Look how Flying Start @ Duchy have been practising their fine motor skills in the baby room…
The children explored pasta tubes, threading them onto coloured wool. Firstly getting the end of the wool through the string was tricky and took lots of concentration, then filling up the string to make a necklace encouraged the children to keep on trying until their string was full!
Well done babies and what beautiful jewellery you have created!
Flying Start @ Duchy’s children are feeling the summer sunshine and often talking about beach trips and picnics they have had at weekends, so they decided to create their very own Beach play environment!
They have a LARGE sandpit with an area for water to go paddling in, spades and buckets for sandcastles and lots of photographs of the children playing and describing their beach memories!
If you have any photos of your child on the beach or in the sea please send them in to Matthew and Laura at duchyfs@hotmail.co.uk and your child can use them to describe to their friends what they were doing and add them to the memory board!
Flying Start @ Penryn have had a change of plan to their weekly Beach School!
This week the outing also took holiday club children as well as the usual preschool children.
The Holiday Club children are in for the summer holidays and are aged 4-11 years old, and of course look for something a little more challenging!
So Sophia and Lauren agreed that if they could risk assess going in the water, then they could go for a paddle!
The holiday club and preschool children did a fantastic job of risk assessing this part of the beach environment, describing the safety they must take into consideration – the preschool children had a great knowledge of the lifeguards and flags that they had learnt in their weekly beach safety sessions.
They also decided as younger children who could not swim without arm bands were with them, and there weren’t enough grown ups to go swimming properly that they would paddle, and created the ankle rule! This rule means you take your own shoes and socks off and find your ankle bone, you feel it on both sides and remember that is where the water can go up to! This way the holiday club children felt like it made a clear rule for the younger children, that was easy for them to follow and easy for the older children to remind them! Lots of…’find your ankle, feel your ankle was heard even when in the water!’
The children felt how cold the water was and although very refreshing decided against a full swim anyway!
As the water was risk assessed this meant the children could also go in to collect water.. which created great fun and an interesting science experiment on the beach.
The children dug sandcastles and made a large castle with a moat around the sides. They then collected water in buckets from the sea and poured it through the moat to see if it would absorb or if it would flow.
The children had several attempts with different quantities of water and quick and slow pouring, then they adapted the moat and dug it out further creating a down hill moat to help the flow. The children put a bridge at the bottom as the test point, to see if the water could flow all the way down around and under the bridge as a success measure!
As you can see it did! Well done beach schoolers!
Flying Start @ Helston have been enjoying their garden after a light renovation!
The garden has been spruced up by staff and the Flying Start Maintenance team to enhance the learning experiences the children have and to make it a brighter, most inviting place to be!
Look out for giant photograph boards of the Helston children exploring outdoor play all around the garden and the bright paint work of the number lines and dinosaur names!
The parents and children have all recently enjoyed the outdoor space for the Preschool graduation and Family day, it was great to see the lovely garden now getting lots of use from everyone!
Good bye and good luck to a fantastic group of preschool children who have completed their Flying Start journey into life long learning!
Flying Start @ Penryn explore technology, shapes and movements through an exciting new technological piece of equipment… a light box!
The babies added shapes of acetate, paper and materials on top of the light box to create a picture, using their fingers to move them around and see the light beneath.
Then the lights went out and they could create their own silhouette pictures, experimenting with the colours of the acetate and the dark shadows from the material and thicker textures.
The children tried matching shapes and colours, naming where possible! The older babies enjoyed using their hands to move around on the light box, whilst the younger babies were intrigued with touching the light and reaching towards it.
The toddlers then used the light box to create stories. Using acetate photographs to shine through and find missing objects in the pictures, they used the pictures to add words and start to create their own dialogue and discussion points, an innovative communication activity!
Flying Start @ Redruth did a fantastic job of not only having a wonderful sports day, lots of parents, supporters and athletic children… but also promoting healthy lifestyles to families with healthy make your own half time snacks!
The children showed their parents how they chop up their own fruit and then everybody could make healthy fruit kebabs for a mid afternoon snack!
There was lots of cheering and shouting as the children raced in their sports day… bean bag races, egg and spoon and running races were just some of the highlights of the afternoon!
Flying Start @ Saltash had a very successful day last Saturday, with families, children and friends of the nursery!
With 27 families and staff raring to go, sports day got underway!
The children enjoyed sack races, egg and spoon races, running races and of course parent races!
Medals were awarded before everyone enjoyed a Teddy’s Bear Picnic on the grass!
Thankyou to all who attended and the staff who organised a fantastic event for everyone involved!
Flying Start @ Penryn have recently had a fantastic summers afternoon filled with sports, fun, picnics, cakes, bouncing, running, medals, photos and smiles!
The summer afternoon was organised as a fundraiser for the RNLI, after the lifeguards saved one of the children from nursery from a serious incident on the beach, as a thank you for their excellent work the staff and children organised a lovely afternoon of fun.
The nursery was thrilled to announce it raised £300.00 for the RNLI! This was raised through cake sales, bouncy castle, tombola and raffle prizes – a very big thank you to all local businesses who donated such kind gifts for the raffle!
The afternoon was extra special as it included the preschool annual sports day and leavers ceremony, saying good bye and good luck before going to big school!
Just some of the lovely photographs of very proud families and children who have completed the first part of their life long learning journey, starting of course with a Flying Start!
Lots of parents, grandparents, friends and families also arrived to watch and cheer on their athletic children!
With lots of shouts, claps and cheers the children ran some fantastic races and all enjoyed a big drink and healthy snack afterwards!
Thankyou yet again to the local community and generous businesses, Penryn Rugby Club for letting the nursery use their field, the parents staff and children who all pulled together and raised money for a fantastic cause!
Flying Start Nurseries each drew a World Cup Football Team from the last 8!
The teams were as follows:
Duchy: Germany
Redruth: Argentina
Penryn: Holland
Marjon: Brazil
Cornwall College: Colombia
Camborne: Belgium
Saltash: Costa Rica
Helston: France
Well Done to Team Duchy for their victorious win!
The children at Duchy have been using their team ‘Germany’ to learn about another country, culture and food.
Matthew’s Omi and Pappa (Nan and Grandad) are German and brought over some fresh German Food for the children to taste. They tasted German chocolate, Rye bread and Pretzels.
The staff and children are hoping for a special visit from Omi And Pappa to learn some more German words and hopefully some nursery rhymes in German!
What a fantastic learning project and a victorious end!
Other blog posts will be posted for the other nursery learning projects.
The staff at Flying Start @ Duchy have recently been on training specific to physical exercise and healthy lifestyles for children in the Early Years. Their training encouraged them to think about how they can provide their children with more physical activity in their daily lifestyles to encourage a healthy lifestyle, impact on child obesity levels, enhance physical skills, strength, mobility etc etc!
They also learnt that for the first time ever there are physical activity guidelines for children aged 0-5 years, and in these it suggests that mobile children should have 180 minutes of physical movement a day! See this link for more information: http://www.bhf.org.uk/publications/view-publication.aspx?ps=1002163
So the staff have trialled some new ideas in their practice, to enhance the children’s play from a physical perspective.
They have removed the chairs for activities based at tape top that do not require the time to be sat down, this helps to reduce sedentary behaviour (where a child is seated or restrained) and the staff observes it encourages the children to move around more, reaching across the table and walking around it.
They are also trialling transportation play, where children can move from one place to another transporting equipment rather than it being so easily accessible, this encourages them to be more physical as well!
Also keep an eye out for singing and dancing sessions! Lots learnt and lots being used to make your children’s play a bit more active!
