When it snows, it’s just an amazing excuse to get outside and get fingers and faces into contact with the natural environment. The children of YMCA Day Nursery loved exploring our garden areas, making footprint patterns with their feet and snowballs using their hands. The really know how to use the word “cold” now!
When it got too cold outside, we bought the snow inside for the children to explore in different ways. They coloured it with food colouring and explored how the colours mixed together. The children also used paint and painted the snow to see what would happen.
While all of these lovely activities and opportunities take place, our amazing staff team are supporting the children to play and explore in the nursery as well as observing them using our online learning journal Tapestry. This enables staff to take photos of the children, add them to Tapestry and use the early years foundation stage to show where each child is up to in terms of their development. Once the observations are posted, parents can view these and see what their child has been up to in the nursery. We have had some positive feedback about this from parents who really like being able to see that their child is fine while on settling visits or their first day. Tapestry is a great resource that allows secure sharing of photos and comments between staff and parents.
We are looking forward to the arrival of Spring so that we can further develop the outdoor area with the help of the children. We have exciting plans to plant lots of flowers, potatoes, and other edible produce so we can use them in Nursery activities and perhaps even for lunch.