Play, learn and grow
with Monkey Puzzle

Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery Marleigh Cambridge

22 hours ago

✏️📚School Readiness📚✏️

At Marleigh, we prioritise school readiness in our daily routine. Children independently wash their hands and then proceed to serve their own meals, and scrape any leftover food into buckets once they've finished. 🥙

For toddlers and pre-schoolers, there is a morning group time where they participate in self-registration by finding their name which is on a wooden disk and placing it onto the registration tree to help learn their names. They also discuss the weather and season. Following this, the children vote on which book to read, based on our weekly topic. 📖

In the toddler room, children practice putting on their jackets using a coat trick before heading to the garden. They are also taught how to put on their own shoes. 👟💙

These are just a few of the many ways we promote school readiness in our setting.

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Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery Marleigh Cambridge

1 week ago

✈️🌍Our spontaneous excursion to Africa, guided by the children! 🌍✈️

The children spent their lunch meal singing songs about flying on an aeroplane and then used their chairs to create their own make-believe plane, using their passports from "Marleigh Airlines". 🛂

This led to a series of afternoon activities culminating in an imaginary safari trip to Africa. The pre-schoolers pretended to hand their "tickets" to a pilot, taking note of the numbers on their tickets before seating themselves accordingly. The adult then did a quick safety talk of the exits on the plane, the oxygen masks and when to take their seatbelt off. 🛩️

During their play, one child suggested the idea of visiting a safari park instead of a regular park, sparking the theme of their adventure. Using an interactive map, we located Africa and explored the different animals that can be found there. We engaged in an animal guessing game, providing clues about animals from around the world and trying to guess them before locating them on the map. 🦁🐘🐆🦒

The children participated in a game where they indicated with thumbs up or down whether they believed animals from their toy baskets would be spotted on a safari. 👍🏻

This led to a discussion about the common patterns of stripes and spots found on many of the identified animals. To complement our activities, we introduced a drawing exercise where the children illustrated their own versions of the animals and attempted to recreate the patterns they observed.

These activities are, in early years, called a "child-led activity" which means the adults scaffold the children's learning based on their interests in the moment to further their development. ❤️

#monkeypuzzlenurserys #monkeypuzzlemarleigh #monkeypuzzlecambridge #monkeypuzzledaynurseries #childledlearning #eyfs #cambridge #MarleighCB5 #cambridgenursery ... See MoreSee Less

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Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery Marleigh Cambridge

1 week ago

💙Career Opportunities at Monkey Puzzle Cambridge - Louise💙

Here at Monkey Puzzle Cambridge we know that our staff team is our greatest resource. Every day they offer outstanding love, care and attention to our children. They show a real passion for what they deliver to our children and take enormous pride in what they do. 🐵🧩

Not only this, but we offer in house training to aid in the progression of your career, whether you are an apprentice progressing to a Qualified Practitioner, or Room Leader progressing to Deputy Manager, we have you covered.

During her time at Monkey Puzzle, Louise has gone from a Deputy room leader to the Deputy Manager of the Marleigh setting, working for the company for over 5 years. 💜

In 2021, Louise was a finalist in at the NMT national nursery awards for "Top UK Practitioner" and says:

"I am incredibly proud to have been nominated for this award and to have reached the finals, considering there were over 300 nominees. I owe a huge thanks to the fantastic mentoring team at Monkey Puzzle Cambridge, who guided me over the course of five years and helped shape me into the practitioner I am today. I am truly grateful for the opportunity and it's something I will always cherish. I hope that now, being a Deputy, I can pass the skills that were taught me to the staff in my team." 🌟

#monkeypuzzlenurserys #monkeypuzzlemarleigh #monkeypuzzlecambridge #monkeypuzzledaynurseries #MarleighCB5 #nursery #nurserycareer #Cambridge ... See MoreSee Less

Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery Marleigh Cambridge

2 weeks ago

❤️🐺Little Red Riding Hood🐺❤️

The children participated in activities inspired by the Little Red Riding Hood story for the week.

In the baby room, they played with red play dough which they helped to make, engaged in red coloured sensory activities and explored forest-themed tasks while learning about the wolf's features and body parts. 🐺👀👂

In the preschool room, they decorated their own baskets for grandma, made cheese and broccoli cupcakes to put in the baskets for their tea, created puppets to act out the story, draw their own wolves and forests and made maps related to the tale. They also did some large scale painting and painted their own forest along the windows to use as a role play prop. 🌳🎨

The toddlers room made soup to help grandma feel better, went on a red object hunt around the room and completed an assault course. They also had fun with a red water tray, practising filling and emptying as well as reading the story daily meaning by the end of the week they were able to quote some lines from the book and fill in the gaps. 📚

#monkeypuzzlenurserys #monkeypuzzlemarleigh #monkeypuzzlecambridge #monkeypuzzledaynurseries #MarleighCB5 #monkeypuzzlenurseries #cambridgenursery #cambridgemums ... See MoreSee Less

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Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery Marleigh Cambridge

2 weeks ago

🌿 Outdoor play 🌿

Playing outside is fun, exciting and important for children’s learning and development which is why at Marleigh, we go out and play in all weathers and utilise our garden space as much as possible. We use our garden as an extra classroom for the children who prefer to learn outdoors. 🤸🪴🐞

Being outside is an exciting sensory experience for all children. Babies will enjoy the exciting visuals on offer and the older children love the chance to explore and investigate different spaces and touch natural objects. Leaves, mud, pinecones and puddles included. 🍂🌲

As well as free flowing to our garden, we are so lucky to have Steve, from Active Kids come and give our children gymnastics lessons every Monday morning. Steve provides a variety of fun games and brings different equipment each week to explore which range from a trampoline, balance beams and exercise balls amongst other things to try. 🎾🤸‍♂️

Please see just a few examples of the activities the children have taken part in as well as pictures from their gymnastics lessons outdoors at Marleigh.

#monkeypuzzlenurserys #monkeypuzzlemarleigh #monkeypuzzlecambridge #MarleighCB5 #monkeypuzzlenurseries #cambridgenursery #cambridgemums #monkeypuzzledaynurseries #eyfs #outdoorlife ... See MoreSee Less

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Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery Marleigh Cambridge

3 weeks ago

🥦🥕The Enormous Turnip🥕🥦

For the past two weeks, coinciding with the arrival of spring and the planting season, the children have been engaging with the story "The Enormous Turnip".

They have taken part in activities such as hunting for vegetables in soil, planting sunflowers, preparing their own vegetable sticks for snacks, creating vegetable prints, sorting vegetables by size and colour, and arranging them from smallest to largest. 🌻

In the toddler room, the children practised vegetable yoga, inventing a pose for each vegetable and mimicking movements like running for runner beans and walking with hands raised like a carrot. 🥕

Moreover, the preschool children imagined the teacher as the giant turnip from the story, attempting to pull her out of the ground as they acted out scenes from the book and then swapped roles, attempting to pull each other out of the ground.

#monkeypuzzlenurserys #monkeypuzzlemarleigh #monkeypuzzlecambridge #cambridge #cambridgenursery #MarleighCB5 #monkeypuzzlenurseries #eyfs ... See MoreSee Less

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Monkey Puzzle Day Nursery Marleigh Cambridge

4 weeks ago

🐛❤️Hungry Caterpillar Day! ❤️🐛

On March 20th, we celebrated "The Hungry Caterpillar" Day! The children gathered to read the story, followed by discussions on the different foods they had tried. They explored the concept of healthy and unhealthy foods and why the caterpillar felt unwell after eating so much.

Afterwards, the children expressed their creativity by making their own caterpillar art through various mark-making activities. They even used left-over vegetables to create more artwork. The children also did some leaf threading. 🍎🍊🍉

In the toddler room, they used balloons to print circular shapes and create a giant caterpillar. 🎈

As a snack, the children also prepared their own fruit salads using children's safety knives and spoke about how each fruit tasted.

#monkeypuzzlemarleigh #monkeypuzzlenurseries #monkeypuzzlenursery #MarleighCB5 #monkeypuzzlecambridge #monkeypuzzlenurserys #cambridgenursery #cambridgemums #cambridge #eyfs ... See MoreSee Less

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