At Jollies we are championing maths in the early years inspired by our recent whole team staff training led by Fiona our training Maths Champion.

We are always looking for opportunities to introduce and explore concepts and expand upon vocabulary and Emma decided that playdough was the perfect medium to do so!

Discussions naturally occurred with words such as ‘big’, ‘little’, ‘long’, ‘short’, ‘lots’ and ‘more’ being used. Our children adored exploring the dough and all the pieces as they created.

(Not only did all this wonderful maths learning take place, but also creativity was sparked through exploration, fingers were strengthened through manipulation, hand/eye coordination was developed through determination and language and conversation was developed through communication!!)

There’s ALWAYS method in our madness here at Jollies and learning through play is DEFINITELY the way for us!!!! xxxx

We are getting ready to think pink on Friday and all look fabulous together!!!!

If Friday isn’t your little one’s usual day please just wear pink any time this week…. The box is there to pop a donation in if you’d like to support us in raising awareness and money for this very important cause. Thank you all xxxx

Autumn’s calling…

As we wander up and down the stairs we may be stalling……..

(As there are lots of lovely new autumnal things to spot!!) xxxx

Our newest Jolly babies are getting to grips with exploring our sensory room (with the support of their key person being nearby for any comfort and reassurance required; as this is still a very new space for them all at the moment!).

They are loving the lights, the textures, the sounds, the smells, but above all else… mostly the bubbles!!!!!! xxxx

It’s out with the old and in with the new as the Jollies great outdoor renovation gets underway…. Exciting times ahead. It’ll be a few days of restricted play for our children, but you can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs, so we think the interruption to usual service will be well worth the wait… xxxx

The ‘people’ have been taming and riding the dinosaurs here at Jollies today… it’s all in a day’s imaginative play for our little ones xxxx

What a wonderful morning Exploring Elephants had together today. Following the children’s current interests Fiona and Tracey took them on an adventure to the train station!

The children had been building huge tracks within the room and whizzing lots of trains around them so a natural exciting progression and thing to do was to pop across the road to see some real trains….



The children had been making some great sound effects within the room so to go and listen to some real trains and try to copy them was just the best!!

They guessed we may see three trains, but we actually saw six!! There were slow ones and fast ones, some stopped and some didn’t, one freight engine whizzed through without any containers attached and it was soooooo fast!!!! It also beeped at us and it was VERY loud and actually made lots of us jump!!!!!

We had some alfresco snack at the station and then we headed on up the steps to the bridge and looked down to watch trains passing under us.

Fiona and Tracey used this as a great opportunity to get some mathematical language and concepts in for us all. What with this and talking about crossing the road safely and staying safe at the station, plus looking after our environment by putting our rubbish in the bin and also observing a lady buying a ticket from the machine, it has been an opportunity for so much lovely learning to take place… But the best bit was just us all being excited train spotters together!!!! xxxx

Jade was busy leading an adult-initiated activity for some of her children when this little one spotted that she had put her tablet down on the floor next to her with the camera still open.

Jade had been busy snapping photos of her children in action to document their learning as part of our online journal system. This also serves as a lovely snapshot into their day that cheers our parents/carers up no end at work when they ping to their phones/computers as they get a sneaky peek into all the fun their little ones are having whilst they are at nursery.

So building upon this little one’s initial interest, as their curiosity had clearly been piqued, she turned the tablet’s camera around and on to selfie mode so they could then see their image on the screen and then together they captured a few snapshots which this little one was very, very, very pleased with!!!!!!! xxxx

These resources had been bought to enhance play when amazing vehicles are being created out of chairs, crates and planks, but this little one decided to snaffle them to explore them just as they were.

He then spent time investigating how they stacked together and moved them around to form different colour combinations.

Then Fiona, who was nearby as a closely observing supportive practitioner, knew how much this little one was obsessed with spinning things so she demonstrated how they could rotate on top of each other and then that was it he was away exploring in the best possible way!!! Xxxx

Imogen joined some of her children upstairs in their playroom and they had such a fun time sharing lots of stories together…

Someone picked ‘The party book’ so that was the first one they shared and together they pretended they were having their very own little party up there. Free Flow was full of giggles as their imaginary adventures organically developed.

Next up it was ‘The three little pigs’ and one little one spontaneously pretended they were one of the pigs and as the role-playing went on they suddenly turned into a baby pig…but they still wanted to build that house!!

Imogen started using all her crazy, silly voices (which she is notorious at Jollies for having!!) and the whole group’s engagement went through the roof!! All the children were giggling so much telling Imogen that she was ‘soooooo funny’!!!

As the stories were shared they all got super comfy and snuggly together with their besties and just enjoyed the ‘Imogen magic’

It’s moments like these when you see the strongest of bonds that our children share with their Jolly grownups and how much they adore getting lost in the magical world of books xxxx