The Chimps this week have been playing with their multitude of coloured balls floating in water – blowing them, pushing them and using different implements to move them around. They have also been making some scary play dough spiders with bodies of play dough and legs of straws. They have made lovely sand collages and leaf paintings and they have been making constructions out of their watery sensory blocks. They have been crawling and walking along our crawling mat that makes different animal noises and they have started to grow some ‘Cress Heads’. They have had a village made out of wooden blocks and they have been moving dolls house people around the village. They have been looking at the Gruffalo book and the team have been doing Gruffalo noises with the children. They have been doing lots of mark making with chalk boards and chalk and they have had a grocery shop for their role play and have particularly enjoyed pushing the trolley around and pretending to buy fruit and veg. They did a few lovely Heuristic Play sessions and have been doing all the actions to ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. They have also been making a right old racket with a selection of drums and laughing as the team and themselves have been trying on all different hats.

Our multilingual Howlers have been continuing counting to 3 in all different languages during group times. They have been playing with boats, loading them up with all sorts of cargo in the water and splashing around to keep cool. They have done some very pretty sponge paintings and they have been playing with the dolls house and dolls and furniture, making up little scenes and playing alongside each other. They have had a seaside role play and they did a pretty challenging obstacle course in the garden. They had some excited sessions of ‘Sleeping Bunnies’ and they have been taking care of the plant in their room by making sure it has light and water. They have been watching their ‘Planets’ song on their tablet – they get mesmerized by it and talk about it throughout the day (it is a Baby Enstein song with video). Like the Chimps they have also done some lovely Heuristic Play sessions. They have been looking at books on and talking all about brushing teeth – using props of tooth brushes, paste and our large model mouth.

The Baboons have had rakes and spades in their sand tray and have been merrily making different patterns in dry and wet sand. They have made some scary looking monsters out of junk modelling and they have been doing some pretty paintings out of coloured ice pops. They have been exploring the texture of jelly and making a right old mess and they had had the trains and train tracks out and racing the trains against each other and making some pretty complicated tracks. They have been using polenta and lolly sticks to do some interesting mark making and they have had a role play aquarium which they have really enjoyed. Following a resounding popularity at sports day the Baboons have been having different plate-based races like sand on a plate and jelly!

Our Gorillas this week have been talking all about our Golden Rules. They have been decorating plates with different expressions and talking about emotions and what causes them. They have been making structures with the giant polydrom connectors in the garden and they have been typing three letter words. They have been reading their phonics books in the book corner and they have had babies and all manner of baby-type things in the home corner. They have been copying Numicon patterns with the pieces and overlays and they have been doing relay races in the garden. They have made fruits and vegetables out of salt dough to use in their home corner role play and they have been doing exciting floating and sinking experiments with our cork boat set in our new water trough in the garden. In Italian they have been learning lots of songs e.g. their version of ‘Miss Polly had a Dolly’.

As you know it has been a sweltering week so the whole nursery has been keeping cool running in and out of the water spray in the garden and having lots of different water activities…