All our children really enjoy exploring new textures to feel and new food tastes that they have never tried before. Exploring your senses is really important as your body develops and involving different textures in children’s play is a really fun challenge.

Chinese new year is a wonderful festival to be able to try new tastes and the staff together with the children at all our settings have created some wonderful activities to understand and explore the celebration of Chinese New Year.

At our Horsforth Trinity setting they have been testing their smell sense by involving mint in lots of different activities from creating a tasty drink to crushing the leaves, freezing it in ice cubes and seeing how fast it will grow.

Our book of the month to celebrate New Year and new beginnings is The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

The children across all our settings have had a fantastic time so far exploring different activities related to the story and in doing so they have covered lots of different areas of the early years foundation stage. It has been so lovely to see the children carry on different Very Hungry Caterpillar activities at home too and such a great thing to share the joy of reading in so many different ways.

Christmas is fast approaching and all our settings are really embracing lots of different festive, winter activities.

It is a really busy time of year running up to Christmas and as well as creating lots of exciting winter activities with the children, we are also focusing on helping others, the importance of celebrating festivals and how across the World festivals are celebrated in many different ways.

Here are a few images of different activities the children have been enjoying across all our settings.

Are you a really driven, inspiring and enthusiastic person who loves children and would thrive in a childcare environment, gaining a wonderful career in childcare?

We are looking for passionate people to join our nursery apprenticeship schemes where you can earn as you learn whilst having the same assessor throughout your qualification enabling you to gain a highly recognised childcare qualification.

If you feel this is the role for you, please contact Tori via email on tori.cliffehouse@yahoo.com

At Cliffe House we have our own in-house training academy where you can take up an apprentice Nursery Nurse role and earn as you learn. You have the same tutor, Octavia our in-house assessor, who guides you throughout your NVQ journey giving you the consistency of the same tutor and enabling you to gain a top quality early years qualification.

Here are some of our most recent apprentices that are now qualified nursery nurses to level 2 and level 3 standards.

Well done girls and keep up the fab work!

Aliya – Trinity – NVQ2          Leah – Burley – Level 2             Kirsty – Trinity – Level 3        Leah – Shipley – Level 2        Iqra – Baildon-Level 3

Spending time outdoors is crucial for all ages but especially important for under fives as it is not only good for their physical development but it expands their knowledge of the World around them, helps them to empathise with nature and understand how we can appreciate our natural World and care for it in so many different ways.

Here are a few images of our Trinity pre-school enjoying making bird feeders to attract more birds to their wonderful garden and learn about the significance of it.

Across all our nurseries we have been doing some wonderful Remembrance day activities to ensure the children explore the significance of remembering special people in history that gave their lives to save others.

It is wonderful to see all the different activity ideas and how the different age ranges from our little babies to our eldest pre-school children have had a wonderful time and been so engaged in the diverse creative things they have done.

The last few weeks has been full of wonderful a=Autumn celebrations with Halloween and Bonfire night being of great interest and excitement for all the children and staff too!

Here are a few images of the wonderful activities the children have been enjoying during their Autumn celebrations.

Harvest Festival celebrations in Autumn are a great way to help the children understand supporting their local community. Enhancing their knowledge of the World around them and helping them understand how families are all so different is key to developing their empathy and reasoning skills for later life.

Across all our nurseries we have been supporting our local communities and the children have loved bringing in items from home to go to local food banks or charitable organisations.

A tuff tray activity is creating objects of interest at a children’s height so they can freely access different resources set up in a way that is really appealing and engaging for the children.

Across all our six nurseries the children love to be involved in making tuff tray activities and they always come from a child’s interest; that may have been something they have been doing at home or a previous activity at nursery. here are a few examples of lovely tuff tray ideas that you might like to replicate at home. Local garden centres sell mini versions of these trays that you would buy for planting seeds etc.