24/04/2026
🐥This week at The Duckling Den, our little ones have been busy exploring, creating, and learning through a variety of exciting activities—many inspired by the beautiful sunshine! ☀️
🏖️Our beach-themed sand area was a huge hit! The children explored volume and capacity as they built sandcastles, counted scoops, and filled buckets.
🧠 This type of play supports early mathematical skills, including counting, measuring, and problem-solving, while also developing fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. We also thought about different flavours of ice creams and matched them to colours, which encouraged language development and creative thinking.
🍋 At our messy kitchen, the children had great fun mixing fruity “cocktails”! Using measuring jugs to pour and fill cups helped strengthen their understanding of capacity and comparison, while also refining their motor control. The role play element sparked wonderful imaginative play and social interaction, as children served drinks to their friends. We also explored the names and smells of different summer fruits, supporting sensory development and vocabulary building.
🖌️We enjoyed mark making on bubble wrap, creating unique textures and patterns that we’ll use next week when exploring frog spawn. This activity encourages early writing skills, creativity, and sensory exploration, while strengthening the muscles needed for writing.
🐸Our frog habitat tuff tray was another favourite! The children made observations about the frogs and used droppers to “bathe” them, which is fantastic for developing fine motor strength through squeezing and pinching. We sang “5 Little Speckled Frogs” together, using props to act out the song—supporting early numeracy, memory skills, and confidence in group participation. Splashing each frog into the water brought lots of laughter and joy!
🚙Our loose parts play area encouraged lots of teamwork and creativity. The children worked collaboratively using sticky road tape and bricks to build roads of different lengths. This supported problem-solving, critical thinking, and early maths language, as they compared which roads were longer or shorter. It was wonderful to see such strong communication and cooperation skills in action.
Just some of the fantastic activities we’ve explored this week—look at how well we play, learn, and grow together! 💛
The Duckling Den Nursery
