Welcoming brand new families

Little Owls Open Days !!
We are delighted to inform our brand new families that have recently “secured a future place” with us at nursery that we will be opening our doors on Saturday 5th February to offer personal one to one appointments to view our 2 wonderful settings. You will be contacted by your relevant setting manager soon to book a convenient time but we cannot wait to officially show our future families around.

Observational drawing around the fire pit
Today barn owls have had the opportunity to take part in observing the fire pit whilst drawing what we could see .
Before lighting the fire we spoke about fire safety around the pit , we ensure we all sat down at all times without touching the fire.
Whilst drawing we spoke about what colours we could see ‘ Red ‘
‘Orange ‘
‘ yellow ‘
‘Pink ‘
Barn owls started their drawing with a circle for the fire pit then choose to add flames as they flickered .
‘ the fire is hot , but the floor is cold ‘ , barn owls then participated in warming their hands up around the fire pit.

This week our overarching theme for Snowy Owls Scarning is “Our Families”
With some of our friends transitioning up at the start of this month this gives us and the children the perfect opportunity to get to know one another and who is special to us!
This morning the children have loved exploring our family photos tuff tray, seeing if they can find their family photos and point out who they can see in the photos explaining vividly what and who they can see to their familiar adults and friends too!
Following on from this lovely activity we have carried out a family and friends creation station where the children can point out the different features they see in themselves or a loved one and independently stick the features onto a blank person making it look like someone special to them!
These amazing masterpieces will be added to our new Family and Friends display for all to see!

This week’s forest school we had been busy making, before starting this activity as a group we have spoken about what birds might eat ‘seeds ‘
‘Bread ‘
‘Leaves ‘
Barn owls have had the opportunity to make their own bird feeder using seeds and lard , we have had the opportunity to talk about the textures of the materials used some barn owls said the lard felt “soft”, “crunchy” and “sticky”.
We cannot wait to give these to the birds.

All About Me
With many of our new Toftwood Snowy Owls starting with us this week, we have been spending time focussing on our theme of All About Me and My Family!
We have enjoyed lots of fun activities on this topic, and today we have had fun making Paper Plate self-portraits!
The Snowy Owls spent time adding glue to their faces, before adding a mouth and whichever coloured eyes they wanted, as well as some woolly hair!
During this activity we discussed our features and what makes us unique to our friends, such as “I got Peppa Top” and “hair brown”!
Well done Snowy Owls.

Today in Barn Owls Toftwood our wonderful Operations Manager, Holly began our new story telling incentive in order to create awe, wonder and excitement around literacy for our pre school children .
We began with a story called ‘What Makes Me a Me?’ A lovely thought provoking story that enables children to question what makes us, us. The children sat and listened beautifully to the story, asking questions and offered comments throughout.
After the story the children all went off into their key groups with their key person and had the opportunity to create a picture of themselves. Adults used open ended questions to enable children to discuss what makes them unique.
“I give the best cuddles”
“I have brown hair”
“Everything is purple, because I like purple”
“I’m using blue, cos I got a blue fleece on”
“I can write my own name”
“I use my kind hands”
“I am kind to my friends”
This activity supported children’s ability to develop a sense of self, have a positive attitude towards their abilities and understand what makes the unique and different to others.
Well done Barn Owls. We look forward to our next story time coming soon.