Welcome to Nursery!

A huge hello from Mrs Edwards and Mrs Sykes.

On this page we will share all of our exciting learning and topics in Nursery, stay tuned for all the fun we are having in our classroom!

We are so excited to welcome the children back to nursery following the half term break. This half term will see the start of a new topic called 'Terrific Tales'. The children will be learning that some stories have been told for a very long time. Our book for the first two weeks will be: 

Big

Middle Sized

Small

Crept

Tiptoed

Magnificent

What a lovely two weeks we have had learning all about dinosaurs 🦖 The children enjoyed practicing stomping like a T-Rex outside catching bubbles. We have also created some wonderful crafts developing our cutting skills, exploring colour mixing and we saw some fabulous communication and language through our play.

Our vocabulary for this book will be: 

Stomping

Trex

Diplodocus

Soaring

Gulping / gulp

Wrinkly

Chomping

Strolling

Our story this week is called 'Where's Spot?' We will have a focus on positional language and the children will be using vocabulary such as behind, under, next to and in front of to find where Spot is hiding :)

Our vocabulary for this book is:

Behind

Clock

Piano

Under

Wardrobe

In the

Rug

We were really busy in our outdoor provision building cars for Daddy Bear to sleep in

Our key vocabulary for this text will be: 

Tired

Bear

Clock

Uncomfortable

Peace

Good Morning

Welcoming everyone back from the Christmas break, we hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing holiday. This half term sees a change in staff in Nursery with Mrs Edwards joining as class teacher and Mrs Sykes returning as a full time member of staff. Over this half term we will be continuing the topic of 'Amazing Animals'. 

The children used shaving foam and paint to make tiger stripe print patterns, we all had fun with the messy play!

Our next two week block has been walking through the jungle. We have learnt about Jungle animals. their diets, habitats and behaviours. The children were amazed to learn that a Tiger's paw is the size of a dinner plate and that snakes can both swim and climb trees!

We have had some very special guest visitors to nursery today in the form of 2 fluffy guinea pigs Gary and Milo. The children have all had the opportunity to help feed and hold the guinea pigs, we have learnt about what they like to eat and where they like to live. Gary was very naughty and threw his water bowl around the pen which made the children laugh!

The children have been practicing their scissor skills again to make tractors, combine harvesters and also scarecrows to bring home to show you all. We have also been talking about animals and where they live. Bonnie found a tortoise and stated that they live where there is grass to eat! The boys were busy making Jurrasic World for the dinosaurs to live together where there was trees and grass to eat. 

This afternoon the children practiced using their fine motor skills to cut out and make a pigs ears headband for us to then be Old MacDonald's pigs! 

Our book of the week this week is Old MacDonald Had A Farm and our focus is amazing animals! Our new vocabulary for this week is:

Hens

Chicks

Mice

Cheep

Cluck

Everywhere

Farm

A few of the boys were feeling very musical this week and treat us all to a rendition of "Barbie Girl", they used the instruments well and sang very nicely together! Thank you boys, you will be stars of stage and screen I am very sure!

This week, some of the children learnt about Remembrance Day and what this means. We watched a short video from Ceebeebies about the day itself and an animation video aimed at the children with a short discussion afterwards.

In our activity session, we then used potatoes to print with red paint to make the lovely poppy display you will have seen in our window.

The children have been learning all about the Hindu festival of lights, also known as Diwali. As part of our learning, we have made Rangoli patterns to put by the door to bring us luck, Mendhi hand art and our very own Diva lamps.

The book of the week this week is "It Was A Cold Dark Night" by Tim Hopgood. The new vocabulary introduced is;

Hedgehog

Fox

Rabbit

Owl

Small

Big

Barn

Bat

Thank you to all of you who took time to bring in the autumn foliage, the children have really enjoyed exploring the items and using them to create their art work with this week. All of those who wanted to, took part in the pumpkin scoop and used some excellent vocabulary to describe the experience. Have a wonderful half term and enjoy the break!

In provision this week, we have had budding architects building houses, railway engineers, tea parties in the play dough, imaginative play in the home corner, and our very own class within a class in the maths area, the children all took turns to be the nursery adults, Miss Merrick, Mrs Benoit and Mrs Sykes think that the children all do excellent impressions of us all and cannot wait till the next half terms installments!

For our PE session this week we have practice the "Freeze" pose as we were hiding in the forest. We also practice moving from one castle to the other (Coloured hoops) in a safe line, leaving spaces between us and our friends. 

This encourages listening, attention and concentration skills, space keeping and attention to our surroundings. The children did really well hiding from The Ogre Merrick!

Our book of the week this week is Leaf Man by Lois Elhert. Our newly introduced vocabulary is

blew

marsh

winter

flew

orchards

meadows

breeze

gliding

Some of the children enjoyed making their very own leaf men out of the autumn foliage they had all so fabulously collected, they told their own stories of where leaf man went and how he got there.

This week's story is Pete The Cat, I Love My White Shoes, by Eric Litwin. Our New vocabulary to learn this week is;

Pile

Puddle

Colours – red, blue, brown, white.

Washed away

While the weather has been so good, we have been using our outdoor area to explore and learn. The children and Mrs Sykes made a game of throwing the ball through a hoop, but they had to choose if they wanted the hoop high, in the middle or low. This introduced new vocabulary and developed gross motor skills, hand eye co-ordination and was also a lot of fun! 

The Children are continuing to learn through play and express themselves during our choosing times. They love to use the playdoh to bake, make models, birthday cakes, monsters and even the odd T-Rex. They love to engage in the painting area to make their own masterpieces, some for the classroom walls and some to share with their grown ups at home. Then we have boys in the maths area using different blocks to build their own castles, all the while discussing their colour and shape collection. Then in the small world, we have had a train track to take us all to the beach for an ice cream. We love imaginative play where the children can create their own narratives and explore their use of language.

We have begun to add a little physical education into our learning this week by exploring "space" and what this means. The children know that to be in their own space is where the cannot touch anyone else or any objects around them. We played the Wizards game where we flew around on our broomsticks to find our own space. The children were then turned into animals by The Grand Witch Merrick and had to move around their space as the animals. We had lots of fun exploring space and movement in the out door area.

Our maths focus this week has been covering size and comparing Big, Bigger, Biggest, Small, Smaller, Smallest. The children are having a lot of fun measuring themselves and the adults in class, then measuring and sorting lots of objects that we can find. They have been encouraged to come home and measure their grown ups at home, so don't be alarmed if they want everyone to stand back to back to see who's head is higher!

This weeks book is From Head to Toe by Eric Carle, it is a firm favourite with the children. Our new vocabulary to introduce is;

Head

Neck

Bend

Raise

Shoulders

Wave

Clap

Chest

Wriggle

This weeks book of the week is Sharing a Shell by Julia Donaldson and is a firm favourite in nursery! Our newly introduced vocabulary for this week is;

Crab

Share

Shell

Empty

Scuttle

Rock pool

Jaws

Tentacle

We have used google to find pictures of hermit crabs to look at their homes and see how they "scuttle" across the sand, then we searched anemones to see how their tentacles wave back and forth under the waves.

The children have also been discussing friendship and what that means to them. We have been busy designing what a good friend would look like, from smiling faces and kind eyes, to sharing hands and wearing pink because that is our favourite colour!

We have spent some time outside this week practising our ball management skills, we started with bouncing the ball in front of us and then catching it, throwing it up in the air and catching, and then sitting on the floor to roll it to our friends. 

All of these things took concentration, listening and attention, communication and gross motor skills. The children found some of these skills really tricky but we practised our school rule of Resilience and kept trying hard. 

For our Maths lessons this week we have been learning all about colour! We have started with our primary colours, RED, YELLOW and BLUE then moved on to finding out all about the other colours on a colour wheel.

The children have also been challenged with a colour scavenger hunt and Fred talking colours

(R - E - D makes RED).

We finished our learning by colour mixing using our fingers and large sheets of paper. The children were amazed watching the paints mix and change colour and enjoyed having a go themselves!

Our book for this week is My Mum and Dad Make Me Laugh by Nick Sharratt.

We have introduced our new vocabulary:

Mum

Dad

Spots

Stripes

Safari park

The Children have been working with spots and stripes to design their own T-shirts and discuss their favourite colours.

We have also been completing self portraits and discussing what makes us different, from our hair and eye colour, down to spots, glasses, clothing and smiles! The children have been very imaginative with their ideas. 

We have also spoken about what family means and who is in our family. The children have also been able to discuss who lives with them and who doesn't. We have worked hard to design and create our own pictures of our families and spoken about them with our friends.

For our literacy tasks this week, our children have met our very handsome William the word hungry bear. He loves to learn new words and language and really enjoys hearing our children talking. He has asked us to learn the new words;

Love

Stretching

Longer

High

Tree Trunk

Thornbushes

For our singing and rhymes sessions we are enjoying 1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish alive, as well as Twinkle Twinkle Little star. Our children have been learning the songs and actions to accompany our beautiful singing. We are also singing our welcome song at the beginning of each session and the goodbye song at the end of each session. 

In our super start for Maths this week we are practicing counting up to 5 and building groups of objects up to 5 using resources in our classroom. 

We are all having lots of fun learning both inside and outside and the children have all had time to access lots of different areas and experiences, from watering our beautiful garden, to digging in a gravel pit, then making works of art in our painting area, and making their own playdoh.