A small group of us went to the wonderful gift shop on the corner of Newbigging today.  The shopkeeper was called Susan and she was very kind.  We wanted to find out about shops because we are opening our very own ‘Star Shop’ to sell stars for Christmas decorations.  We found out about putting prices on things, about wrapping them up and about giving receipts.  We also looked at how the goods were displayed to make them look beautiful.

When we returned to nursery we put prices on our stars and got our shop ready.  Our shop will be open at the end of the nursery sessions from Wednesday 27th November onwards.  Glittery stars cost £1 and plain stars cost 75p.  All stars are handmade from twigs gathered from the school woods.

Our Afternoon Group are becoming more confident using the mud kitchen. Here is a little video so you can see their developing play.

The mud kitchen has proved incredibly popular again today with our Morning Group.  Most of that group have now had a go, and several were desperate to get back in there today!  I couldn’t resist taking more video to show you just what a wonderful learning experience this is.  Many thanks to Max’s Dad who turned up with an old microwave today, so we can pretend to cook our pies!  It will be interesting to see how this changes the play next week.

We got to use our new mud kitchen for the first time today and as you can see from the video it was a huge success. In order to keep the nursery and their clothes clean and dry, the children must wear waterproofs and wellies. Putting these on and taking them off independently will enable the children to get the most out of this nursery experience. Mums and Dads please help by sending your child to nursery in shoes they can take off and put on all by themselves (i.e. with Velcro fastening unless they can manage laces without help) and by encouraging your child to practice getting on and zipping up their own coats.

We would welcome donations of wooden spoons, bowls, metal/enamel cups or goblets, balance scales and old towels (preferably not white ones!) to supplement our equipment.

We have been planning our mud kitchen for some time, and consulted with children and parents to give us their ideas. Two massive bags of topsoil were unexpectedly delivered yesterday, and needed to be moved into the nursery garden. Some mums and dads came to help us this morning and worked really hard. We had to spend some of the money raised from our sponsored obstacle course on replacement willow screening (to block out our view of the boys’ toilets) and the topsoil. We have organised a little-used area of the nursery garden with a place to store soil, and some surfaces to work on. We will have plants growing that can be picked and added to the mud pies. We still need some small stones/pebbles to add, and some off-cuts of turf or grass if anyone is able to help us.

For more information on mud kitchens and ideas for what equipment is used (all donations gratefully accepted!) please check out the Muddy Faces website.  Their publication on Making a Mud Kitchen is particularly interesting.

Some photos of the Morning Group hard at work!