What a LOVELY week we have had this week, we have been making lots of fantastic pictures with loose parts both inside and outside. In the sandpit outside we used different sized pebbles to make different shapes we tried to create a circle, square and of course a heart shape. It was lots of fun. We spoke about how many pebbles we had used for our shape and how big or small it was. 

We have been exploring colours too mixing reds pinks and purples together to see what happens, we made some fantastic coloured pictures outside.

Inside we have been practising our fine motor skills and strengthening those muscles in our hands, we have been trying to peg some plastic pegs onto some love heart shapes, it was quite tricky but we all had a go and counted up how many pegs we had put on.

The sausage dogs have been busy making the Queen of hearts some tarts which looked delicious, we all had a try at using the cutter to cut the shape and spooning the jam into the middle of it. They looked fabulous!

The dalmatians have been busy making playdough with Leah, they decided to make it purple and used lavender essence everyone was very good at mixing it together and we spoke about adding "More" or "Less" ingredients to the mixture.

We are now into February and we have lots going on this month, so keep checking the blog and the Facebook page for regular updates. Our value of the month is "Love" we have been talking about who we love and who is special to us, we have also been talking about things that are kind to do for our loved ones too.
We have been looking at the country France as it is the love capital, we have been trying different french food such as crepes,  brioche and croissants at snack times which we have all enjoyed trying. 
Some of us have been busy practising our mark making skills and have been busy making cards and pictures of our loved ones.
Outside we have been creating marvelous creations on a bigger scale using sponges and heart stamps, we have been discussing how to make colours such as pink and purple and the trying out our thoughts to see if it would work. 
In the mud kitchen we have been making love potions using glitter, sequins, different coloured water and jars of all different sizes. It was lots of fun!
Fabulous week at Mucky Pups! 

This week has been a busy one!
We have been outdoors exploring the garden and looking and listening for different birds as it has been the B​ig garden birdwatch week. We have seen lots of different birds from Magpies and Bluetits to blackbirds and even a Robin. We spoke about where birds live and what they like to eat and made some bird feeders using pipe cleaners and cheerios, some of us took them home to put in our own gardens. We decided to make a house for the birds and got out the spades to do so,it was lots of fun and sparked lots of different questions such as Do birds sleep in beds? Do they have a roof on their house?

We have been learning how to fly like a bird and spoke about how they move on their legs and tried to copy this, some of us are very good at moving like a bird. 

We have also been making some fabulous structures outside in the construction area, practising our balance and looking at risks. Some of us found it a little hard walking across the plank of wood and needed a little help. We have all been kind and helped our friends if they needed it. Well done Mucky Pups!

Inside we have been baking delicious cookies with Steph, which we all to home to enjoy. We looked at weighing out the ingredients and the numbers on the scales saying if we needed "More" or not. Then we used our muscles to mix, squash and roll the mixture to make the cookies, it was lots of fun. 

Happy new year everyone!
What a fabulous week back already!

We have had a few new faces join the Mucky Pups family this week, whom have had lots of fun at nursery some of them didn't want to go home. 

We have been sharing lots of stories about what Father Christmas brought us all for Christmas and all the other exciting things we have done over the holiday period. It sounds like we've all been very busy!

We have started to explore Chinese new year which is 25th January, we have been exploring different material and moving to Chinese music, as well as trying to pick things up using chopsticks, which is very tricky.

Julia Donaldson is our author of the month for January and we will be looking at different stories of hers throughout it. Joe who is our story teller will be focusing on one of her great stories "Stickman" he has lots of fabulous ideas which we are all looking forward to seeing within nursery this month. Why not watch the animated film at home https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06t09rk/stick-man
or read the story at home, we would love you to share pictures of this on here or the Mucky Pups Facebook page.

What a fabulous festive few weeks we have had at Mucky Pups.

The weather outside has been frightful, but that hasn't stopped us looking for Jack Frost and exploring in our "Frozen" ice kitchen, making marvellous ice soup and potions. We have been using our gross motor skills too and have made a sleigh using crates and some strong rope to move around in whilst outside which was lots of fun, we have all enjoyed pretending to be Santa and his reindeer.

Inside we have been enjoying lots of new stories, the elves came to Mucky Pups and left a story book advent calendar, everyday we have opened a new story book to read and enjoy. We have also been super busy crafting lots of beautiful Christmas decorations and cards to take home for our families, which all look super. We love to bake and have been busy making some delicious treats for our Christmas coffee morning (Friday 20th December) everyone is welcome to come along for a Christmas cake and a hot drink. 

We had a visit from Ali at Pyjamarama and we did some drama with her!
We had to move to different music and pretend to be lots of different things, such as a horse. We thought about how a horse moves and if it hopped or slithered or jumped, a lot of us thought they ran really fast and a few of us thought they Galloped. It was lots of fun to see what everyone thought and how they moved. Thanks Ali for your visit.

This week we have been looking at Diwali and bonfire night, as they are both to do with light. We have been busy making bread stick sparklers which are on our newsletter as our recipe of the month. (Have a go yourself and send a picture) everyone enjoyed making these and choosing which sprinkles they wanted. We also made some diva lamps to celebrate Diwali, we used lots of different materials such as dry spaghetti, glitter, forks and pasta to decorate and make patterns on the clay. We had lots of fun making them and talking about where we would put them in our house. Outside, it's been getting darker so we decided to take out the torches and explore in the dark, it was lots of fun. We had a look at what we could see up in the sky too and if the moon or the sun was out, we saw a few twinkling stars too.

What a spooktacular time we have had at Mucky pups this week!

We have been exploring lots of different sized pumpkins and squashes, we spoke about the sizes and what we all thought was inside them. Once we cut them open we had a feel of what was inside, we all thought it was "Slimy." We then decided to sort out the seeds from the pumpkin itself, it was a hard job but we did it using all different types of tools such as tweezers, spoons and our hands.

Outside, we have been on a "Pumpkin hunt" we all had lots of fun doing this and we noticed that they pumpkins had numbers on them, once we found them all we put the number in order. Our mud kitchen was turned into a "Monster kitchen" with lots of cobwebs and green water to make potions and soup in. We all enjoyed making lots of different pumpkin and green soup, they all looked delicious.
On Thursday we had a party and enjoyed a witches finger (Sausage barm) for breakfast, some of us enjoyed tomato sauce with it too.
Party day was lots of fun and we all enjoyed listening to different spooky sounds and dancing to different music too.

Fabulous spooky week!

We have had a fabulous half term week this week and have been very busy exploring Autumn. We have been painting pumpkins and talking about how big or small they are, some of us wanted to paint them.
They all look fabulous!
We also enjoyed scooping out the insides of one and talking about how it felt some of us thought it was "Sticky" or "Smelly"
We also did some colour mixing, we used various colours to see what happened and tried to see if we could make a certain colour. 

We have been changing our environment slightly and helping Steph decide where we want our resources to go in the room. 
Lots of us enjoyed using the creative area once she had done this as there are lots of new things to explore and do.
We have been exploring in the sand pit which is now inside the room, a lot of us like to hide the dinosaurs in it and then dig them up to find them. 

Fabulous half term!

It has been very wet over this week but it's not stopped us having lots of fun outside, we put on our wellies and our waterproofs and went off to explore. We have been exploring the leaves on the trees and we noticed that they have changed colour from green to red. We spoke about the change in weather and that it was now autumn and the leaves would be falling and changing colour. We decided that we would go and explore the rest of the garden to see if we could find any more red objects. We found lots of leaves and berries and also a few conkers which we looked at in more detail inside with Joe.

We have been doing some great tipping and pouring using a variety of different objects in the water tray and in the puddles too as we had a few rather large ones. We enjoyed using the colander and watching the water that we put in come out through the holes, we tried to see if we could catch it using our hands, some spoons and a range of different sized saucepans. We spoke about the different sizes of the pans and looked at how much water we could put into them using different mathematical language.

We have enjoyed constructing boats and aeroplanes and visiting different places on them such as Poland, Ireland and Preston. We all got there safely as we are all very good at sailing boats and flying aeroplanes. We had a lovely time exploring each place and there was even time for a piece of cake and a cup of tea before coming back to Mucky Pups.