This week has reminded me a bit of childbirth for two reasons. First: the process of childbirth is usually a turbulent one although it is supremely rewarding. Second: and this is more related to the ‘due date’; you make all these lovely cosy rose-tinted plans about giving birth and keeping an eye on your due-date and both can easily fly out of the window when reality takes over!
So, let’s explain the turbulence! The start of every year is always the biggest intake of children and this is usually a smoothish(!) process. Yes, there are always some initial tears in the first few days but this year has felt different. My belief is that because of the lockdown and continuing into winter with uncertainty, the start back to ‘normal’ has been harder. Thinking this through, it really should not be surprising as our little children have spent far more time with their parents and families in their homes than they would ordinarily have done. There has been no school, play groups, swimming, playgrounds as well as other extra-curricular activities. But there has been a safeness and security in staying at home and bunkering down. Naturally it makes perfect sense that in coming out of our respective homes to resume normal life there has been a level of anxiety attached. Add social distancing and other measures and restrictions into the mix, and all in all it has made the start of term more turbulent than in normal times. So the dropping off in the school garden has been different. For some several few the goodbyes have been hard all round with both children and parents feeling the weight. That said there have been many who have been more than happy to get back to daily routines, and we have observed children getting stuck into nursery, and parents happily waving them off. Thus, it has been curious and interesting in making these observations as these first few weeks progressed. The good news is that we are nearly there! And that is thanks to the will and care of everyone involved. Hence just like childbirth we are beginning to experience the rewards of time. And now to explain the ‘due-date’ analogy… I had made some lovely plans to bring out our continents puzzle and begin to label the different continents. This followed on from our land, water and air lesson last week. However, with all the differing arrangements as settling all the children in has taken precedence, our in-depth look ended up being more a quick look. And thus the best laid plans and all that! The children enjoyed looking at the Continents puzzle, and we had some lovely moments when we were recalling the names. I held up Europe and one girl said it was called ‘Syrup’. Then when we looked at Africa one child said they thought it was cold in Africa. I asked why. And he replied ‘because it’s green and it’s green here and it’s cold.’ I thought that was a timely moment to introduce the concept of the Equator.:-) Here is another little photo selection of what we have got up to this past week. Enjoy! Last week we resumed a bit of normality. It seems like we took another inch towards it although I am highly aware that this may be a false sense of reality. We are, after all, only one positive test away from our nursery bubble closing for 2 weeks. Fingers crossed though that we can ride this wave and see that off.
It was a heartening experience seeing all the children return, both old and new. Everyone by now is used to queuing, to keeping a mask at the ready, handwashing and even having their temperatures taken. Which was great as, as it turns out, this is precisely what was needed to bring the children into the nursery garden. And after a week of refamiliarizing ourselves with some of the old routines, and adapting to the new, we were able to make some headway into our topic for this term – Migration! We have begun with the basics, or as Julie Andrews would sing, “Let’s start at the very beginning...” and she is right; it is a very good place to start. The children were shown the land and water globe and were great at identifying what it was called. They labelled it ‘a planet’, ‘the world’ and also ‘Earth’. We spoke about how land, water and air are vital to our planet and life on earth. One child pointed out that they bring their own water bottles into nursery every day. I asked if they are reminded to drink water by their parents. They all emphatically shook their heads and in unison told me ‘no, no, no!’ to which I then asked them if they could remind me, seeing as they were expert water drinkers. We looked at our ‘land’ ‘water’ and ‘air’ jars and matched some picture cards to each jar. There were some interesting and imaginative ideas and cute conversations. ‘Where does the train go? Land, air or water?’ One child quickly replied ‘In the air!’ The others were baffled. Some looked confused and others thought it was funny. I smiled, ‘Fantastic! So if I catch a train to London, will it fly there?’ and ‘That means if we look carefully we can see train tracks in the sky!’ There were guffaws, cries of ‘no’ and fun was had by all. We clearly were all enjoying the joke which led to other deliberately wrong answers when we explored the difficulties of sea turtles living on land, people living in the sea (we would need gills and fins) and hot air balloons flying in water. Through our exploration and reasoning, and through our intentional mistakes we became drawn to the right answer. It was a lovely little exercise in sharing ideas and thoughts. Here follows a little selection of pictures from the week. Enjoy! |
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October 2023
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