Squirrels News - 25th April 2025

This week, we read Earth! My First 4.54 Billion Years. The story introduced Earth as part of our solar system, describing the other planets as Earth’s "family." We also talked about the Milky Way and how it contains many more planets or "cousins," (as the book puts) it which we haven’t discovered yet. The children were fascinated by the idea of these faraway planets, likening a journey there to a very long plane ride we can’t take yet.

Inspired by the story, the children created their own planets in Art, using different materials to explore shapes and colours. In class, they also used kinetic sand to build mini planets, discussing their sizes and shapes along the way.

Our Role Play Area was transformed into a bustling airport, with children jetting off to exciting places like Italy and Greece, making sure to get their passports stamped, of course!

We had glorious weather as we headed out for our first Outdoor Learning Day of the summer term. Everyone was in good spirits as we left the nursery and headed off to the common. On our way we discussed people who help us such as doctors, vets and shop workers, whilst observing some of the signs around us that showed that Easter had been celebrated. We also spoke about shade, thinking about why some areas are shady and others are sunny.

Once we got to the common the children had a great time playing 'Stuck in the Mud' where they had to crawl through a child's legs who was stuck to free them. Some of the children built a fairy house, whilst others went camping for the weekend. It was a wonderful atmosphere, and everyone was in good spirits.

Our Outdoor Learning Day Focus lesson was to create flower balls. We discussed wild flowers and why they are important before getting our hands messy to create some flower balls of our own. We used our hands to mix wildflower seeds with mud and a little water before squishing them into balls. These were then left to dry a little bit whilst the children continued to play before we 'scattered' the seeds by throwing the flower balls. This was great fun! The children did a great job, everyone got their hands dirty and whilst some children said that they do not like getting mucky hands they also acknowledged that it was ok because we could clean them. Great work everyone.