4. Autumn Term 2014 – Big Coffee morning

Sunday, January 4th, 2015

Big coffee Morning

Firstly, a big thank you to all as on 26th September we held a “Big Coffee Morning” and  invited parents to come and share coffee and cakes with us to raise funds for Macmillan.  Many parents and grandparents came to support this worthy cause and it was a great way of getting our parents and children together and raising £150.

In September we welcomed 10 new children to the Nursery.  We have been delighted by how quickly and well they  have settled into our setting.  We have also been impressed by their independence and  self confidence.  We are also delighted and very proud of Rachel who has successfully  completed her childcare qualification at Alton college and has achieved level 3.

September also saw the start of Playball at Privett with Kerrie coming to take two  consecutive groups of children outside to practise a range of ball skills in the morning.  Our children  have been learning how to hold, throw, catch, kick and hit a ball correctly.  The skills  and games they are practising also require them to listen, follow instructions, balance and co-ordinate their movements.  Kerrie praises the efforts and progress made by each of the children and they love it.

Our mini beast project for the first half of the term began with a snail hunt!  We found lots of them outside of varying sizes.  The children loved looking through magnifying glasses to get a closer look at the tentacles with eyes on their tips and also to see how snails use their “tongues” to rasp at leaves.  We discovered that snails love cucumber and that they go to sleep if conditions are dry.  We sprayed them with water to wake them up and keep them active!

After the success of our snail hunt we decided to go and look for worms.  We tried soaking the ground with water to encourage worms to come to the surface as advised in a book we read.  When this failed we started looking under flower pots and stones. We found plenty!  We made a wormery, making layers of different colours so that we could see how worms mix soil.  The children were able to see the worm tunnels and leaves we had placed on top being pulled down.  We made some great worm pictures using pieces of string soaked in paint and printed onto black  paper.

The life-cycle of ants was the focus of our attention next and the children were surprised to  learn about the larva and pupa stages. However, when we started to learn about spiders they  were even more surprised to learn that spiders have pale blue blood, no bones and shed their  skins several times in order to grow!

At the end of October Eli’s mother, Rachel came to read one of her stories to us in the morning.  It is about a  snail, called Emile who unfortunately loses his shell.  It is written in rhyme and has a  wonderful quirky sense of humour. Needless to say, it was well received and the children enjoyed joining in with the repeated refrain.

George’s Dad, Tim, regularly reads to the children.  We have all  enjoyed listening to some familiar, some new and some very old stories and poems.  Roessa teaches Yoga on Thursday mornings and the children are beginning to work in pairs demonstrating their developing trust and ability to work cooperatively.  Annaliese teaches music on  Monday  mornings and this term the children have listened and moved to different styles of music trying to recreate the movements and actions of different creatures including ants and butterflies.  They have also played a variety of percussion instruments and practised changing the rhythm, speed and volume of their playing.

Christina brought some bread dough to Nursery so that the children could enjoy kneading and rolling the dough into rolls to take home and enjoy at harvest time.  Kate attended a Provider briefing and a Safeguarding update and Maggie a couple of SENCO training sessions.

On the last Friday of term we had a Christmas party for the children.  The children enjoyed a wonderful feast provided by parents followed by  “Magic Wanda’s Show”  The children joined in enthusiastically and nominated Matilda to be one of Wanda’s assistants. Charlie was the next assistant and he succeeded in helping Wanda to produce sweets and a cake!  We hope he will be able to use this new skill in Nursery next term!

Our Christmas Story, on the last morning of the term, read beautifully by Tim and with back drop, resurrected by Annabel was a little more chaotic than usual.  Mary (Amy) remained calm and serene throughout but our angels and stars seemed rather distracted by all the tinsel and glitter!  A huge thank you to Tim, Annabel and to Annaliese, whose efforts to teach the songs to the children were perhaps a little unrewarded by the performance on the day!  Nevertheless, we do hope that it will be a memorable event for our parents and their children.

We look forward to the Spring Term, a new project and the long awaited arrival of Ofsted in Privett.  In the meantime, we wish all a very happy and successful 2015.

 

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3. Summer Term 2014 – Village Hall renovation

Sunday, August 31st, 2014

Summer term – village hall renovation

Work on the village hall was completed at the end of April 2014 (Village hall renovation),  just in time for us to set up Nursery ready for the beginning of term.  With help from  Amanda and Emma, we hurriedly moved all our equipment out of the storage container and into our new large store. We immediately benefited from having an extra corner in the hall. We now are able to create a space for the older children to work with the more advanced Montessori materials.  The room appears brighter and lighter.

At the start of the summer term we read “The Journey” and the children enjoyed re-enacting the story about the little boat making her journey along rivers and out to sea, using props and musical instruments. Annaliese brought  music from various different countries for us to listen to and the children enjoyed dancing and playing instruments to it.

In May, we made our own journey by steam train on The Watercress Line from Alresford to Alton, stopping off at Ropley where we met Mrs Bear and helped her  find her picnic. Unfortunately, the weather was a little damp and we had to eat our picnics inside. Rain did not prevent us from walking to a nearby meadow to see the wildflowers!  Sadly, presumably because of the rain, there were no butterflies to see.

One morning in June, Kerry from Playball came to the Nursery to give us an introductory session on a variety of ball skills.  We are very much looking forward to Playball becoming a weekly event  next term.  In June, we were also practising our  races regularly for our annual Games Day

and the children thoroughly enjoyed all the extra physical activity.  Our Games Day, which we     postponed because of rain to the first week in July, was a huge success with all the children       competing in several different races and some very exciting sprint races from the parents!  As usual, we all enjoyed a leisurely picnic afterwards.

This term, we have all very much enjoyed listening to Tim (George’s Dad) read a story most weeks before our Yoga with Roessa on

Thursdays.  In July, Felicity (Ottie’s Mum) spent a few mornings in Nursery with us to take photographs of the children.  The main purpose of which, was to produce a “leavers book” and the results are available for all to see in a my copy at Nursery.   The book is a really lovely way to remember all our 2014 leavers.

This year, we chose the theme “lest we forget” for our entries to the Horticultural Summer Show and the children made some

beautiful collage pictures of poppies.  The pictures were displayed in Froxfield Village Hall in August and were admired and commented on by many!  We also received a special mention for our entries, in the Petersfield Post!

Work  to renovate our raised beds began at the end of term;  several overgrown shrubs have been removed, the rotten wooden borders have been replaced and the central wigwam reset.   In the Autumn, Annaliese is planning to organise a group of parents to help us re-plant.   Our willow den is looking quite untidy and Merryn’s Dad has very kindly offered to sort this out for us!

We are looking forward to welcoming 9 new children and their parents to the Nursery in September and give our congratulations to Rachel and Zuzie who have both achieved level 3 in their childcare qualifications.  Rachel will be back with us but Zuzie has moved away and is hoping to find work in another Montessori Nursery.

 

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1. Spring Term 2014 Newsletter and new website

Thursday, April 24th, 2014

Welcome to our new website!

The wet and mild weather which continued more or less throughout the term did not dampen our spring spirits or us because we stayed nice and dry under the new roof! We began our project work by thinking about what we could do at Nursery and at home, to be more environmentally friendly. There was plenty of discussion about reducing the amount of paper, water and electricity we use. We talked about the amount of rubbish that goes to landfill sites or is incinerated and we were all shocked to learn that plastic takes hundreds of years to break down. The children were surprised to learn that warm fleeces can be made from old plastic and that glass can be reused to make roads. Emily told us that her family reuse their plastic bags when they go shopping and Georgina showed us a very attractive pot made from an old plastic bottle that she had brought back from Africa.

This gave us an idea for a “Mother’s Day” gift. We collected small plastic bottles, cut off the tops and covered the remaining section with colourful tissue paper torn into pieces. We coated it in PVA to seal it and to give a nice varnished finish. The children arranged a small posy of flowers in their vases and presented this very attractive gift to their mums.

Annaliese (our music teacher) found a link to a website where people living close to a Landfill site in Paraguay are converting junk into beautiful sounding musical instruments and this inspired us to make our own instruments from cardboard junk and other bits and pieces. We asked parents to collect boxes, tubs and tubes and to come into Nursery to help the children make a musical instrument. The instruments they produced ranged from drums and rain-sticks to guitars and xylophones and the children and parents had lots of fun making and playing them .  Annaliese also taught us a couple of re-cycling songs to the tunes of Twinkle Twinkle and Incy-Wincy which she found on the internet!

In March we held a coffee morning and daffodil sale in aid of Marie Curie and we raised an amazing £188.

We participated in World Book Day and the children came to Nursery dressed as favourite book character.  Some of the children’s parents came and read stories too.  We read the wonderful story of “The Tiger who came to Tea” and the children enjoyed re-enacting the story for themselves.

Zoolab visited us for our Open Morning and we all enjoyed meeting and learning about some very interesting creatures including a giant snail, millipede, cockroach and Ruby the corn snake who was almost everyone’s favourite (not mine though!)

At the end of term we celebrated Easter by making an Easter Garden, telling the Easter Story and going on an Easter egg hunt. We made lovely Easter chick cards and learnt a great song (Spring Chicken) which the children really enjoyed singing and moving to. Our theme for the Spring Horticultural Show was “After the Storm” and the children used water colours to paint rainbows which looked beautiful displayed in the windows of the hall.
Building of the new storage area began at the beginning of March and we managed to move all our spare equipment and materials into a container just in time. Work is well underway and we hope it will be complete by the time we return for the new term on Monday 28th April.

During the Summer Term, we are hoping to renovate and replant our raised beds which are looking very neglected!  We are  looking forward to 3 new children and their parents joining us and to our school trip and Teddy Bear Picnic on the Watercress Line on Thursday 22nd May!

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