Butterflies
We had a lovely surprise on Monday morning when we returned to Nursery; we had a butterfly that had emerged from its chrysalis. There was a lot of interest in the butterfly house; we talked about the life cycle of a butterfly and what we needed to do next to look after the butterflies. Children helped to feed the butterflies with some strawberries and left over fruit from snack time.
Children noticed the beautiful pattern on the wings of the butterflies and we talked about their symmetry. In the creative area, children had a go at creating their own butterflies. We folded our paper in half and pressed down to make a print. It was the same on both sides!
We’re waiting for a sunny day to release the butterflies into our garden. Watch this space!
Animal ranger visit
On Tuesday morning, we had a very special visitor to Nursery. In fact, we had lots of little visitors, too! Children were very excited to find out what was hiding underneath all of the covers that the animal ranger, Amy, had brought.
We were very proud of how well Nursery behaved; they sat still and very quietly so that they didn’t scare all of the creatures. Children listened really carefully and found out lots of fascinating facts about millipedes, bearded dragons and giant African land snails.
At the end, Amy brought a snake to show us. Some children were a little bit wary of touching it but once they’d seen some of their friends have a turn, they were brave and stroked it, too. A couple of children were chosen to hold it- well done!
Thank you for all of your contributions towards the cost of our animal visitors.
B for bee!
This week, we’ve been finding out about bees and sampling some yummy honey at snack time. Children really enjoyed tasting both set and runny honey on their toast. There were a few surprised children that really liked the honey, even though they didn’t think they would.
In maths, we noticed a pattern in the honeycomb that we saw in the book about bees. We investigated using hexagons and other shapes to see if we could recreate the honeycomb pattern. There were also lots of opportunities to practise our counting skills, using the tiny wooden bees and flowers. At the dough table, we made bees and counted out 6 legs and 2 wings and in the creative area, we used yellow and black paint to make a repeating pattern of stripes on our bee pictures.
During group time, we continued to develop our phonological awareness by listening for initial sounds in words. We tried to find objects that started with the same initial sound. See if you can make a collection of items at home that start with the same sound. We also played a game where we had to spot the ‘odd one out’ from a group of pictures. The ‘odd one’ was the object that started with a different sound. You could have a go at this game at home. Collect 3 objects, for example, a spoon, a sock and a cup. Which one is the odd one out? Why?
Outside, we’ve been looking for minibeasts and learning about their habitats, watering our new plants and trying to identify different birds that we spot in the garden. We also have a new painting area which has been very popular, too.
Next week, we’re looking forward to a few exciting events including a visit from an animal ranger and some celebrations for the Queen’s Jubilee. If your child doesn’t attend Nursery on Friday afternoon for the School’s Jubilee celebrations, don’t worry, they won’t miss out. We’re going to have a mini Jubilee celebration in Nursery for those children that can’t attend.
Animal rangers – visit to Nursery
On Tuesday 24 May, the animal rangers will be visiting Nursery. They will be bringing along a wide range of animal species that will include a bearded dragon, rabbits, white tree frogs and many more.
This will be a great opportunity to learn interesting facts about different animals and their habitat. There will also be the opportunity to hold or touch some of the animals. Please alert your class teacher if your child has any allergies which may prevent them being around or touching any of the animals.
We are asking for a voluntary contribution per child towards the cost of the visit. This can be paid on the app. Please refer to your email for more details.
Unfortunately, on this occasion, we’re unable to invite those children that do not usually attend Nursery on Tuesday.
What the Ladybird Heard
We’ve enjoyed reading ‘What the Ladybird Heard‘ this week. It’s written by one of our favourite authors, Julia Donaldson. In the story corner, children enjoyed playing with the story props to re-tell the story and they were especially interested in the map that the burglars used to try and steal the fine prize cow.
Children made their own maps and took them outside to locate the prize/treasure that they’d hidden.
In group time, we played I Spy using the animals from the story. We had to listen very carefully to the sound. Some children noticed that some animals started with the same sound, such as ‘h’ for horse and hog. We’re working really hard to help children identify the initial sound in words at the moment. Have a go at playing I Spy at home this week to help reinforce this learning at home.
Here are a few other activities from this week:
- Exploring the texture of moon dough in the sensory area. It was very crumbly but you could also mould it in to mini sandcastles.
- Subitising spots on a ladybird
- Counting out the correct number of legs for our paper plate ladybirds
- Matching the number of spots on the ladybird to the numeral
We were also very excited to find a chrysalis on Tuesday morning! We have one caterpillar left and it’s getting bigger and bigger.
Finally, thank you to everyone that attended our drop-in session on Monday to look at your child’s Learning Journal. It was great to see parents and carers back in Nursery after such a long time of restrictions due to Covid-19. Our final drop-in session is on Wednesday 18 May from 4.15pm until 5pm, please call in if you can to have a look at what your child has been learning in Nursery this year.
Don’t forget – ‘Walk to school’ week!
Walk to School Week 16-20 May 2022
Next week is Walk to School Week (or scoot or ride).
We hope you’ll all try to take part in this, even if you can’t walk from home. The Buffers Pub and St Phillip’s Church have agreed for us to use their car parks so everyone has the opportunity to walk part of the way.
Remember to bring your raffle tickets each day you walk to put in your class boxes to be in with a chance of winning a prize!
Let’s get active!
Caterpillars
This week, we read another very famous book written by Eric Carle, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. Many children were already very familiar with the story, which allowed them to use their story telling skills in the book corner. If you have a copy at home, enjoy reading it together and see if your child can tell you the story in their own words using the illustrations on each page.
As we read the story, we also talked about the life cycle of a butterfly and learnt some new words including hatch and chrysalis. Can your child remember what a chrysalis is? In the story, Eric Carle refers to the home that the caterpillar makes with a different name – can they remember what word he used?
We’ve been watching our own hungry caterpillars very closely; they’ve already grown a lot. We’ll keep checking them next week to see what happens. Watch this space!
We added a few other caterpillar themed areas to Nursery, too. In the Fiddly fingers area, children enjoyed refining their fine motor skills by threading tiny beads onto a pipe cleaner to make some very tiny caterpillars. There were caterpillars to count in the maths area, caterpillars to make using playdough and spaghetti caterpillars to catch in the sensory area.
In maths, we’ve been talking about ‘more and less’. To begin with, we revisited some learning from earlier this year. We looked at 2 plates of cookies and talked about which plate had the most or fewest cookies. We asked children which one they would prefer and why. There were lots of comments which demonstrated their understanding: “I would choose that one because it has more” and “I want that one because there are 4 and that one only has 1 cookie on.” Children were very familiar with the terms ‘more’ and ‘most’, but they were less confident with the words ‘fewer’ and ‘fewest’. Try to use the words fewer/fewest at home this week to help consolidate this learning at home.
Next, we put 2 cookies on a plate that had been labelled with the numeral 3. Children were very quick to comment that we needed to put ‘one more’ cookie on the plate to make the number of cookies match the numeral. When we put 4 cookies on the same plate, they also knew it needed ‘one less’ and they took one cookie away. Great work, Nursery!
Outside, we continued with our gardening work; we’ve planted some more vegetable seeds and some ‘flower seed bombs’ near the fence at the bottom of the garden. There were lots of cars whizzing down ramps on the hill and the new fairy garden small world area was very popular.
Learning Journey – Drop in sessions
Now that Covid-19 restrictions have eased, we are pleased to be able to give you the opportunity to view at your child’s learning journey and look at what they have been learning this year. You are welcome to visit Nursery on one of the following dates:
- Monday 09 May– 2.30pm – 3.30pm
- Wednesday 18 May – 4.15pm – 5pm
Spiders
This week, we have been very busy in the garden. Children helped to prepare the planters, adding in some new compost before helping to sow some vegetable seeds. Once they’d planted the seeds, children remembered that they needed to water them to help them grow.
As we were out in the garden, we found lots of insects and bugs, including some big spiders hiding in the tyres. Children loved developing their gross motor skills as they climbed carefully through our giant spider web!
We listened to a story by Eric Carle called ‘The Very Busy Spider‘ and children joined in with the repeated refrains such as, “The spider didn’t answer. She was very busy spinning her web.” We have also been learning about the different parts of a book, including the title, front and back cover and the blurb. As we read the story, we pointed to some of the words so that children start to learn that the words have meaning and are read from left to right and from top to bottom. Understanding these key concepts of print are part of our literacy curriculum.
Next time you read a book, see if your child is aware of these five key concepts:
- print has meaning
- print can have different purposes
- we read English text from left to right and from top to bottom
- the names of the different parts of a book
- page sequencing
To extend children’s interest in bugs, we have a new ‘minibeast’ themed small world area in the Sunshine Room. In the playdough area, we practised rolling ‘sausage’ shapes like we do in dough disco; we used them to make legs for our spiders. At the beginning of the week, we spotted a fly had got trapped in a spider’s web. We looked at it closely, and used the illustrations from the story to help us draw some spiders webs using chalk.
During group times, we’ve been practising our mark making skills by drawing spiders. Children drew circles for the head and body and lines for hairy legs. Some children remembered that spiders had eight legs and they counted them carefully as they drew each one. We learnt all about the number 5 and we know that when a five frame is full, there must be five objects.
Next week, we’re going to read another story written by Eric Carle. Can you guess which one? We’ll give you a clue… some caterpillars arrived in Nursery this week!
Learning Update – Targets and support at home
We’ve had lots of emails this week to let us know about how your child has been working towards the targets that we discussed during our parent teacher consultation meetings. Thank you for working with us to support your child. We know that parents/carers are a child’s first educator so support at home has a significant impact on future learning.
If you haven’t had a chance to work on them yet after the busy Easter holidays, have another look and see what you can do towards them this week. Lots of the activities will fit into day to day life and your child’s play time.
As some children had similar targets for some areas, we’ve put together a few ideas to help you further support your child at home. Check which targets your child was given and have a look at the corresponding activities.
Reading – Spot rhyming words in stories.
- You could visit the library and choose some new books to share together. Julia Donaldson stories are great for spotting rhymes, as well as the ‘Oi Frog‘ series of books by Kes Grey.
- Listen to a bed time story every night, the more children hear rhyming stories, the more confident they will become at spotting rhymes.
- As you read a story, pause at the end of the line where there is a rhyming word. Can your child suggest the missing rhyming word? Challenge them to think of another word that might rhyme and see how many you can think of.
- Make up silly rhymes with real or non-sense rhyming words. Children usually find these very funny!
- Sing nursery rhymes and replace the rhyming word with one that doesn’t rhyme. You could make up your own rhyme, adapting words from their favourite nursery rhyme. “Twinkle, twinkle chocolate bar, my friend drives a rusty car…”
- Listen to this rhyming song and see if you can add in your own rhyming words.
- Watch this video and play the rhyming game at home.
Writing – Encourage children to write some of their name using correct letter formation.
- Start with just the first letter of your child’s name. Gradually add in the next letters as they master each one.
- You could write letters outside using chalks or an old paintbrush dipped in water.
- If you have a shallow tray, add a thin layer of sand/shaving foam/sugar and get children to write the letter with their finger or a stick.
- Write the letter for them to trace over. Use a green dot at the point where they need to start writing the letter and put a red dot where they need to stop. Make sure that you watch them carefully to ensure that they form them correctly.
Writing – Encourage your child to pretend write such as making shopping lists or writing messages.
- Ask your child to help you make a list of things that you need from the supermarket. What sound does it start with? apples – do they have an a in their name? Can they remember how to write it? If you are baking, ask them to help write a list of ingredients that you will need.
- Role play going to a café. Ask your child to take your order and encourage them to write any sounds that they can hear, especially at the start of the word such as writing a letter m for ‘milkshake’. Praise their attempts and at this stage, it doesn’t matter if the letter is incorrect or not formed as it should be – children are still learning and may only know a limited number of letters. They may also write symbols that resemble letters, this is a great start to early writing.
- Encourage them to make cards or write messages to you or family and friends.
Maths – Counting objects 1:1 to 5
- Count anything and everything in everyday life! Birds on the fence, coins, biscuits on a plate, apples in the bowl…
- It is often easier to count objects accurately if they are in a line so encourage children to touch/move each object as they count it.
- Ensure that they only say one number for each object as they point to it/touch it.
Maths – Sing number songs to help show ‘finger numbers’ to 5
- Here are a few number rhymes for you to sing at home together. Ask children to show the number on their fingers for each verse.
- When you’re out and about, or at home, ask children to show you ‘how many’ on their fingers. At lunch time, you could ask, how many carrot sticks have you got on your plate? If you see a numeral 3 on a door, ask them to show you 3.
Maths – Subitising – How many objects are there without counting? (up to 3)
- What is subitising? Watch this short video to find out more.
- Go on a subitising walk, look out for groups of 1, 2 and 3 objects. You might look for similar objects such as dandelions in the grass that are growing close together in a group of 3 or 2 pebbles on the path. Encourage your child to notice how many there are without counting them.
- Having peas for dinner? Look at how the peas are arranged on your plate. You’ll see that some are on their own, some might be next to another pea in a group of 2 and some might be in groups of 3. Spot 1,2 and 3 peas in a group without counting them.
- Don’t go out and buy new games, but have a look in the back of your cupboards, you might already have a game that requires your child to subitise, such as ‘Spotty Dogs’ or ‘The game of Ladybirds‘ by Orchard Toys.
Have fun working with your child on their target, and remember, please let us know how you’re getting on and if you need any further help.