Room on the Broom
Our story of the week, Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson, has inspired lots of fantastic story retelling! The children have loved joining in with the repeated refrain in our story corner:
“The witch tapped her broomstick and whoosh they were gone!”
It has been lovely to hear the children joining in so enthusiastically. Next week, we will continue to enjoy this favourite story and begin adding our own actions to different parts of the tale. We will also be getting our hands busy with some magical potion-making!
A big thank you for supporting our autumn bag activity. We have enjoyed sharing the children’s wonderful collections. This week, we used magnifying glasses to look closely at the leaves, noticing their colours, shapes and details. We are developing our curiosity and observation skills as we explore the world around us.
In maths, we have been investigating the properties of shapes. We have been thinking carefully about whether shapes have flat or curved sides and exploring which shapes are best for different purposes. Which shape would make the best tower? Which shape would roll down a ramp?
More of this weeks learning rolling conkers to make patterns and exploring an autumn sensory tray.
Next Week
As we approach the end of our very first half term, we will be practising the nursery rhymes we have learnt so far. We are sure the children would love to share their favourites with you at home!
Our rhymes are:
Baa, Baa, Black Sheep
Humpty Dumpty
Incy Wincy Spider
Why not sing them together at home?
Reminders
Parent–Teacher Consultations: I am looking forward to meeting with you all next week for our first parent–teacher consultations. If you have not yet booked an appointment, please contact the school office.
Half-Term Holiday: Nursery closes on Thursday 22 October.
Return to Nursery: We look forward to welcoming everyone back on Monday 2 November.
Have a happy and healthy weekend, everyone.
Leaves and conkers
We shared our final few autumn treasure bags his week. So many interesting things pumpkins, conkers and acorns. We have really enjoyed sharing their contents and finding out all about them. We hope that you enjoyed collecting them.
The artist, Andy Goldsworthy inspired our autumnal creative work this week. We worked together to create a design of conkers, pine cones and leaves.
Our interest in autumn has helped us to develop our fine motor skills too. This is the development of the muscles in the fingers. This will help us to develop an effective pencil grip. We pegged leaves to a washing lines, balanced conkers on upturned cups and placed tiny coloured leaves onto the light board to make a pattern.
We also enjoyed making conker soup!
Next week’s learning
Our story next week is Room on the Broom, it’s written by the very popular author, Julia Donaldson.
Our Nursery Rhyme of the week is Incy Wincey Spider Can you sing this at home?
Reminders
On Wednesday 14 October 6pm-7pm we have an open evening in school. This is one of three sessions when parents and carers of Reception 2027 children are invited in to school to look around. There is no need to book a place.
Parent Teacher consultations – Please don’t forget to sign up for these 10 minute appointments. This is an opportunity to find out how your child has settled into nursery. It’s on zoom this time, the next meetings will be in person.
We still need your family photos. The children are really enjoying talking about their special people and seeing their photos in our home area each day.
Thank you for your continued support.
Autumn time
There’s been lots of wonderful talking happening in nursery this week. We’ve been developing our communication and language skills by sharing our special autumn treasures with our friends during group time.
We’ve been practising how to wait for our turn to speak, use a voice that is loud enough for everyone to hear, and use words to describe what we can see.
We’ve heard some fantastic descriptive language as the children talked about their treasures, sharing their ideas and listening carefully to one another.
“This is a rainbow leaf red, brown, orange”
“A heart conker, it’s like a heart”
“The conker goes in here, this is spikey”
It’s been lovely to see the children becoming more confident communicators and enjoying sharing their experiences with their friends!
If you haven’t brought your autumn treasures back yet, don’t worry, we’ll be continuing to share and explore them next week.
Our autumn interests have continued throughout our provision too. We’ve explored rolling conkers, watching how they moved. We’ve discovered that, unlike apples, conkers don’t float in the water tray. They are also very tricky to catch with tweezers. In our painting area, we’ve been developing our arm and shoulder muscles by using rollers to create artwork.
Next week, we’ll continue to learn about autumn. We’ll be looking at artwork by Andy Goldsworthy and using natural materials to create our own artwork inspired by his work.
Next week
Our Nursery Rhyme of the week is Humpty Dumpty
Can you join in with this nursery rhyme?
We are continuing to explore “We’re going on a bear hunt” This week we’ll be joining in with the rhyme and adding our own sound effects.
Reminders
- Our individual photographs will take place on Tuesday 06 October.
- Don’t forget to send in your family photos to add to our display. The children are really enjoying talking about them. Send them to our email address [email protected]
- We currently have a number of unnamed water bottles in nursery. Please could you ensure that your child’s water bottle is clearly labelled with their name to help us avoid any confusion and make sure everyone gets the right bottle
It’s been a wonderful week of exploring, talking, listening and learning together!
The Three Little Pigs
The children have had a wonderful time retelling our focus story, ‘The Three Little Pigs’. They have enjoyed joining in with the repeated refrain, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!” We have loved hearing the children use the story language as they developed their confidence in retelling the tale.
Following on from our exploration of ramps last week, we used them to roll some of the apples and conkers we found in our nursery garden. The children enjoyed watching them travel down the ramps and counted them as they reached the bottom.
As the children continue to explore our provision, lots of different interests are emerging. Friendships are developing along with skills of independence as the children learn where the resources that they need can be found in the provision.
Here are some more photo’s of this week in Nursery.
Next Week:
We will be talking about the changes we are noticing outside as we begin to explore autumn.
Look out for a brown bag in your child’s folder. We would like you to fill it with some autumn treasure that you find together and return it to Nursery for us to explore.
Our focus story will be the much-loved ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. We will be exploring the story using our own puppets and props and joining in with the familiar words and actions.
You can watch ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ being told by the author Michael Rosen together. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt
Our Nursery Rhyme of the Week will be ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. Listen to the rhyme together here and join in at home.
Reminders:
Please don’t forget to send in a family photograph for our Home Corner display. Please email photographs to [email protected].
Friday 2 October is a training day. Nursery will close on Thursday 1 October and reopen on Monday 5 October.
Thank you for your continued support with our learning at home and in Nursery. We can’t wait to see what autumn treasures the children discover!
Exploring and learning
What a lovely week we’ve had in Nursery!
Many of our children have continued with their transition sessions and are now confidently staying for a full day. It has been wonderful to see so many happy faces as the children wave goodbye to their parents and carers each morning. We are so proud of how well everyone is settling into their new Nursery environment!
As you can see from the photographs, the children have been very busy exploring, playing and learning together. It is fantastic to see them becoming increasingly happy, confident and engaged in their play. This is exactly what we love to see as children begin to feel comfortable and secure in their new surroundings.
Now that the children are becoming familiar with our Nursery classrooms and routines, over the next few weeks you will begin to see some exciting changes to our areas of provision.
We will be introducing new small world areas, themes and opportunities for learning, giving the children lots of exciting ways to explore, imagine and develop their skills through play. We can’t wait to see where their curiosity takes them!
Next week’s learning
We will be reading our first focus story ” The Three Little Pigs”. We will be using story props to retell the story. Whynot listen to the story together The Three Little Pigs
Reminders
- As the weather becomes more autumnal, please ensure that your child has a coat with a hood at Nursery each day. We spend lots of time enjoying our outdoor provision, whatever the weather, so having a warm, waterproof coat will help your child stay comfortable while they play and learn outdoors.
All about our families
As we’re getting to know everyone, we love to talk about our families and home life.
To encourage children to tell us more about the special people in their lives, please e-mail or bring a photograph of your child with their family to Nursery.
The photographs will be displayed in our home corner, where children can look at them and talk about their families. This is a lovely way for us to help children feel connected to home while building relationships and getting to know one another.
Please send photographs to: scholesnursery@
Getting to know you.
What a wonderful, busy first week we’ve had in Nursery!
It’s been lovely to welcome back our returning children, who arrived with big smiles and lots of exciting stories to tell us about their holidays. They quickly found their friends, rediscovered their favourite places to play and settled back into nursery life.
We have also been delighted to welcome our new children and their grown-ups to our Stay and Play sessions. It has been wonderful seeing everyone joining in with the fun, exploring our activities and beginning to feel at home in their new nursery environment.
This week, we have been helping all of the children to settle in and become familiar with their new surroundings. It can take a little while to remember where everything is, but the children have been doing brilliantly! They have been busy exploring all of our nursery provision, trying out different activities and having lots of fun.
What Makes Us Tick
One of our next jobs is finding out what everyone enjoys playing and doing.
You can help us with this by adding a note to your child’s photograph on our “What Makes Us Tick” board. Whether your child loves diggers, dancing to K-pop, dinosaurs, drawing, dressing up or something completely different, we want to know! Please speak to your child’s key person if you would like more information.
A Few Reminders
Please remember that your child needs to bring a coat every day, whatever the weather.
Please make sure your child’s water bottle is clearly named.
We’ve had a great start to the new nursery year and we’re looking forward to all the learning and fun still to come!
Let’s get ready to play!
Hello everyone!
We’ve been busy this week meeting some of our new children at their home visits. It’s been lovely finding out about you all and what you like to do. We’re looking forward to getting to know you more when we welcome you to Nursery next week.
We are looking forward to welcoming back our returning children. We can’t wait see see how much you have grown and to find out about your summer holidays. Remember your first day back at Nursery will be for a half day session.
Nursery is now ready for the new school year. Have a look at the photos to see what you might like to play with next week. We’ve tried to make sure that there’s something for everyone to enjoy, including some of your favourite things that you told us about on home visits. We’ve got Paw Patrol, fairies, diggers, The Gruffalo and lots more ready for you to come and play.
Where will you play?
A few reminders from home visits: what your child will need every day…
- A waterproof coat (named)
- A pair of wellies (named)
- A change of clothes (top, trousers/ leggings, underwear, socks)
- A filled water bottle (named)
See you on Monday !
Pirates Love Underpants
Our pirate adventure has continued this week, and the children have had a fantastic time! They loved listening to the story “Pirates Love Underpants” and enjoyed retelling the story independently in our story corner. In our creative area, the children have been busy making their own pirate ships from dough, while in the maths area they have been counting gold coins and developing their early number skills. They also used their fantastic mark-making skills to create colourful pirate flags for their ships.
The pirate theme continued outside as the children used treasure maps in the Nursery garden to search for hidden treasure. As they explored, they used lots of positional language to describe where the treasure was hidden. We heard wonderful vocabulary such as next to the sandpit, underneath the bridge, behind the planter and on top of the tyre. It was lovely to see the children working together, following clues and building their language skills.
Our oldest children have also enjoyed visiting their new classrooms in preparation for September. They visited while the classrooms were quiet, accompanied by a member of the Nursery team, and had the opportunity to explore the learning environment, look around and begin getting to know their new teachers. These visits help to build confidence and support a smooth transition into their new class.
Reminders
The weather is expected to remain very warm until the end of term. Please remember to place your child’s sun cream in their group basket each morning. If it is there, we will know that you would like us to apply it at lunchtime.
As we look forward to our final week together, we would like to thank all of our families for your continued support throughout the year.
On your child’s final day in Nursery, please remember to collect:
- Changing bag
- Wellies
- Coat
- Lunchbox (if applicable)
- Water bottle
We look forward to a wonderful final week of fun and learning together!
Keeping cool.
With the high temperatures last week, we made the most of the cooler early morning sunshine by enjoying lots of fun, water-based activities.
The children loved washing the bikes and did a fantastic job of taking turns with their friends. They also strengthened their fine motor skills using water sprays to wash away the patterns on the tuff tray and had lots of imaginative fun mixing and blending at our very popular milkshake stand.
We made sure everyone took plenty of important hydration breaks throughout the day—just like the footballers!
When it got too warm outside, we headed indoors, where the children used their fine motor skills to fold their own paper fans. They were very proud of their creations, and they certainly helped to keep us cool!
Well done everyone for coping so well in the warm weather.
Our older children also enjoyed the exciting experience of having lunch in the school hall. They wore their dinner bands, collected their own knives and forks, carried their trays carefully to their tables, and enjoyed eating in a new environment.
We are incredibly proud of how independent, sensible, and confident they were. They are becoming so ready for their next exciting step!
This week learning
Focus book
Pirates love underpants by Claire Freedman & Ben Corty
Nursery Rhyme of the week
A sailor went to sea, sea, sea.
During maths group times this week, we’re learning about positional language.
Help at home: Try to use positional language in your day to day conversations and during play. For example -Can you put your teddy underneath the box? The car is behind the garage. The monkey is on top of the tree. Put your shoes next to the cupboard. As you look at illustrations in a story, ask questions such as ‘Where is the cat hiding?’ or ‘What can you see in front of the fence?’
Reminders
If your child is returning to Nursery in September can you please ensure that your child’s returners paperwork is handed into the school office by Monday 06 July.
End of year events
Please refer to the letter in your child’s going home folder.
Learning Journey drop ins
Come and look through your child’s Learning Journey and celebrate their achievements.
- Tuesday 7 July – 2:30 pm–3:00 pm
- Thursday 9 July – 9:00 am–9:30 am
- Monday 13 July – 2.30pm – 3.00pm
Nursery Summer Party
Friday 17 July
Children who do not usually attend Nursery on Friday mornings are invited to join us from 10:00am – 11:15am. Please let a member of staff know