Nursery: Gross motor skills, Tales Toolkit and more!

Nursery have been very busy since returning from home learning! We have introduced more activities to support gross motor development and enjoyed creating stories with Tales Toolkit.

What is gross motor development?

Gross motor skills are those used to move your arms, legs, and torso in a functional manner. Gross motor skills involve the large muscles of the body that enable such functions as walking, jumping, kicking, sitting upright, lifting, and throwing a ball. Acquiring motor skills is an important part of child development that allows children to participate in activities and achieve age-appropriate developmental milestones.

How does the learning environment support development of your child's gross motor skills?

The learning environment in nursery has been set up to support the development of your child's gross motor skills through play. We have standing easels for painting and mark making, we encourage children to stand whilst using play dough, the children have been painting the fence with water (such a simple activity yet so popular with the children).

We have also just had a basketball hoop delivered which the children helped put together. They learnt how to use an Allen key and used their fine motor skills to screw the nuts and bolts.

Why did the children help put the basket ball hoop together?

Not only were the children very enthusiastic to help their teachers fix the basket ball hoop together, it was also a great learning experience for them. They developed skills in turn taking, problem solving, and their fine motor skills. They also took on the responsibility to have a role within the team building the hoop, listened to and followed instructions and now understand the importance of looking after the resource (as they were the ones who put it together).

Tales Toolkit 

We have been really impressed with the children's engagement with Tales Toolkit and their imaginative ideas towards creating stories. Here is a photo of green group holding some of the resources following a session; they really enjoyed it! You can find out more about Tales Toolkit here.

Mrs Light said, "The children were absolutely fantastic with tales toolkit today and their vocabulary was brilliant, they used key story telling language too."

Keep up the fantastic learning nursery children; we are so proud of your achievements!