Kits News - 13th January 2023

The Kits have had a wonderful first week back after the New Year. We were especially excited to warmly welcome our new starters and we have been very proud of how quickly they have settled into the nursery routine.

We have started the year with the topic book Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell. The book was one of the children’s favourites last term and they have loved reacquainting themselves with the story. In Art we made our own pictures inspired by the book as we stuck cardboard onto a square of black paper to make ‘crates’ and then chose animals from the book to stamp in paint and walk over the crates leaving foot prints behind. 

We have continued with an animal theme throughout the week and on Wednesday we refined our listening skills as we listened to different animal sounds. The children concentrated well and were very excited to call out the different animal names and enjoyed trying to mimic the noises themselves. Afterwards they developed their fine motor skills by using the glue sticks to stick pictures of the animals we heard onto their activity sheets.

During Snack Time the children are learning how to chop the fruit independently and use the spoons to scoop fruit onto their plate. We extended this further in our Cookery Focus Time on Thursday when we made rice cake animal faces. The children developed their hand strength as they used knives to cut the bananas and then forks to mash them into a paste which they could then spread onto their rice cakes. Finally, they used their pincer grip to pick up raisins and add them to their rice cakes to make ‘animal faces’ and other patterns. 

The children have also enjoyed playing with the playdough throughout the week which is a great activity for strengthening their hand muscles. We have used the cutters to cut out animal shapes and on Friday we engaged in a ‘Dough Disco’ in our Fine Motor Skills Focus Time. The children all loved listening to the music and poking, squashing, squeezing, rolling and patting the dough.