Author: Nursery Team

Feed the birds

It’s been a busy week in Nursery. The children love exploring the outside area, especially looking for worms and bugs under the logs. This week they began to notice that they couldn’t find many.  Where they had gone?

We talked about the cold, frosty weather and how the ground had been very hard. The children then began to think about the birds in our garden and wondered what they were eating?  We decided to make them some food. Cutting up lard very carefully, we mixed it together with bird seed, it was “sticky” and “gooey”

We pressed it into cups, added string, and then hung them in our Nursery garden. We took some home too, so that we could watch the birds at home. Let us know if your bird feeder attracts the birds into your outside space.  scholesnursery@spherefederation.org 

Some other activities from this week in Nursery.

Self-help skills are very important as the children develop. At lunchtime we are developing our skills of independence by learning how to use a knife and fork. We have been practising this skill in our dough area too.

In group time, children in red, blue and green group learnt about the number 2.  We looked at a domino that had one spot on one end, and one spot on the other. When we looked at the spots together, there were two. Children knew that they had 2 eyes, 2 ears and 2 feet. We jumped twice and counted two claps.

Help at home: Have a look around your house and surroundings – What can you find two of?  You might see two wheels on your bike or 2 eggs left in the box. Can you spot any number twos on doors or number plates?    Send us an e-mail to let us know how you get on – you could send a photograph to show us what you find.  scholesnursery@spherefederation.org 

Next week’s learning:

Sound of the week- “e” for elephant.

We will be choosing some of our favourite Nursery rhymes to revisit this week. Which is your favourite?

Pat a cake, The Grand old Duke of York or Jack and Jill?

The Nursery Team

Lunar New Year

We have had a great week; children loved reading a book about the Lunar New Year and we watched some short video clips to find out how people prepare for the festival and celebrate with their families.

To join in with the celebrations, we painted ‘good luck’ banners in the creative area. We enjoyed decorating a lunar lantern with some patterns that we’re learning (circles, zig-zags, waves and lines) to help improve our pencil control. We used scissors to practice our “snipping skills” to help to let the light through. The children were very proud of their learning.

In the sensory area we explored noodles.  They were “ sticky” “ stretchy” “ gooey” “ cold” and “ sticky” Lots of great vocabulary to describe how the noodles felt.

Help at home 

Independence is an important skill for all of the children in Nursery. Being able to put on their coat, fasten it  and go outside  is a significant achievement.  We support the children to do this independently at Nursery. Practicing these skills at home, maybe on a weekend when you have a little more time, will support the children’s development considerably.

Next week’s learning: 

Nursery rhyme of the week –Jack and Jill went up the Hill

Sound of the week – ‘c’ for cat and ‘k’ for kite

Reminders 

The weather is still very cold and we spend lots of our time learning outside. Please ensure that you child has a warm coat, hat and gloves/ mittens every day. As always, name everything.

Thank you as always for your continued support.

The Nursery Team

Dinosaur Roar

It’s been great to see our new children becoming more familiar with Nursery routines and lots of them have now stayed for their first full day. Well done, yellow group!

Children continue to explore nursery and are independently choosing resources to enhance their play; we’ve created amazing constructions, working together and sharing ideas.

We have also enjoyed finding out about dinosaurs. Digging up dinosaur skeletons in the sand tray, finding out about dinosaurs in our small world area and learning their names.

In the sensory area, we loved playing with the slime in our dinosaur swamp! Ergh.. it’s very sticky!

Mark making always plays an important part of our learning in Nursery and this week the children have been practising their skills in many of our provision areas. In the paint, sand, message centre and making patterns on giant pieces of paper.

In group time, children in red, blue and green group helped Mrs Beesley with her shopping bags. One bag was very heavy and the other bag was quite light. We looked at the different items in each bag and compared them. Children had to find an item that was heavier or lighter than the tin of baked beans.  You could try this at home.

Our sounds next week is Oo 

Make your mouth into a round shape and say o.

Our Nursery Rhyme of the week next week is Row Row Row your Boat.

Can you sing the rhyme fast, slow, loud or quiet?

Have a happy and healthy weekend and thankyou as always for your continued support.

The Nursery Team.

 

Making new friends

We have had a busy week settling yellow group into Nursery and helping them to explore their new environment. They’re all doing really well and are gradually getting to know us and beginning to make some new friends. They have already stayed for lunch and next week will stay for their first full day, what a fantastic start!

This week, in Maths, we have been finding out about number 1. We have been representing 1 in lots of different ways with our fingers, on a five frame and with marks.

Next week we will start some new learning about weight. We will be using words such as heavy, light, heavier and lighter to compare different objects.

Help at home: You could continue this learning at home by asking questions during everyday activities. Which bag from the supermarket is heaviest/ lightest? Which toy is lighter? Can you find something that is lighter than the bottle of milk? Can you find something that is heavier than a packet of crisps?

Our sound next week is Gg

Our nursery rhyme of the week – Ring-a-ring-a-roses

Can you join in with the rhyme and the actions at home?

We will continue reading Dinosaur Roar next week. Can you remember all of the different types of dinosaurs in the story?

“Dinosaur weak, dinosaur strong, dinosaur short or dinosaur very, very long”

We look forward to finding out more about dinosaurs.

Have a happy and healthy weekend and thank you as always for your continued support.

The Nursery Team

Run, run, as fast as you can

 

Happy New Year and welcome back to Nursery! We hope that you all had a great Christmas and enjoyed a break over the festive period. We were expecting to welcome everyone back on Monday morning but the weather had other ideas ! It was lovely, however, to see everyone on Tuesday morning and hear about your holiday adventures and presents from Santa. Thank you for sending in your photos of your Christmas celebrations.

This week, we’ve been reading ‘The Gingerbread Man’ and children have been retelling the story in our small world area.  If you have a copy of the story at home, please enjoy reading it together. If not, you might like to listen to Mr Tumble reading it.

We have enjoyed joining in with the repeated refrain  “Run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man.”

This week we have been learning our new sound is ‘m’ for mouse.  We pronounce it as  ‘mmmmm’.

Help at home: In group time, our sound bag had lots of ‘m’ objects including a marble, a mouse, a map and a mirror.  What can you find around the house that begins with the ‘m’ sound?  What other ‘m’ objects could we have put in our sound bag?

As the snow froze solid in our Nursery garden it was too dangerous for us to play outside. This led to lots of discussions about keeping safe.

” We could slip and fall” 

” I might bump my head” 

“We can’t run on the snow, like we can’t run inside” 

Well done everyone!

We couldn’t to go out in the snow, but we could bring the snow inside to explore.

We added snow to our water tray to create an arctic landscape.

The snow and ice felt

” very cold”  “wet”   “freezing”

We painted the snow and it looked amazing!

We used frozen paint to create our pictures.

Next week  – 13 January 2025

We look forward to welcoming our new families and children to Nursery for their first sessions on Tuesday 14 January. Our new ‘yellow group’ children will join red group as they come into Nursery through the main door each morning so it may feel a little bit busier than usual. Please be patient as we help to settle the new children into Nursery. We’re looking forward to getting to know everybody and making some new friends.

Next week’s learning: 

‘Dinosaur Roar’  by Paul and Henrietta Stickland is our story next week.  If you don’t have a copy of the book at home, you might enjoy watching the first 3 minutes of this clip together.

Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip

Letter next week – ‘d’ for duck

Nursery rhyme next week – The Grand Old Duke of York

Have a happy and healthy weekend and thank you as always for your support.

The Nursery Team

Applications for a Reception place.

A quick reminder.

Applications for a Reception place for September 2025 can be made until 15 January 2025. Guidance on applications can be found on Leeds City Councils You Tube video

A quick guide to school admissions

Please remember that you still need to apply for a Reception place at Scholes (Elmet) Primary School, even if your child attends Scholes Nursery.

Welcome Yellow Group.

 

We enjoyed meeting all of our new children and families at their home visits and we’re looking forward to getting to know you more next week.

Here is a reminder of some of the important information that we discussed during the home visit.

  • Your child will need a drawstring bag with a full change of clothes. Please make sure that you write their NAME in everything.
  • We play outside in all weathers so a warm, waterproof coat is essential. Please also send gloves and a hat during winter.  Children need a pair of wellies at Nursery.  Remember to name their coat, shoes and wellies!
  • Please put your child’s water bottle in the yellow basket in the entrance. You’ll need to collect it at the end of their session each day.  Again, please remember to write their name clearly on the bottle.

Registration and end of day

  • Nursery opens at 9am and we close registration at 9:10am.
  • When you come into Nursery (main entrance via the path from Morwick Grove) you’ll be asked who is going to collect your child and for their lunch option.
  • If you change who is collecting your child, please inform the office. If we haven’t met somebody before, we will ask for your password.
  • Once you’ve put your child’s belongings on their peg, you’re welcome to settle them somewhere to play before you say goodbye.
  • Nursery closes at 3pm but you can collect your child from 2:50pm onwards.
  • At the end of the session, parents and carers are able to come into Nursery to collect your child’s belongings and check their folder for artwork.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask a member of Nursery staff.  We look forward to seeing you again at the Stay and Play visit on Monday 13 January from 3.30-4.15pm. See you all there.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

We have had a wonderful and very busy last week of term. From sing a longs to a visit from Santa we have had it all!  We were all so proud of the children this week, they sang and performed so well on Monday and Tuesday. We hope you enjoyed it.

Here are some photographs of all of our Christmas celebrations – what a week it has been!

    

     

   

 

Please don’t forget to send  us some photographs of your Christmas celebrations with family or of an exciting day out that you enjoy.  We will share these photos during group time in the first week back in January; they’ll be a great way of starting our conversations. Here is a reminder of the email address for your photos

scholesnursery@spherefederation.org

We return to Nursery on Monday 06 January.

We hope that you all have a Happy and Healthy Christmas, see you all in the New Year!

Christmas is coming!

We had such a busy week learning the songs and rehearsing for our Christmas sing a long. We can’t wait to share it with you on Monday and Tuesday and hope you enjoy watching.

We’ve enhanced many of our areas of provision to provide lots of opportunities to learn about Christmas and talk about the traditions that some families join in with at this time of year. Here are a few photos from this week. You can see that we have been very busy…

  • Using our fine motor skills to decorate the Christmas trees using tweezers.
  • Using our number skills to count the decorations on the trees.
  • Making paper chains, it took lots of concentration to thread the paper carefully.
  • Wrapping presents in the Elf workshop.
  • Making Christmas cards for our families.
  • Exploring our sensory Christmas scene.

Next week:

We will consolidate the letter sounds that we have learnt so far – s, a, t, p, i and n.

Help at home: In group time, our sound bag had lots of ‘n’ objects including a nest, a net and a nurse.  What can you find around the house that begins with the ‘n’ sound?  What other ‘n’ objects could we have put in our sound bag?

Reminders:

  • Our Early Years Christmas Sing a Long will take place on Monday 16 December at 1.30 – 2.15pm and on Tuesday 19 December at 9.45 – 10.30am.
  •  Our ‘Stay and Decorate‘ sessions take place next week on Wednesday 18 December  9.00- 9.45am or 2.00 -2.45 pm and Thursday 19 December 9.00-9.45am. We can’t wait to welcome you all.
  • Our Nursery Party is on Friday 20 December from 10-11.15am. Children can attend Nursery wearing their party clothes.  Please remember that we will still take part in Nursery activities (which can be messy) and we’ll also be outside so footwear needs to be sensible.

Stick Man

We’ve  started to get festive in Nursery this week. We all helped to put up the Christmas tree, we hope that you like it!

We made paper chains to decorate nursery, it was a bit tricky to thread them together but we did it.

In the home corner, children enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree and re-creating some experiences from home.

We’ve  enjoyed listening to Stick Man by Julia Donaldson and helping to recreate it using our story props. The children loved exploring our Christmas sensory tray, finding objects that “made a noise”, some to “sprinkle”, some that were “soft” and some that were “stretchy”

Outside the children loved decorating our winter trees with baubles and tinsel.

We made Christmas trees in the dough, carefully decorating them.

We’ve also been busy learning our Christmas songs, maybe you’ve been hearing them at home? We can’t wait to sing them at our Christmas sing- a long.

Help at home

Can you find some long and short objects around the house? Which is the longest piece of tinsel on your Christmas tree? Which is the shortest?

Let us know what you find.

Next week’s learning: 

We’ll continue with our Christmas themed learning and will find out about the Nativity story.

In maths, we continue to learn about length so will be using the words long, short, longer and shorter to compare different objects.

Nursery rhyme of the week – We’ll be busy learning songs for our sing – a long, so please keep singing your favourite rhymes together at home.

Here is a reminder of the Nursery rhymes we have covered this half term

Wind the Bobbin up.

Hickory Dickory Dock.

1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a fish alive.

Twinkle twinkle Little Star.

Sound of the week – N n for net

Open your lips a bit, put your tongue behind your teeth and make a nnnnnn sound.

Reminders:

  • Please send your child’s costume to Nursery by Monday 09 December.  Remember to write your child’s name on all items of their costume and the bag.  Thank you for your support.
  • If you haven’t already returned your reply slip for the ‘Stay and Decorate’ sessions, please do so this week.