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.
Supertato to the rescue!
Children returned to Nursery with beaming smiles and were excited to see their friends. We loved hearing about your holiday adventures which included cooking sausages on the BBQ and hunting for eggs in your gardens, visiting the seaside, feeding lambs at the farm and flying on orange or blue aeroplanes.
This week, we enjoyed listening to ‘Supertato‘ and finding out about what happens in the supermarket after dark! Children enjoyed making Mr Potato head characters in our fiddly fingers area, rolling little peas in the dough and using the small world figures to create their own superhero stories.
In the sensory area, the Evil Pea and his friends had escaped from the freezer! Children enjoyed scooping the frozen peas and watching what happened to them once they’d been out of the freezer for a while. They also loved mashing them to create mushy peas.
In maths, we continued to practise our sorting and counting skills, sorting the vehicles by colour and type and counting how many were in each group.
Following the children’s interest in magnetism, we’ve created a discovery area with lots of magnetic items to explore. Children carried out their own investigations around Nursery, taking the magnets into different areas to test what they would ‘stick’ to. We looked at the different items that they found the magnets were attracted to and some children noticed that lots of them were made from metal and not plastic. What super scientists we are!
Sunny days
We’ve had some beautiful, sunny weather this weekend and we’re hoping that there’ll be more sunny days over the next few months. Please make sure that your child has a sun hat and water bottle in school every day. As always, please clearly label them with you child’s name.
We’ve also had a few questions about sun cream. On sunny days, sun cream should be applied before children come to Nursery. If your child’s sun cream requires it to be re-applied after lunch, please put a NAMED bottle of sun cream in their group’s water bottle basket just on the days that you would like it to be re-applied.
Welcome back!
Welcome back! We can’t wait to begin the summer term and find out all about your holidays. Thank you for your emails to share some of your learning with us from the last few weeks. It’s been great to see that you’ve been taking care of your bean plants and remembering to water them! Don’t forget to send us a photo of your plant to show us how much it has grown.
We’d also love to find out to how you’ve been getting on with your home learning targets. Have you been singing number rhymes and showing ‘finger numbers’? Have you been practising forming some of the letters of your name correctly or did you write a message in an Easter card? Maybe you decorated an egg with some patterns. Please take a couple of minutes to send us a brief email to let us know how your child is getting on. If you need any other ideas or support, please speak to a member of the Nursery team.
We’d also like to welcome Miss Thomas to Nursery this week. She will be joining us everyday and will be the Key Person for Green group. She can’t wait to start and to get to know everyone.
We’ll begin this week talking about the holidays and Easter celebrations as children settle back into Nursery routines. Look out for a post about our new topic and interests soon.
Happy Easter!
We’ve had a very egg-citing week learning all about Easter and taking part in some traditional Easter activities. We’ve sampled Hot Cross Buns at snack time, made Easter nests, decorated eggs and joined in an egg hunt.
In our sensory area, we looked at different types of egg – raw, scrambled, fried and boiled and talked about the differences that we could see. We also talked about the changes that occur when you heat an egg. Can we turn the scrambled egg back into raw egg? As we made Easter nests, we observed what happened when we heated the chocolate. We also noticed it got harder as it cooled in our bowls. It looked like the solid chocolate again!
Remember to plant your beanstalks! Children have been learning about the life cycle of a bean and talking about what plants need to grow. Can they remember what happened to the seed? They might also be able to name some key parts of their plant such as the seed, roots, stem and leaves.
We hope that you have a fantastic holiday and enjoy the Easter break. We’ll look forward to hearing all about it when we return to Nursery on Tuesday 19 April.
Reminders
- Please check that your child’s uniform/ clothing is named over the holidays.
- It was great to speak to you at our parent teacher consultations. If you notice your child achieving any of the targets that we discussed, or if you work on them during the holidays, please send a quick email to share their progress with us.
Tuesday – Hard boiled eggs!
On Tuesday 29 March, we’re going to decorate eggs. Please send your child to Nursery with a HARD boiled egg, wrapped safely in some named tissue/ a bag / container. We’ll have a few spares for emergencies! Thank you.
Red Nose Day fun!
We had a break from ‘beans’ on Friday and joined in some Red Nose Day themed fun. In the creative area, we printed on red noses and made our own – it was quite tricky to get them to stay on! We also enjoyed chopping up and investigating what was inside some ‘red noses’ (tomatoes!) in the sensory area. Thank you for joining in with our fundraising and your kind donations.
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Jack and the Beanstalk
We’ve loved reading the story of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and children have been using the story props in our small world area to re-tell the story. Fee Fi Fo Fum!
We also used a non-fiction text to learn about the life cycle of a bean. You might have spotted the bean seeds that we’ve been planting through the waving window in the Rainbow room. Some of them have started to germinate already; children spotted cracks in their seeds and tiny roots beginning to emerge.
In maths we’ve been sorting and counting seeds. We looked at the numerals on the pots and counted out the correct number of seeds to match. We tried to make sure that we remembered to STOP when we got to that number. Afterwards, we checked that we had got the correct number by lining up the seeds and counting them, touching just one seed at a time.
We’ve explored the texture and smell of different types of beans in the sensory area, including baked beans, kidney beans and butter beans. The baked beans were very smelly!
Other activities this week included painting beanstalks using rollers and leaf stamps, threading beads onto straws in our fine motor area and planting seeds in our gardening area outside.
Some children also enjoyed learning about bees using some non-fiction books because they found a very large, dead bumble bee outside and were fascinated by it. Could it sting us? How many legs did it have? They enjoyed being able to look at it closely and see the tiny hairs and patterns on its wings.
Thank you to everyone who was able to send in a baby and toddler photograph. Children loved looking at these and talking about how they have changed. If you haven’t sent them yet and would like to, please email us and we’ll add them to our ‘growing up’ display. We’ll continue to learn about ‘growing’ next week and will discuss things that we do to help us to grow and be happy and healthy.
Reminders
- Please look out for an email with the Zoom details for our Parent Teacher Consultations next week. We will send them in the morning on the day of your appointment. Please get in touch if you do not receive one by lunch time.
- Lots of children’s names have come off their water bottles. Please could you make sure your child’s is clearly visible. Thank you
Nursery open – Monday 14 March
Nursery will be open at 9am on Monday 14 March. We will continue to use the main Nursery entrance for all children. Thank you for your patience as we register everyone.