we watched the train travelling around the track near the ceiling (this was BRILLIANT!!!) and we had a satsuma, a cheeky chocolate biscuit and a drink of water.

We drew pictures for our friends there and added some lovely Easter stickers before handing them out to them all.

Someone VERY special was in the pub too… Emily was there with her family having coffee with her beautiful new baby girl and she came over to say hello to us all and we were beyond excited to see her!!!!

On the way back we stopped for a play in the park and a run around and the children wowed the grownups with their climbing skills as they were super confident on the very high equipment!

Afterwards we walked past everyone coming out of school and we spotted Pam, the lovely lollipop lady, so we went over to say hello and chatted about how she helps keep children safe when crossing the road and we looked at her lollipop sign and read the word ‘STOP’ and we chatted about her high vis coat, and how it was similar to our high vis vests, and why we wear them. She told us what she does each day and how she stops the traffic to enable everyone to cross.

Pam is a superstar and has been keeping children safe crossing the road for the past 28 years…

What a brilliant afternoon we all had and we timed it perfectly too, as James’ yummy soup was waiting for us just as we walked back into the building!! xxxx

Seeing as today is Global Recycling Day our children considered caring for our world in a variety of ways. From sharing books about recycling, rescuing the sea creatures by removing the plastic from the ‘sea’ in the water tray outside using tongs, exploring recyclable materials and experimenting by building and creating with them, (lots of lovely mathematical language was also used as they compared sizes and shapes, used positional language and vocabulary such as ‘more’ etc too) to looking at the creatures living in the bug hotel over the road from Jollies (as our children are also ever so slightly obsessed with mini beasts at the moment!!) and discussing how this hotel had been cleverly created by using recycled materials such as broken bricks and pieces of wood!!

Our children are very aware of recycling in their every day Jolly lives as they regularly check which bin to place things in and we reuse materials for our crafts and models etc) but today was an extra chance to bring this to the forefront of their minds again…. xxxx

A quick look

in our book nook revealed…. Emma sharing a story and having a great discussion with this little one

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Last week some of our oldest and youngest children joined together and had a very exciting morning playing outside taking part in Kirstan’s amazing ‘art attack’ activity…

Kirstan had set up clear umbrellas, a shower curtain, a variety of paint, brushes and even some ‘fly swatters’ as an exciting invitation to play and make lots of marks as our children created their own masterpieces….

They all loved this activity and they started off just painting the umbrellas in situ using the brushes, but then they decided to actually hold the umbrellas whilst their friends painted them and they also liked to paint from the inside too!!

They then liked to twirl the umbrellas and then stand back and admire their fabulous umbrellas; as well as hiding from the rain with the them, as it had started to rain halfway through their activity!

Our children explored and naturally learnt how to mix colours and closely observed all the different colours they could make!

They then accidentally got some paint on their friends’ faces and this then led on to painting each other’s noses and this then developed into trying to paint full faces!!! This was just like last week when the older children painted their faces inside with face paints as they had asked Imogen if they could do this. So they suddenly thought it would be fun to explore this aspect again as it was still so fresh in their minds and something they had naturally enjoyed doing…. Basically Kirstan had created an experimental, exploratory, imaginative mixing and exploring painty free-for-all and our children fully embraced it! They were covered in all in one wet-suits so clothes were protected and as they were dressed appropriately they were at liberty to explore, explore, explore!!!

They also made marks on the shower curtain painting pictures of their friends and also …. (Rainbows are another current fascination when it comes to mark-making)

Many of the children also liked to use the fly swatter to make marks on the curtain too as this was a very exciting piece of equipment to explore…

Everyone loved looking at their masterpieces when the creating was over! They had THE BEST time outside and they may have got VERY messy, but it was just soooooooo much fun! xxxx

Also, in case you hadn’t realised, our lovely Kirstan is back creating fun and mayhem as she’s decided to rejoin our Jolly Family full time again… welcome back lovely lady!!!! xxxx

World Book Day was so much fun yesterday! Thank you to everyone for dressing up and bringing in your favourite books to share. From baking gingerbread men and decorating them, mixing up the perfect Gruffalo crumble, creating colourful Elmers, completing jigsaws, making up puppet shows, to sharing stories in the book nook we simply had it all going on here at nursery

Thank you all for the fun you bring to Jollies life!!!! Xxxx