The nursery has been abuzz with the sights and smells of Halloween and autumn fun. The Gibbons have been getting into the spirit of things with some of our favourite Halloween tunes. They’ve been monster mashing with drums, shakers and bells. The little ones have also paying attention to the beat and clapping along. For their creative activity, the Gibbons have been decorating their very own witch’s hats with sequins, glitter, pumpkin stickers, and paint. They’ve also made broomstick painting using hay and sticks. Just to jazz things up a little, they also added a little glitter, of course. In the small world tray, spiders have been scurrying about in their cobwebs and the Gibbons have been having a boo-tastic time catching in the sand and counting how many there are. They’ve also been practicing their Incey Wincey Spider hands and giving us some lovely renditions of the song. Their Makaton signs this week have been yes and no, so please ask your team if you haven’t already on what these are so you can practice at home, or at least figure out why your little one keeps nodding their fists at you.

Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere and not a drop to drink! The Baboons have been getting into a gooey mess as they carved pumpkins. They blended the innards with jelly to make a rather oozy, slimy home for their spiders. With all these pumpkin references around, it only makes sense that the Baboons took to making their own with paper plates. Using sponges, they painted and decorated their pumpkins with facial features. Also at the creative table, the children made hand print spiders with a multitude of googly eyes. This week, Gloria the Giraffe managed to get loose into the garden and the Baboons have had to look high and low to find her. She’s back safe and sound in the Baboon room, but she’s had quite the adventure, and I think she enjoyed it enough to do it again. In the dance room, the Baboons have been honing their listening ears and seeing eyes to stop and go games using red and green mats as visual cues. Speaking of mats, they’ve also been doing a bit of sport session prep with a colour recognition activity. Arranging the mats in a square, the Baboons then ran to specified colours when their names were called.

Tomorrow’s chemists were this week’s potion makers in the Reggio Emilia area. The Gorillas had an investigation explosion with bicarbonate of soda, vinegar, oil, washing up liquid, food colouring and powder paint. They also enjoyed the smells of spices as they crushed up cardamom and cloves, and sprinkled cinnamon into their concoctions. Using all of the tools at their disposal, the Gorillas made test tube mixes, dripped vinegar onto the bicarb using pipettes, and crushed spices with a mortar and pestle. Neel wasn’t best pleased with the clean-up, but the Gorillas couldn’t have been happier with their potions. For their discussion time, the Gorillas have been talking about their fears and feelings and how to deal with things that scare us. Out of the story bag has popped all things to do with teeth. They’ve been practicing their brushing skills on a large pair of teeth (don’t worry, we’ve not raided a graveyard) and talking about why it’s important to keep their teeth clean. On Thursday, the children took a trip to the allotment and did some more seasonal work for our plot. They shopped for a few more seeds, dug holes (which needed to be 4-5 inches apart so they had to do some measuring), soil sorting (squashing lumps and removing rocks), and watering. This week they planted red onions and garlic. Mmmmmm….

A group of Gorillas came to the allotment for our first planting at the new plot. We sifted the soil within an inch of it’s life and planted winter onion and garlic. They carefully put the bulbs in the right way around and sorted the onion from the garlic. We are so excited to be starting to plant. We will need your help soon with a few structural bits and pieces so please get involved if you can – info about when and how will be coming your way soon.