Welcome to Caterpillars class. We are really excited to be part of your child's first experinces here at Willowcroft and can not wait to share all our adventures with you.

My name is Hayley Davies and I am the Manager of the Two Year Old Class. I work alongside qualified Early Years Practitioners, Laura Waters, Jade Evans, Megan Lane and Carly Frizzell.

We are all experienced and knowledgable and here to support you and your child or children in settling into the class and possibly experiencing their first time away from you. Settling techniques and time will vary from child to child and we will advise and support in the best way we can. Tears are a very normal part of this process for both you and them! 

Caterpillars class offers 3 different sessions;

Am - 8.30 - 11.30

Pm - 12.15-3.15

All day - 8.30am -3.15pm.

Children who stay all day will need a pack lunch provided for them please. We also ask that all children have a filled water bottle which we will aim to send home with them each day.

Children still wearing nappies will also need to be provided with these, please don't forget wipes too!

All children will require a minimum of two changes of clothes too please. Two year olds are messy and generally love water! 

Term 1

Our term 1 topic is 'All About Us' and we ask ourselves the big question; Are we all the same?

This topic fits in naturally with meeting new friends and getting to know each other. We explore our physical features and feelings about starting nursery. 

Term 1 offered us lots of opportunities for outside play. We practised climbing and balancing alongside our new friends and focused on being kind to eachother and taking turns. We experienced the changes of the season and explored the natural environment around us.

                                    We enjoyed using the nature around us to create beautiful pictures.

We shared the story of the colour monster, which helped us to name some of our feelings whilst we were settling and making new friends. The story relates feelings to a colour, to help us understand them more. We therefore did lots of activities that we could relate to colour and the monsters. We will revisit this story again in term 2 as part of our new topic as well.

We had so much fun creating halloween ghosts from tissues and straws. We all tried really hard to blow the straws and make the ghosts fly!

         Creating bubbles for our cauldrons was brilliant, especially when we popped them with our fingers!

Term 2 certainly lived up to it's topic's name and provided us with an array of colour, in all the activities we explored. Below are photographs of just a few experiences the children got to enjoy.

The term ended with the children sharing their crafting skills with their parents at our Parents craft day and then with a very special visit from the man himself. The children all had an amazing time.

In Term 3 our topic was 'Story Travellers'. We shared familiar stories such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Dear Zoo and We're Going on a Bear Hunt, to name a few. This is our favourite topic of the year as it really provided the opportunity to deepen the children's enjoyment of books and characters they find within them.

We also welcomed lots of new children and families in our January cohort. They have all settled so well and are enjoying exploring nursery life with their new friends. Well done for being brave everyone, settling into nursery is always tricky for both parents and children, but you all made it look so easy.

We created a beautiful We're going on a Bear Hunt display. We all worked really hard at making our own version of the story with the bear.

We enjoyed acting out some of our favourite stories in the garden. We went on a bear hunt together and pretended to be the characters from Brown bear, we especially enjoyed being the red bird.

We joined the Tadpoles when they had a visit from the local librarian to read them a story, it was so much fun. She let us share some new books together afterwards too.

We did lots of painting, that often ended up on our hands!

Term 4's topic was 'Let's move'. This gave us the opportunity to explore different types of moving objects, as well as the way in which our bodies move. We spent lots of time in the garden practising our gross motor (large movement) skills.

An important part of very early mark making and later writing skills is to ensure we develop the muscles in our shoulders. In term 4 we did lots of outdoor painting with water. The children absolutely love this and it provides the perfect movement to develop strength in those important shoulder and arm muscles.  

As always story and snack time was a key aspect of our day and it was lovely to be able to share some of our daily routines out in the sunshine.

We also continued to support the development of our fine motor skills with more intricate activities such as threading. The children we so proud of their achievements with this and rightly so.

As always we celebrated calender events such as St Patrick's Day and Mothering Sunday. The children loved making flower bouquets for the special females in their lives.   

In Term 5 our topic will be 'Nature detectives'. This is such an interesting topic, where we take the opportunity to explore the natural environment around us and make visits to both forest school and the pond! We also have Caterpillars delivered to nursery, so the children can experience watching the exciting process of them turning into Butterflies.This is always popular with our little Caterpillars!