Collaboration has been a huge theme over the past three weeks with children working together across the nursery: talking, making, fixing, building, dancing and cooking.
Our families have been so generous in donating fruit to top up our own bumper harvest from the garden. We found ourselves in the fortunate position to have surplus pears this week. The pears were beginning to appear over-ripe: browning and softening (which does not look very attractive in our snack area!) 
After consultation with the children, they created delicious delicacies to share using up the pears. Children worked reading the recipe, gathering the utensils and ingredients, negotiating turn taking and using tools such as graters, peelers, sharp knives, scoops, levelers and sieves. Syeda observed a lovely moment where one child was mixing the mixture in the bowl and their partner voluntarily held the bowl still. Naturally all the subsequent children did it without comment - so harmonious and thoughtful.
Pear pancakes and pear muffins made a wonderful mid week snack! 

This week and last as I sat with our wonderful teaching team in evaluation meetings each day I was struck by one theme that came up time and time again - peer support. Whether it was Mukhtar leading Abdi Malik on the balance bikes around the garden, Yusra modelling the fire fighter pole for Jannatul, Nabeelah encouraging Nabeeha to follow the process of colour mixing, Luka demonstrating to Armaan how to level the flour accurately when independently making playdough, Romy encouraging Habibur to try the 'apple dippy egg' with nastercium or Sienna and Aairah reassuring the rest of Becky's Story Group that Baba Yaga was just a witch in a story and not a real person! 
Our staff are so skilled in supporting children's learning but the empathy and enthusiasm shown by one of your peers demonstrating and encouraging you has proven over the past two weeks to be exceptionally motivating to our children and powerful.
There is no box to tick in children's assessments to note this achievement.
Our young children can be teachers and leaders in our school.
They will make this term an easier one for our new settling friends and staff team by taking on this role! 

As our children return from their six week break it is always wonderful to see how they have grown physically and emotionally. All our friends and family came back smiling and happy to be back at school. There is no greater compliment for us than to see this: children feeling happy and secure and knowing we will be delighted to see them and hear their news. 
Children have explored mixing paints, with some children able to create shades and tones such as 'peach', 'teal' and 'gold' purposefully. They have recreated the Hackney Carnival some of them attended, shared their summer stories and created interesting models from Lego. The garden team have been busy harvesting the fruits and vegetables: grapes, apples, gooseberries, potatoes, mint and chives were all harvested this week and garden and bluebell teams worked with children to prepare and cook potato salad, potato cakes, apple and cinnamon crumble and simply to pick, washand enjoy the fruit fresh from the tree. 
We are now beginning to welcome our new friends to nursery and begin developing friendships and play. Our Rachel Keeling Values and our established friends will be helpful in the next few weeks!