In Nursery this week we have been thinking about how to help keep our brains healthy and how to show kindness. We have taken part in various crews on sharing, kindness, exercise and our feeling monsters (zones of regulation). The children brought in their own teddies to share with their friends in a circle game. Every other child had a teddy and they sang a song called ”Pass the Teddy”. The aim of the game was to bounce the bear on their knee and then when the music stopped they had to pass the bear to the child next to them without a bear/toy so that they could have a turn too. All of the children were very gracious and kind to share their bears and they were very understanding that not everyone was holding a bear without feeling left out or possessive over their teddy.

Today the children thought more about the range of emotions they may feel via the feeling monsters (zones of regulation). We made stick puppets of the monsters. Nursery recognised that each emotion needed different facial expressions, such as a smile, frown, scowl or excited face. The children used amazing cutting skills to create the faces of the emotion they wanted to explore. They used googly and sticky eyes and drew on the appropriate mouth/ expression. We were were very proud peacocks of our final results!

As part of Children’s Mental Health Week, Nursery have taken part in a special dancing crew to show how exercise can lift their mood and make them feel happy. We did a comparison of before and afterwards to see if they felt any different. Most children said they felt happier.

Last week Nursery children celebrated the Chinese Lunar New Year. They watched a video about the celebration and learned about the importance of various symbols within Chinese culture, such as the colour red, fireworks and the animals that represent each year within the Chinese zodiac calendar. They also learned about traditions within the culture that are carried out in preparation for the celebration.

The children experienced some real Chinese decorations and artefacts gifted to us by one of our community members, who spoke about them proudly in Crew. All of the children listened carefully and were very interested to look at the materials.

All Nursery Children then explored Chinese New Year further within provision. They were Go for it Gorillas using fine motor skills to manipulate chopsticks to pick up woollen “Noodles”. Some created a Year of the Rabbit, bouncing rabbit, others painted beautiful pictures of Dragons and Chinese symbols used to represent numbers. We sculpted dragons and noodles using play dough and experimented with traditional Chinese dress in the role play area. We even tried Prawn Crackers with Sweet and Sour sauce too at snack time. I think everyone had lots of fun and brought themselves lots of luck for the Chinese New Year.

Today in Nursery we tried a variety of vegetables the colour of a rainbow, as part of our expedition on “How do things grow and change?” Most children were very brave and adventurous trying some vegetables for the first time and others that they are more familiar with. They were asked to choose three as we are practising counting to that number this week. The vegetables included; Cucumber, Red and Yellow Peppers, Radish and Carrot.