w/c 24th June: Helicopter Stories

This week, our challenge in the classroom was to write our own ‘helicopter story’. The children embraced this and we had some fantastic story telling with some beautiful story language. Many of the children began their story with ‘once upon a time’. Over the course of the week, the children brought their stories to me and read what they had written. On Wednesday, we all gathered around the stage to hear each other’s stories. All of the children were keen to participate and we had some wonderful acting as we took on the characters from the story. At the end, all of the actors took a bow and the audience clapped.

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A couple of reminders for next week, as we have a busy week ahead! I look forward to welcoming all parents and carers into Nursery on Monday afternoon at 2.15pm for a Stay and Play session. Also, we are all very excited for Tuesday, when Circurama will be coming into Early Years to teach Nursery and Reception some circus skills! Please ensure your child comes to school in appropriate footwear (no wellies or opened toed sandals please). The sun finally seems to have its hat on, therefore, please can you ensure that during sunny, warm weather, your child comes to school having sun cream already applied and has a sun hat and water bottle in school. Thank you. Enjoy the glories weather, and see you all on Monday for an action packed week!

W/C 17th June: Ladybird larvae

This week, we were joined in Nursery by some new friends – ladybird larvae. Before we introduced them, we asked the children what they thought they might be before they change into a ladybird. We had some good predictions, for example, a caterpillar, bee and spider. The children have spent time this week observing the larvae, watching them grow and have been recording their observations. We are excited to see how they have changed when we return next week.

In maths, we have been recording and representing numbers through problem solving. Using tally charts, we recorded the eye colour of the different children in the classroom. The children could represent the number for each colour and used one to one correspondence to count how many of each they had found. I think we have some maths magicians in Nursery!

W/C 10th June: Can Ladybirds Hear?

We began our new topic ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ this week. To start the week, we read the story, focusing on the basic elements of a story – what happened in the beginning, middle and end and attempted to summarise the story for our friends. We used extended sentences to recall the story on our class stage.

On Wednesday, I posed the question to the children – can ladybirds hear? We didn’t know the answer so thought about ways we could find out. We decided that we could read a book, look in the grass to find a ladybird to observe or look on the computer. The children were very inquisitive about the ladybird. We searched on the computer for ladybird facts and along with lots of other exciting facts, we found out that ladybirds can hear! Next week, we will be joined by some ladybird larvae so we can observe the ladybird lifecycle for ourselves.

W/C 3rd June: Sports Day

Welcome back! It’s hard to believe that we are in the final half term of the year – where has the time gone! This week was ‘Healthy Week’ and we participated in the Early Years sports day. What a fantastic turn out we had, with so many parents and carers coming along to support our Nursery children in their first sports day at Kenton Bar. I must say, I was immensely proud of the children this week. The children all joined in with every race (bean bag on head, egg and spoon, obstacle course and sprint races), trying their best and showing fantastic sportsmanship. They listened to and followed instruction perfectly, with only one false start! When not competing, the children showed excellent respect for the other children racing, sitting beautifully, cheering on and encouraging their friends. Thank you to all those who came along and supported our children on what was a fantastic event.

W/C 20th May: Butterflies

The metamorphosis process is complete – we have butterflies! The children were so excited to find that the butterflies had emerged from their chrysalis.

Maisie: “It nipped the cocoon to come out”.

We decided to release the butterflies in the Nursery garden. We were very lucky and one of the butterflies was feeding from an orange and allowed us to all have a turn holding it before it flew away! The children were all keen to hold the butterfly and all shared care and concern, holding the butterfly very gently and calmly.

I hope you all have a lovely half term break and I look forward to greeting the children back next half term to begin our new topic ‘What the Ladybird Heard’.

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W/C 13th May: What’s a chrysalis?

We began the week checking on the caterpillars, and we couldn’t see them! They had changed into a chrysalis. We decided to represent these in the creative area. Using paper mache, we made our own cocoons.

William: “They make a cocoon, we observe them”

Elena: “It turns into a cocoon, It’s round, I’m drawing it round”.

Lucas: “It’s changed from a caterpillar. It’s a cocoon. It’s metamorphosis.”

This week, we also wrote a story map of our own story ‘We’re Going on a Butterfly Hunt’. We had some fantastic ideas for settings. We went through the ‘sandy beach’, ‘the park’, ‘the house’, ‘the woods’ and ‘the ocean’. All of the children could then use the story map to retell the story to their friends.

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W/C 7th May: Story mapping

In preparation for writing our own story ‘We’re Going on a Butterfly Hunt’ next week, we have written a story map of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. We worked together to create the story map, representing each part of the story through our marks. We tried our best to use ‘froggy fingers’ to hold our pens, and showed good control while mark making. We then used the story map to retell the story with our friends.

On our outdoor day, we began by reading the story ‘The Very Busy Spider’. We went on a hunt for spiders, using the magnifying glasses, used the tweezers to rescue the bugs from the spiders web and did some weaving to make our own webs. Next week, we will be writing our own stories and will be looking at the next stage of the life cycle – when the caterpillar chrysalises.

W/C 29th April: Caterpillars

This week, we began by retelling the story ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ through movement. We listened to some music while retelling the story. We began by wriggling and moving like a caterpillar, before curling up as small and as still as we could to represent a cocoon and finally growing bigger and bigger, into a butterfly. We began looking at the lifecycle of a butterfly and introduced our class caterpillars. We will be observing them over the next few weeks, watching the metamorphosis process.

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W/C 23rd April: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Welcome back everyone, I hope you all had a super Easter. The children have all come back with big smiles on their faces and ready to learn. It was a short week this week with the bank holiday, but we’ve still managed to carry out lots of learning! We began our new topic ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ this week. We have read the story and did some super counting to find out how much food the caterpillar had eaten. We have been making some repeating pattern caterpillars, strengthening our fingers by threading the beads. In phonics, we have been talking like robots and are beginning to hear and blend CVC words. Next week we will be continuing with our topic and have some special visitors coming into Nursery!

W/C 1st April: Easter

This week, we have been learning about Easter. We began the week by reading the Easter story. The children were very engaged and did some fantastic recall of the story. We made some delicious chocolate nests, which we enjoyed at snack time and some beautiful Easter cards to send home. We ended the week by reading ‘We’re Going on an Egg Hunt’. We went on our own hunt outside, following the story map to retell the story and help give us clues to where the eggs were hiding – what great team work we did to find all of the eggs!

This week we had some special visitors in class. Mrs Grey brought in her lambs. We were so excited to meet them and the lambs were just as excited to meet us! We fed them their milk, using a bottle and most of us were brave enough to stroke the lambs.

Have a fantastic Easter holiday everyone, and we look forward to welcoming the children back next half term to begin our new topic ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’.