January brought lots of new faces to Monkey Puzzle St.Albans with both new staff and new children joining us for the start of 2011.

It has not been a quiet month at the nursery with our Ofsted inspection in the second week. I am pleased to say that the report will soon be public and on the website for you to peruse.

Activities continue in all areas of the nursery. If you visited during January some of the things you may have seen are…

Babies being fascinated by texture as over the month they explored the pasta, rice, sand, pea and ripped paper play

Toddlers have been discovering shape and thoroughly enjoying it! They have painted with different square, circular and triangular objects. Discovered shapes in the sand and water play and have even been eating shaped foods.

Our oldest children have been learning all about the sound ‘S’ and have been playing with sparkly spaghetti, silvery sand, going on ‘s’ hunts all over the nursery, painting with silver paint using spiders, spoons, squares and lots more (all animals were pretend!).

They have also been working with low numbers and what happens to those numbers if you add other numbers to them. Exploring/making dens, feeding the ducks at the nature reserve and generally enjoying being with friends and laughing/giggling and screaming have all been witnessed throughout the nursery this month.