Author: Reception Team

We’ve had a super summer and we’re looking forward to another fun filled year in Nursery.  Hopefully, you’ve all had lots of adventures too; we can’t wait to find out about them.

If you are one of our older children and are returning to Nursery, you’ll have received a letter before the holidays to about your first two days.  Remember, we’re on home visits during the first week so we’ll have to wait until Monday 13 September until we see your happy faces again! Please refer to your letter for further details.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (07-09 September) the Nursery team will be out and about to say hello to all of our new children and their families for their ‘door-step’ Home visit.  Fingers crossed the weather will be kind to us but we’ll have an umbrella with us, just in case! During this short visit, we’ll introduce ourselves and answer any questions that you may have.  Your child’s individual transition into Nursery (which included a Home Visit date, ‘Stay and Play’ details and their first session date)  was outlined in your transition letter that you received in July. Please get in touch with us as soon as possible if you have any queries. Our Nursery email is scholesf1@spherefederation.org

What does my child need?

• A waterproof coat (NAMED)
• A pair of wellies (NAMED)
• A water bottle (NAMED)
• A drawstring bag containing a full change of clothes (including a top, trousers/leggings, underwear and socks – ALL NAMED)
• A sun hat on sunny days (NAMED)

In case you missed it above, you must NAME all items that your child brings to Nursery! You don’t need to get special name labels, a simple marker pen (e.g. Sharpie) in the care label is fine!  It is very hard to return missing items to their owners when they’re not named.

Next week, we’ll also be busy preparing Nursery for you to come and play. Keep checking our News page and we’ll post some photos for you as soon as we’re ready.

See you soon!

What a busy two weeks! We’ve had so much fun, playing in the sunshine, visiting the farm, joining in Sport’s Day races on the field and dancing at our ‘Under the Sea’ party. We’ve put together a short video for you to watch of our last few weeks in Nursery.

Nursery Video – End of term fun!

Thank you for all of your kind words, cards and gifts this week. We hope that you all have a great Summer holiday and we’ll look forward to seeing some of you in Nursery in September and some of you, next door in Reception!  We’d also like to say good bye to those children that are moving to other schools – we hope that you love your new school and make lots of new friends.  Finally, we’re very sad to say good bye to Miss Backhouse but we hope that she has enjoys her very well earned retirement.

 

Please remember to make sure that staff know if your child is allergic to any animals before the farm visit on Tuesday.  Thank you

One of the first things that we noticed on Monday morning was that our tadpoles had grown front legs!  As we have been learning about the life cycle of a frog over the last few weeks, some children were able to explain what was going to happen next. We took some tadpoles out of the tank to look at them more closely and we could see that their tails had also started to shrink. Towards the end of the week, we released some of the froglets back to the pond as they were starting to jump around the tank and needed to be free.  Hopefully, they’ll all be happily sitting on a log with their friends in the pond now! Here’s a link to one of our favourite songs for you to sing a long together at home – Five Little Speckled Frogs.

In the dough area, we used dough extruders to help strengthen our finger muscles. Our oldest children will be moving to Reception soon and this is a great way of helping to prepare their hands for writing and holding a pencil effectively.  We had to push really hard to squeeze the dough through the holes to make spaghetti.

An extremely large cardboard box has been very popular this week, providing many hours of open ended role play opportunities. It’s been a pirate ship, a bus, a train and a cave so far.

Next week, we’re really looking forward to welcoming some four legged visitors to our school field on Tuesday. We can’t wait to meet the animals and learn a little bit more about them. In preparation for the visit, we’ve created some farm small world areas and children have already begun to talk about their previous experiences of visiting farms.

Did you receive your ‘Under the Sea’ party invitation? Don’t forget to let us know if you’d like your child to attend the party if they don’t usually come to Nursery on Wednesday afternoons.

There were lots of happy faces on Monday morning as we all returned to Nursery and were reunited with our friends. It was great to be back together again for our group times, rather than joining in on Zoom.

We always love searching for treasure, so this week, we did just that! Outside, we used a map of our Nursery garden to find where the treasure was hidden. We looked for the ‘X’ on the map as we knew this is where the treasure would be. Children used lots of positional language during this activity. The treasure might have been next to the sandpit, underneath the bridge, behind the planter or on top of the bird table.

Once we found the treasure, we had to use a five frame to help us count how much we had found. We also worked out how many more coins or jewels we would need to fill the chest by looking at how many spaces were left to be filled.

We continued our counting practise in the small world area, looking for hidden treasure on the pirate ship and counting it into the five frame treasure chest.

We’ve also been creating shape pictures and using sticks to copy and make patterns in the sand.

The willow arch in the garden has really grown over the last few weeks. We pruned it and have used the branches to create a reading shelter in the garden. It was quite tricky trying to weave the branches together.

Next week, we’re going to continue with a pirate theme for our learning. We’ll read all about some pirates that LOVE underpants!

 

Hooray! We’ve made it to our last day of isolating at home! We hope that you have a lovely weekend and we can’t wait to see you all again in Nursery next week.

If you enjoyed ‘squiggling’ this morning, don’t forget to send us a video if you decide to create your own at home today.

Our final music video for this week is a rhyme all about a rocket. You’ll need to find some things that you can drum with, such as a saucepan/cardboard box and a wooden spoon.  Have fun drumming in time to the  Rocket rhyme!

Story time

For today’s story time, we thought that you might enjoy watching a story written by one of our favourite authors, Julia Donaldson. Grab a snack and sit back and enjoy watching ‘The Snail and the Whale‘.

Thanks for sending us some photos of things that were arranged into groups of 3 after our group time yesterday.  Great subitising, Nursery.

Today’s song will get you moving! You’ll need your fingers, thumbs, arms, legs and your head. Have you guessed what song it is?

One finger, one thumb!

Story time

Here’s Mrs Beesley reading one of her favourite stories all about a family that like spots and stripes.  ‘My Mum and Dad make me laugh‘

We hope that you enjoyed joining in with the seaside themed dough disco this morning and that you’re not still singing Baby shark!  If you want to have another go, here’s the link for you to play it at home.

Don’t forget our email – scholesf1@spherefederation.org if you’d like to send us a photo of your home learning. If you spot any ‘groups of 3’, from our subitising challenge this morning, send us a picture.

To join in with this afternoon’s song, you’ll need to get a tea towel or a hanky that you can wave in the air.  Click on this link to join Mrs Gosper with another musical activity. Have fun! You might be able to find your own things to make some short and long sounds afterwards.

Story time

Today’s story is called ‘Runaway Train‘ and it’s written by Benedict Blathwayt. Listen carefully and pause the video to look at the illustrations – they’re really great in this book!

We loved the scavenger hunt on our Zoom group time this morning. Did you remember to put all of the things back that you found?  We hope that you helped tidy up, just like we do at Nursery.

If you joined the Zoom yesterday, you might remember that we sang a song. Here’s Mrs Gosper singing it again, make sure you join in with ‘12345 Once I caught a fish alive‘ at home.

Story time

Mrs Crompton is going to read today’s story, some of you might remember hearing it at Nursery last week. It’s all about a shark…

Find somewhere comfortable to sit and listen to ‘Shark in the Dark‘ by Peter Bently.

It was lovely to see you all on our first Zoom meetings this morning. Don’t forget to look at your home learning activities all about ‘Keith the Cat with a Magic Hat’ and send us an email to let us know which ones you enjoy.

We will post a song for you to sing along to at home and a story for you to listen to, every afternoon this week.

Today’s song is ‘Row, row, row your boat’, you might be able to sit with someone in your family and pretend to be in a rowing boat, just like we do at Nursery.

Story time

Miss Morris is reading today’s story, ‘Go, Go, Pirate Boat‘. We love to draw treasure maps at Nursery and pretend to be in pirate ships, maybe you could have a go at home.