The Children's House Nursery School community never cease to amaze me in the levels of enthusiasm and engagement in nursery life. Our annual Easter Bonnet Parade and Egg Hunt were no different this year. 
Despite so many feeling the financial pinch, everyone came put and brought the joy!
There were straw hats, cardboard hats, bunny ears, flower crowns and one hat made from the excessive Amazon packaging the family received with an order! It was lovely to see so many home efforts and ones that children had helped to make!
Children enjoyed their egg hunt and families joined in with voting for their favourite staff Easter Bonnet (although there were accusations of voter fraud!!!)
Thank you Children's House friends and families: next stop Eid!

Over the past few weeks children across our nursery have been engaged in exploring a range of exciting experiments as part of Science Week. At Children's House we encourage curiosity in  our children and support them to ask questions and make predictions.
There has been volcano making: children have used some kitchen cupboard ingredients and watched the reaction as it creates an erupting volcano!
Children have explored floating and sinking: using everyday, classroom objects in the water tray to see which ones have buoyancy. Children enjoyed predicting and observing each object as they were put into the water. 
Ice cream making was an effective way for children to see how materials change state: after mixing the ingredients in a bag (with lots of active shaking) the ingredients transformed into ice cream! 
Slime making was a fun way for children to follow a recipe, working alone or in pairs to create something fun to take home!

Click here for some ideas that you can explore together at home with your young scientists.

Sending love to all mothers, grandmothers, sisters, step-mothers, aunties, cousins, friends and the female people in our lives who support our development. 
We know it takes a whole community to raise our children and we are proud of working closely with our families to support the aspiration and learning for all the family. 
At Children's House we invited mums and other family members to join us in sharing and celebrating all children's learning: there was singing, dancing, races, planting seeds, decorating biscuits, sharing stories and lots of play together.

Don't worry if you were not able to join us this time, all children were included in the session.  There will be more opportunities for you to join us in school during the summer term.

At Children's House Nursery School we know how important real experiences are for children to develop language.
We have been supporting children at snack time and through a range of adult led experiences to express themselves as they handle and taste food.

A group of children have been developing independence in following a recipe to make flatbread. Children were encouraged to identify the ingredients and explore them, handling them, smelling them, tasting them and talking about them. Some children had been part of this experience before and were encouraged to 'remember' the learning. Much of learning is helped by remembering and recalling and we support children with this every day in their learning.  Children washed their hands, rolled up their sleeves and got mixing and kneading the mixture, shaping it into small, round, flat pancake shapes.  Children used language to describe the texture: "wet" "sticky" "dry" "icky" was some of the vocabulary used. Children showed perseverance and concentration as the process took a few stages: from mixing and shaping, to proofing and cooking the flatbreads in a pan. Some children selected toppings to create mini-pizzas which they then baked in the oven. Children then shared and talked about what they could taste.

Another group of children were supported to express their opinions and respond to their sense of taste. Children were introduced to vocabulary such as "sweet" "salty" "spicy" and "sour".  They then explored a range of food: identifying it and saying whether they remembered seeing or trying it before. Children were so interested in tasting the small samples: lemon, salty rice cake, a chilli flavoured crisp and chocolate (a tiny piece!) After each one, they talked about how it tasted and have begun to use the vocabulary above to relate to them. They also expressed whether they enjoyed the taste and smell and why. Some children are beginning to speak in sentences now!

Can you help your child to talk about their learning?
Please remember to borrow their Special Book and take it home to talk about all the wonderful learning they do at Children's House.
Look at old family photographs too and talk about past experiences together.
Children also love to hear about what they were like when they were babies and toddlers so share this with them. 

At Children's House we value the importance of books: there are books all over the nursery. From traditional tales, to information books, to poems, to books made by children to magazines. We know the power a book can have: the impact on language acquisition and confidence as well as understanding. 
We celebrated World Book Day this year by coming to school in our pyjamas to share a bedtime story.

Remember to borrow a book every Friday from school to share over the weekend.
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Bedtime is a wonderful time to share some precious minutes together: snuggle up and enjoy a book or tell a story without a book.
You can sing songs and rhymes.
Switch off the television, tablet or phone and enjoy some connection before bed.
Please email Becky a photograph of your child enjoying a bedtime story at home.