We’re going on a Bear Hunt
It was great to see some of your autumn ‘treasure’ from the little brown bags that we sent home this week. Children have enjoyed telling us all about the things they have collected and where they found them. It sounds like lots of you have had fun visiting local parks or looking for autumn things on the walk to Nursery. We’ve heard some super descriptive language (shiny, spiky, smooth) and the conkers are providing endless opportunities to talk about size. We love to line them up in size order.
Thank you to everyone who has returned them already. Don’t worry if you haven’t had a chance to fill them yet, there’s still time! Please bring them to Nursery when they’re full and we’ll add them to our autumn tray.
In maths, we’re learning to match objects and to sort objects in different ways (such as by type, colour or size). Next week, we’ll be sorting our autumn treasure into different groups including conkers, pine cones, sticks and leaves.
In our story time this week, we’ve loved listening to one of our favourite stories, ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt‘ by Michael Rosen. Children are really enjoying this story and have been using the props in our story corner to re-tell the story. Have a listen to Michael Rosen telling the story using the link above – it’s great!
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.
Reminders:
- We have a few more family photos to print and add to our home corner display this week, thank you for e-mailing us. Please see our previous posts if you haven’t sent us one yet – there’s still time.
- Please make sure your child has a rain coat with a hood at Nursery every day; we never know what the weather is going to be like and we play out in ALL weather! Thank you.
Old MacDonald had a farm
Children loved the new small world farm area this week. We sorted the animals into different pens and sang ‘Old MacDonald had a farm‘ as we played. Children enjoyed adding the animal sound effects to the song; we’re sure you could hear the ‘moooooos’ and ‘baaaaaass’ throughout school!
As part of our early phonics learning, we encourage children to listen to the sounds that they can hear around them, such as an aeroplane flying above or birds singing in the trees. We also explore the different noises that animals make.
Help at home: Sing ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ together to help your child become familiar with the words and tune. If you visit a farm or see some animals in a field, remember to use the animal names and talk about the noises that they make. You might like to play a game where you use some farm animal toys and choose an animal to describe. For example: It has 4 legs, a curly tail and a snout. Can they guess which animal you are describing and make the animal noise? Can they give you some clues? This is a great way to add new words to your child’s vocabulary and to develop their listening skills.
This week, we listened to the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and used the puppets in the story corner to re-tell the story with our friends. The construction area has also been popular. We saw some great team work as children worked together to build a boat. They added seats and some lights and set off on an adventure, sailing through a storm (on the windy day!).
We’ve also enjoyed picnics in the home corner and scooping, pouring and using sieves with fine sand in the sensory area.
Next week, we’ll begin to learn about autumn and we’ll read the popular story, ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’. Look out for a little brown bag in your child’s folder – we’d like you to fill it with autumn treasure and return it to Nursery.
Reminders:
- Thank you to everyone that has e-mailed a family photograph for our home corner display. Don’t worry if you haven’t sent it yet, there’s still time! Please send it to scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
- We play outside in all weather – please remember to send your child with a waterproof coat everyday.
Happy children, engaged in play
This week, many children continued with their transition sessions and have stayed for a full day at Nursery. We’ve had lots of happy faces as children waved good-bye to parents and carers each morning, with just a few wobbles!
Try not to worry too much if your child has a little wobble or struggles to say goodbye in the morning. We often find that a quick hug, a big smile and waving good-bye works best and that most children usually settle very quickly once you’ve gone. We will always give you a call if your child continues to be upset, so if you don’t hear from us, you can presume that your child is happy and busy playing!
Here are a few photos of our play and learning this week – you can see that children are very busy and happily, engaged in play. This is just what we like to see once children have settled into their new environment! We strive to make Nursery a happy and healthy place to learn.
Now that children are familiar with our Nursery classrooms, over the next few weeks, you’ll start to see some changes in our areas of provision as we introduce new small world areas and themes for our learning.
Family photograph
As we’re getting to know everyone, we like to talk about our families and home life. To encourage children to tell us more about their family life, please e-mail or bring a photograph of your child with their family to Nursery next week. These will be displayed in our home corner for children to look at and talk about with staff and their friends. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Immunisations
Exploring Nursery
It was great to see our older children return to Nursery on Monday; they quickly settled back into routines and are already getting to know our new children.
On Monday, we enjoyed welcoming our new families for their ‘Stay and Play’ session. Children were really excited to visit and soon began exploring all of the different areas of provision in Nursery. They all had a great time, in fact, a few children didn’t want to leave!
Following a gradual transition, we’ve enjoyed welcoming new children into Nursery for their first sessions. We’re really pleased with with just how well everyone is settling in and we’re looking forward to getting to know everyone better over the next few weeks.
A few reminders:
- Please make sure your child has a pair of wellies and a spare set of clothes at Nursery (named and in a drawstring bag). These can stay at Nursery and don’t need to be taken home every day.
- Please check that your child’s school shoes are clearly NAMED – we have already spotted several pairs of the same design so it makes it much easier to make sure that children wear the right ones!
- Children also need a water bottle, filled with water. Please don’t send juice to Nursery. Thank you for your cooperation.
Welcome to Nursery
We’ve had a great week meeting some of our new children during their home visits. It was lovely to find out a little bit about you all and we’re looking forward to getting to know you more when we welcome you to Nursery next week.
Nursery is looking fantastic; there are lots of exciting areas to play in and we can’t wait to show you around. Our Nursery foxes, Ferdie and Fern, are looking forward to having some more friends to play with. As you can see from the photos, they’ve already been busy testing out some of our toys, playing in the fairy garden and sliding down the slide!
A reminder for children that are returning to Nursery – Remember to check your transition paperwork. The first day back is a transition session and children will have lunch and go home afterwards at 12.30.
Here are a few reminders of some of the things that we talked about at our home visits.
- Please bring a full change of clothes in a drawstring bag and a pair of wellies that will stay in Nursery. Remember to write your child’s name on EVERYTHING!
- Children need to bring a water bottled (named) to Nursery. Please put it in your child’s coloured basket in the morning and collect it at the end of the day to be washed.
- Please return your ‘All about me’ information sheets next week and bring proof of your child’s date of birth, if we didn’t see it at your home visit.
Don’t worry if you’ve forgotten which door to come in; find the path to the Nursery entrance (off Morwick Grove) and there’ll be someone there to greet you and show you where to go.
Have a great weekend and we’ll look forward to seeing you next week.
Learning Journeys
Next week, we’d like to invite you to look at your child’s Learning Journey when you drop your child off at Nursery on Monday, Tuesday or Thursday morning from 9 until 9.30am.
We’re sure the children would love you to see how much progress they’ve made; it’s a great way to end the year and celebrate all of their hard work and learning.
We hope that you’ll be able to stay on one of the mornings, even if it’s just for 5 minutes!
Transition to Reception
Over the last few weeks, as part of their transition to Reception, our oldest children have enjoyed visiting their new classrooms to play. For their first visit, they visited when the classrooms were empty. They had a look around with a member of Nursery staff and enjoyed a story time. This week, they’ve been visiting with a few friends and getting to know their Reception teachers.
Children continue to enjoy our ‘under the water’ theme and this week, we enjoyed listening to ‘Commotion in the Ocean’ and finding out about different sea creatures.
We’ve been strengthening our finger muscles in the fiddly fingers area by squeezing pegs and adding them onto some jellyfish to make tentacles. It was a bit tricky at first and sometimes the pegs snapped but we persevered.
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In maths, we’ve been learning about capacity. We’ve been talking about when something is ‘full’ or ’empty’.
Help at home: Use these words together at home when you’re playing, in the bath or cooking. Is it full or empty? How do you know?
Not only did we find that one of our tadpoles had turned into a froglet this week, but we also found a tiny frog outside at the bottom of the garden. We enjoyed watching it hop around for a while and were surprised at how camouflaged it was in the grass.
Seaside photographs
Thank you to everyone that has sent in a seaside photograph so far. It’s not too late if you’d like to email us one photograph of your child at the seaside – we’ll look at them during snack time and talk about our favourite things to do at the seaside.