Little Hands Learning BIG Things
Everything the Nursery and Pre-Reception students do during their day’s activities contribute to their over-all development.
Children learn creativity, confidence, problem solving, perseverance, focus, dedication, collaboration and accountability through art.
Sensory play also contributes in crucial ways to brain development. Stimulating the senses sends signals to the children’s brains that helps to strengthen neural pathways important for all types of learning.
Children learn through doing. Art is an important part of a child’s world. It’s not only a way for children to express themselves, but it also helps them develop their fine–motor skills. The process during creative activities is more important than the final product. Small–muscle control is needed in order to cut with scissors, paint with a brush and colour with crayons. Creating these works of art builds a child’s self-esteem. The finished product, displayed on the refrigerator or wall, validates a child’s sense of worth.
Another very important activity during our day is building puzzles. Puzzles develop a child’s abstract thinking ability as they must be able to see a space and visualize what belongs in that space. Fine-motor coordination is developed when fitting the pieces into place.
Fine-motor control is developed by playing with a variety of toys such as big and small Legos, wooden blocks, pegboards, beads to thread, play dough etc. These manipulative toys help develop a child’s fine motor skills, which is a precursor to being able to write.
I hope you see play differently, through the eyes of a teacher and the importance of it!
Cindy Nunan
Nursery and Pre-Reception Teacher
Travelling back in time…
Travelling back in time to learn more about dinosaurs.
All the students and probably most adults find dinosaurs fascinating. Learning more about dinosaurs stretches the student’s imagination and allows them to experience a world very different from today. The more they learn about these creatures the more they want to know.
This week we learned more about dinosaurs during:
– Theme discussion: by watching video clips about different dinosaur facts.
– Arts and crafts: We made our own dinosaurs during arts and crafts time and we played with play dough to develop our fine motor skills.
– Numeracy: We had to order dinosaurs according to their size during the activity.
– Literacy: We decorated the letter of the week with dinosaur footprints.
– Music and movement: We danced to the dinosaur stomp song.
– Story time: We listened to stories about all of the dinosaurs who lived on the planet before us.
We look forward to more adventures while learning next week!
Martie van Dyk
Pre-Reception Teacher
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Nursery Fun 2020
The Nursery has started to settle in well in their first term.
They have settled into the routine and during the day they have a nutritious breakfast and all the yummy snacks and lunch provided by the school. They also get to have nice long restorative naps.
They have a nice shade over the garden and can spend most of the day outside in the fresh air. They are making new friends and learning so many interesting things about the class topic this week. The topic for the week is Family and the little ones love talking about their families and painting and drawing them.
The Nursery had immense fun playing with all the Sensory toys. They had a great time touching the sand, water and small creatures. They also liked playing with the macaroni and little dinosaurs.
I look forward to seeing how the little ones in our Nursery develop this term.
Jacky Billings
Nursery Teacher