Another busy month at RLO has flown by! This month we have been really enjoying learning about all different types of animals! We have also been learning about personal hygiene in the final week of the month.

A collection of photos we have taken this month of the little ones!

What we have been up to this month…

Farm Animals-
During the first week of this month, our theme was Farm Animals. At the beginning of each day, we got our farm yard out and had the little ones help us to build this every morning and then we found all of our farm animals from the box and got busy playing! This week we also read lots of farm themed books and talked to the little ones about each animal. We also heard lots of ‘moo’s’ and ‘baa’s’!
During our farm animal week, we also took a couple of trips to Pets at Home to see the animals in the shop. The little ones loved this trip as we were able to see the animals up close and a member of staff came to feed the animals in order for us to see them!
Sea Animals-
Durning the second week of September, we decided to learn about sea animals, as the little ones seemed to be really enjoying the animal theme from the previous week! We did lots of water play this week both inside and outside! We also were very lucky when we were out on a walk one day as there were some lovely people feeding the swans and ducks and they shared their food with us and the little ones were loving feeding the animals! Some of the children had pigeons eating from their hands! Finally this week, we had a great messy play activity, where we had blue jelly as the sea and then all of the animals went in! We then cleaned the animals in the water tray after.
Jungle Animals-
We then moved on to jungle animals, another week full of fun activities for the little ones! Durning this week we had a lovely group song and story time, singing and reading lots of jungle things! Our arts and crafts activity for this week was a lion face, painting the middle yellow and the outside brown for the mane. Finally, one of the practitioners painted a jungle animal print dice for the little ones to play with. We rolled the dice and whichever print it landed on, the little ones did what they thought action would match with the animal! It was great to see the little ones having so much fun doing this!
Dinosaurs-
Our final week of an animal theme was on Dinosaurs! We did lots of dinosaur themed activities during our dinosaur week… including painting your own ceramic dinosaur, reading some of ‘The Dinosaur That Pooped…’ books, dinosaur hunting in the forest and much more! We really enjoyed this theme as the little ones seemed to be really engaged in the activities we were doing and loved the dinosaur toys we had in the room too!

Day in the Life of Orla…

This month, instead of our usual advice for parents, we thought we would share a little insight to what the RLO staff get up to while working at RLO and also out-with RLO in order for you to get to know our staff more!

Orla is our room leader and nursery practitioner, to learn more about her position and experience, please click here!

What does your day at RLO look like?

I start my day at 8:30, where I help to set up the room for all of the little ones coming in. I make up a plan for the day along with the other practitioners. At 9am I welcome in all of the little ones and help to get them settled into the room for their session. I am currently working with the under two’s, so I tend to spend my time in the quiet baby corner, playing alongside the little ones and reading stories to them. I then head out for a walk with the children to Inverleith Park or to our garden. We often then have visits or settles that come in towards lunch time, so I welcome in the children and parents! Then at the end of the day I help the other members of staff with the end of the day handovers.

What is your favourite part of your job at RLO?

My favourite part of my job at RLO is welcoming in the little ones and chatting to the parents in the morning! It is great to see the little ones coming in with smiles on their faces! I also love being able to build bonds with the children and watch them grow and become confident within the RLO environment.

What do you get up to after work?

I am currently a nanny for two lovely families after I finish my day at RLO. I have a wide range of ages of children I nanny for, their ages are; four, three and two! I love taking the children out to fun things like going to the park. I also love to do baking and arts and crafts when we have some time to spare. I then often babysit later on in the evenings, so seem to be very busy at the moment! One thing I love about babysitting is helping with the bedtime routine, being able to help the children wind down with a story and then have cuddles before going to sleep!

When I am not working, I really enjoy spending time with my family and friends, going out for meals and just generally spending time with them!