2022 Unwrapped
Another year is coming to an end, we have welcomed many new families to the Inspirations community, our babies are now toddlers, our toddlers now pre-schoolers and we said goodbye to our capable school leavers. What a year it has been!
Last January as a nursery we made a new years resolution, to continue to learn from nature and make the right choices for our children and our planet, and this is something we stuck to. Our children here continue to inspire us daily, their curiosity and passion to lead their own learning guides us as the educators to continue to grow as people and as a setting. The toddler room has seen an exciting new outdoor classroom meaning they are outside most of the day, preparing them for our outdoor learning and forest school in Pre-school.
Let’s take a look at each month as we say goodbye to 2022 and hello to 2023.
January
We welcomed in January 2022 with pink and orange skies! The bonus of our outdoor setting in Pre-School means the sky is our ceiling, literally.
February
A new interest emerged in the Art Studio, the children’s imaginations lead them down a path of story telling. Little did we know this was the start of a 6 month project. Watch the video below to see how it begun.
March
The first signs of spring emerged alongside World Book Day, an annual favourite at Inspirations. We celebrated Spring Equinox by Forest School and The Art Studio teaming up for a full day in the forest. We took our lunch with us and ate it beneath the trees, it was a wonderful opportunity for the children to have the freedom of time and space and to learn from our forest.
April
The babies took a trip to see the daffodils in the park, the toddlers were knees deep in soil as the garden was re-arranged to support their pouring, filling and digging interest. In the Art Studio in Pre-school we created a shadow puppet theatre so the children could use this as another platform of story telling. They created their own characters and turned them into paper puppets on sticks.
May
Our nursery therapy dog odin turned 5 years old!
June
Our whole nursery came together to have a tea party to celebrate the Queens Jubilee, with parents invited too. The Pre-schoolers performed a little ukulele song we made up together called ‘You and Me at the Queen’s Jubilee’; a song we still sing 6 months later. Have a listen below-
July
We had a heatwave for our Annual Summer Party, this year we did it a little differently and took over the school field with a carnival parade, steel drum band, BBQ and bouncy castle.
Our school Leavers had their graduation photoshoot.
August
Our many nursery apple tree’s were producing plenty of apples, which inspired the children to open an ‘Apple Shop’. A wonderful opportunity once again to learn from nature, whilst incorporating role play and maths with real coins.
August also saw the completion of our new staff room, which opened up the previous staff room as a dinning room for our pre-school children in the colder months. The New Staff room is much bigger to accomodate our growing number of staff and is tucked away next to the Art Studio.
September
Jackson Pollock inspired Art in the Art Studio, we splatted paint, experimented with pendulum painting. The results can now be seen in the main entrence of nursery. The September winds provided perfect conditions for some kite flying in Forest School. It was also recycling week in September so our children had a big woodland tidy up to nurture care and respect for our environment and wildlife.
October
Our annual pumpkin picking trip and the festival of lights. Following our pumpkin haul we melted crayons onto the pumpkin when the children expressed they wanted a ‘rainbow pumpkin’.
November
We celebrated Nursery Rhyme Week across the rooms in November, the baby room had activities linked to their favourite nursery rhyme ‘5 little ducks’ .
December
And here we are, December 2022, one of the coldest on record. We had a pre-school trip to see Stick Man at the Playhouse Theatre, and they have been combining festive ingredients and smells to make cranberry cordial.
We thank all of our children, parents and staff for another wonderful year. We will look forward to welcoming you all back from 7.30 am Tuesday 3rd of January, but in the mean time we wish you all a happy and healthy festive period.
‘The best classroom and richest cupboards are roofed only by the sky’- Margaret Mcmillen
Nathalie