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.
Wanted – Baby photographs!
Next week, we’ll be learning all about growing up and looking at how we change as we get older.
It would be great if we could look at some photographs of children when they were babies and toddlers. If you are able to, please send us an email with a photograph of your child as a baby and a toddler. We’ll use these in group time and will also look at them in Nursery throughout the week. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
World Book Day
It’s been an eventful first week back with both ‘Pancake Day’ and World Book Day!
We loved all of your super costumes and enjoyed reading some of your favourite stories. Here are a few snaps for you to enjoy spotting our favourite characters!
In maths, we’ve been learning about the number 3. There are lots of stories involving the number three, we read some of them as part of our World Book Day celebrations. Can you think of any?
In group time, we looked at 3 spots on a dice, 3 counters on a five frame and spotted that there were 3 corners and sides on a triangle. We all collected three things from around the room and counted them carefully to check that we’d all found 3. Have a look to see if you can find groups of three things around your home. Can you spot the number three on any house doors or number plates? We also liked watching this song all about the number 3.
Here are a few other activities that we’ve enjoyed this week.
Before the holiday, as part of their music sessions, children enjoyed making their own musical instruments. We hope that you had as much fun playing them as we did!
Reminders
- Please check your emails and remember to book an appointment for our Parent Teacher Consultations that will take place soon. Please refer to your email for more details.
Goodbye and good luck!
Sadly, Mrs Crompton will be leaving us on Friday to start a new job, closer to her home. We’d like to say thank you to Mrs Crompton for all of her hard work in Nursery over the last few years and we know that she will be missed. We wish her lots of luck in her new job.
Thank you and good luck, Mrs Crompton!
Shrove Tuesday
We had a great first day back at Nursery; it was Shrove Tuesday so we enjoyed making and eating pancakes at snack time. Children enjoyed mixing the ingredients together and watching Mrs Beesley cook them and flip them in the pan. We learnt a new rhyme as we cooked them. Can you say it together at home the next time you have pancakes?
Mix a pancake, stir a pancake, pop it in the pan. Fry a pancake, toss a pancake, catch it if you can!
Happy faces
This week, as part of our Expressive Arts and Design curriculum, we’ve re-visited learning to draw ourselves. We used mirrors to look at our faces and talked about what shape we needed to draw on the paper first. We then looked at our features and tried to add more details to our drawings such as hair, ears and eyes. Some children added tiny little lines for eye lashes and drew spirals for curly hair.
Have a go at home together. Can you draw each other? Start with a circle shape for your face and then add in some features.
You might have also spotted some funny faces on the table and window! We talked about some of the different faces that we make when we feel happy, sad, worried or angry and used iPads to take selfies of ourselves! In our loose parts area, we used the resources to create some of these faces with our friends. What could you use for the eyes? How would you make a sad face?
At the beginning of the week, children enjoyed some ‘red’ themed activities as there was a lot of excitement around Valentine’s Day. We cut out different sized heart shapes in the dough area and decorated them with crystals, we used mini hole punchers in the fiddly fingers area and there was a lot of activity in the mark making area as children created their own cards and signed their names.
We’ve also been busy building dens and obstacle courses with tunnels and slides in the Sunshine Room as the windy weather prevented us from being outside at the start of the week. In our small world area, we worked together to draw some roads and create a city to drive the cars around.
We hope that you all enjoy half term and we’ll see you on Tuesday 01 March when Nursery opens. Remember, we are closed on Monday for a Training Day.
If you’d like to send us a photograph of your favourite holiday activity or if your child wows you with something that they achieve during the week, please e-mail us. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Reminder – WORLD BOOK DAY
It’s World Book Day on Thursday 03 March and if your child chooses to, they can dress up as one of their favourite book characters and bring a copy of their favourite book to school. Please refer to the earlier school email for more details. Also, please be mindful of typical Nursery activities when choosing a costume – children need to be able to play both inside and outside comfortably and safely and they also need to be able to access the toilet easily in their costumes!
Please make sure you write their names on their books so that they make it home again for bed time.
Safety week
This week, we joined in with school’s safety themed week. We’ve been learning all about staying safe in lots of different situations, such as online safety and road safety.
We spotted things around Nursery that could be dangerous and talked about the things that we can do at school to stay safe, such as keeping the floor clear of toys so that we don’t trip, locking the Nursery gate to keep us safe and putting cones on our playground when the play equipment is too slippy to use. We also spotted things that could be dangerous in our homes.
During group time, we played a subitising maths game on our iPads. Before we did this, we talked about ways to stay safe whilst using technology at home such as making sure that we are near a grown up and using apps and games that our parents and carers have said are ok for us to play. We also agreed that we’d tell someone if we saw any thing that we didn’t like pop up on our screens.
On Tuesday, we had a special visitor in Nursery. Sue, our school crossing assistant, came to talk to us about how she helps to keep us safe on the road near school and about other things that we can do to stay safe when we’re walking near roads. We looked at Sue’s lollipop ‘stop’ sign and talked about why she wears a very bright coat. How is it different to Mrs Long’s coat?Outside, we made our own signs and made sure our Nursery roadway was safe as people played on the trikes.
Later in the week, we had some more special visitors…
Some firefighters came to visit and showed us some of the features of their fire engine. We were very lucky and got to try on their helmets and to hold the hose. The siren was very loud! We also talked about the ways they can help people who get into danger.
Talk to your child about keeping safe at home and about road safety. What can they remember? Can you think of some other ways to stay safe when trying different activities such as swimming or going to the park?
Happy New Year!
This week, we’ve enjoyed learning about the Chinese and Lunar New Year. We used non-fiction books to learn more about how some people like to celebrate across the world and we also watched these ‘Let’s celebrate‘ videos to find out about how some families in England prepare for the celebrations.
Children created their own ‘good luck’ banners by painting patterns on to red paper and during group time, we made paper lanterns. There was a lot of interest in our New Year topic table, with children enjoying looking at the paper dragons, fortune cookies and chop sticks. In the sensory area, we explored the texture of dry noodles and found out what happened when we added hot water. Our fingers also got a good work out as we tried to use the chopsticks to pick the noodles up.
We found out that some people like to give good luck cards and red envelopes containing money to their friends and family during the festival. In our maths area, we practised our subitising and counting skills as we counted out the correct number of coins to match the number/dots on each envelope. Some children really enjoyed this and went on to make their own coins and envelopes in the creative area.
One of the favourite activities from this week, had to be creating our own dragon dance. At the beginning of the week, we watched some dragon dancing and afterwards, children began to experiment using fabric and instruments to create their own interpretation of the dance. We practised walking together in a line and then introduced moving our bodies higher and lower in time to the music.
By the end of the week, we’d created our own dragon head and had perfected our dragon dance!
Finally, we also talked about the recent very windy weather. We listened to songs about the wind and waved ribbons using large arm movements to create shapes and watch the ribbons dancing in the wind.
