Shapes
This week, we’ve been learning all about 2D shapes. In group time, we started by sorting some shapes by their colour and size. Next, we tried to find the same shapes and sorted them into circles, triangles, squares and rectangles. We’ve used lots of new mathematical vocabulary as we described the properties of shapes, including some formal and informal language such as sides, corners, curved, straight, round and flat.
On Wednesday, we went on a shape hunt around school. Children were really good at spotting some common shapes in the environment. Have a look for some shapes around your house or on your walk to nursery. At the moment, we’ve been learning about common 2D shapes, but you may spot some other shapes or 3D shapes too.
We also enjoyed listening to these shape songs – see if you can spot some shapes as you sing along. Shape song 1 and The Shape Song Swingalong
Outside, we’ve been working on our physical development by practising balancing and jumping as we made our way around an obstacle course. Lots of children were a little bit wobbly to begin with, but after a few attempts, they were really pleased to be able to balance along the beams without any assistance.
Parent Consultation Meetings
Thank you to everyone who was able to attend a meeting this week. It was great to speak to you all (despite a few Zoom hiccups) and share how pleased we are with how well children have settled into Nursery life. It’s amazing how much children have already progressed, growing in both confidence and independence since joining Nursery in September.
If you couldn’t make your appointment, please get in touch with us to rearrange.
Reminders
- It’s definitely got colder this week. We play outside in all weathers, so please make sure that your child has a warm coat every day. You may also want to send a hat and some gloves, too. Please try to name them somewhere, there’s often a label inside gloves, or you can use a Sharpie pen in the wrist band.
- Please send your child with a named water bottle every day, and fill it with water. Thank you for your cooperation with this.
- Look out for the Christmas information letter that we will be sending home soon. It contains all the important dates and information about our Christmas party.
Fundraising
A massive thank you to everyone who donated to our recent fundraising events – you were all unbelievably generous. We managed to raise £126.25 for our school charity – Leeds Autism Services. This was following our Odd Sock Day at the start of anti-bullying week. Last Friday we raised money for Children in Need and managed to raise £410.30.
Thank you all so much.
Christmas Performance
Nursery and Reception Christmas Performance
Unfortunately, this year, we are unable to invite you in to watch our Christmas performance but this won’t stop us from getting dressed up and singing for you all. We will still be performing and you will be able to see us from the comfort of your favourite chair.
We will be filming the performance and emailing it for all of our parents and carers to enjoy on Monday 13 December.
This year, we will be performing a play aptly named “Our First Christmas Play”
To get into the Christmas spirit, the Nursery children will all need a Christmas top or jumper, trousers, leggings or a skirt to wear when taking part in the play.
Please bring these to Nursery in a named bag by Wednesday 1st December please. The clothes will need to remain at Nursery until we have filmed our play.
Thanks for your support with this, the children are really enjoying learning the new songs and we are sure that you will enjoy watching them perform.
Children in Need
Thank you for donating to our Children in Need fundraising non-uniform day. In Nursery, we talked about what ‘Children in Need’ is and why people get involved in lots of spotty themed, fun activities.
Here are a few photos from today. You might be able to spot (haha) that we even managed to incorporate Pudsey Bear into our maths learning at group time this morning! We’ve been learning how to complete a simple repeating pattern so we practised this, adding a repeating colour spotty pattern to Pudsey’s bandana.
We been busy in the creative area, decorating and making our own spotty Pudsey Bear ears.
We’ve practised our pencil control by joining Pudsey’s spots in the mark making area.
We also got a little bit messy with foam and spots in the sensory area! Here are the before photographs…
World Nursery Rhyme Week
As you’ll have read in our previous post, this week we joined in with World Nursery Rhyme Week. Ask your child to sing their favourite rhyme and see if you can find a new nursery rhyme to learn this weekend.
In group time, we tested our memory with a nursery rhyme themed Kim’s game and drew Incy Wincy spider with 8 hairy legs.
Can you guess the nursery rhyme linked to each activity? Ask your child to give you some clues!
(Baa Baa Black Sheep – printing, I’m a Little Teapot – Water area, Little Miss Muffet – sensory tray and 5 Currant Buns -playdough)
Outside, children have shown an interest in ‘telescopes’ which reminded us of a character from a popular children’s story book – Timothy Pope! We enjoyed reading ‘Shark in the Park‘ and children have begun to retell the story in our new small world area.
Reminders
- Don’t forget to join Mrs Beesley or Mrs Long for your Parent Consultation meeting next week. Look out for an email with more information and Zoom details on before your appointment. If you don’t receive this by 9am Monday morning, please let us know.
World Nursery Rhyme Week
It’s World Nursery Rhyme Week, so we’ll be singing lots of rhymes in Nursery – even more than usual! We know how important Nursery rhymes are for developing early literacy skills; we’re hoping that by the end of the this week, children will be able to confidently sing along to some nursery rhymes or will have learnt some new ones, in addition to those that they already know.
Each year, World Nursery Rhyme Week focuses on 5 songs and rhymes, if you’re not familiar with this year’s rhymes, follow the links below to sing a long at home.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes
In Nursery this week, lots of our areas of provision are linked to some of these rhymes, as well as some other favourites. We have Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars to sort in our maths area, Incy Wincy Spider to put together at the creative table, Little Miss Muffet’s curds and whey to mix in the sensory area and 5 Current Buns to make at the playdough table.
What’s your child’s favourite rhyme? Send us an email to let us know and we’ll make sure we sing it in Nursery.
Pop! Bang! Crackle!
Thank you to everyone who emailed photographs of your Bonfire Night celebrations. Children enjoyed sharing them with their friends and talking about their Bonfire Night experiences during our ‘snack and chat’ time. Some children loved all of the different colours and noises, where as others explained that they didn’t like the loud bangs in the night.
In Nursery, our Bonfire Night small world area was very popular and a great starting point for conversations. Children talked about what they’d seen and heard, as well how to stay safe and how to look after animals on Bonfire Night. We made firework patterns outside in the sand and used fluorescent paints to create our own firework pictures.
In maths this week, we continued comparing groups of objects to say which had the most and fewest. Children are getting much more confident with this. We compared spikes on hedgehogs in the playdough, counters on the light panel and we even spotted which pile had the most leaves.
Outside, children loved collecting leaves to help tidy our playground. This required lots of teamwork and gave our arm muscles a good work out as we used the brushes and rakes to make large piles of leaves. It’s a great way of developing our gross motor skills, too. The best part was definitely jumping in the leaves and listening to the rustling and crunching noises!
Here are a few other photos from this week:
Next week – Odd socks, Nursery rhymes and Pudsey Bear!
As you may have read on the main school news feed, next week is Anti-Bullying Week. This year’s theme is ‘One Kind Word’ and Nursery will be joining in with the rest of school with Odd Socks Day on Monday. Odd Socks Day is to raise awareness of our differences, individuality and personal choice. Your child (and you!) can come to school wearing odd socks to celebrate what makes them unique.
It’s also World Nursery Rhyme Week, so lots of our areas in Nursery will be linked to a well known Nursery Rhyme. Look out for another post about this soon.
And next Friday is Children in Need day. This is a non-uniform day. Your child is invited to come to school in non-uniform and make a donation to the charity.
Welcome Back!
We loved hearing about all of your half term adventures this week. Some people enjoyed jetting off to sunnier climates and others enjoyed a spooky walk along woodland trails. There was also lots of talk of collecting sweet treats on Sunday evening in the rain!
This week, in group times we’ve been focussing on our listening skills further. We reminded ourselves of what makes a good listener and then set off on a listening walk through school. Some of the sounds we heard were loud, but some were very quiet and we had to listen very carefully and stay silent and still. Can your child remember going on a listening walk? See if they remember some of the things that we heard.
Here are some of the sounds that we heard:
- a baby crying in playgroup
- a spoon ‘clinking’ in a bowl as someone stirred round and round and the ‘chop, chop, chopping’ noise of a knife in the kitchen
- a creaky door and a door slamming
- teachers talking and children laughing
- a machine whirring – it wasn’t the washing machine though, it was the photocopier!
- vehicles on the road and birds quietly singing
- the leaves rustling and the wind blowing past our ears
Why not go on a listening walk abound your house and garden? What can you hear? Listening and identifying environmental sounds around us is a really important part of developing children’s early phonics skills. Let us know how you get on.
In maths, we’re learning to compare collections of objects and say which group has more things. To keep it simple initially, we’ve been comparing sets that have the same type of items and an obvious difference in quantity (with one group having a widely different number of things). We looked at which plate had more sweets and which web had the most spiders on it (and also which had the fewest). We’ll be continuing this learning next week. Try and include it in some day to day activities at home to help your child consolidate their learning. Which garage has the most cars? Which pile has fewest socks? Which pile has more coins?
Highlights of the week also included…
- Storytime on Monday with Heather the Witch , aka Miss Backhouse!
- Using tongs to pick insects out of some very sticky and slimy jelly.
- Creating a track game outside where the dragon had to catch the wizard and witches before they reached the cauldron. We rolled the dice and the witch and wizard had to move forward that many spaces.
- Room on the Broom continued to be a popular story so we made our own wands at the creative table and thought of our own magic words to say as we cast some spells.
- We’ve also mixed more potions, drawn lots of patterns and even saw some superheroes using a map to help find and rescue people in danger!
After the excitement of Bonfire Night, our learning and activities at the start of next week will be themed around this celebration. Please e-mail us a photograph if you enjoy joining in with any Bonfire Night celebrations. It’s a great way to remind children and encourage conversation about their family and home life. scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Have a safe and fun Bonfire Night!
Pumpkins and potions
It doesn’t seem like two minutes ago that we were visiting our new children on their door steps and now we’re writing our final post of the half term! We’ve had a fantastic start to the autumn term and have already seen children making lots of progress with their learning and becoming much more independent.
Here are a few things that we enjoyed in the final week, some of the most popular activities involved exploring pumpkins! We investigated what was inside them, enjoying putting our hands in the slimy, squelchy flesh and picking out some seeds. Children also loved decorating and painting them in the creative area and joining in with the ‘Five Little Pumpkins’ counting story in our maths area.
Children enjoyed re-telling the story of ‘Room on the Broom’ and working together to complete jigsaw puzzles of the witch and dragon. The water area was a hive of activity with children working together to share eye balls, spiders and bugs to mix into their potions!
We hope that you all have a lovely, relaxing holiday and we look forward to hearing all about your adventures when we return to Nursery on Monday 01 November. If you have any photographs that you would like to share with us, or if your child achieves something that they’ve been working towards, don’t forget to send us a quick email – scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Reminders
- Please ensure that your child’s water bottle only contains water.
- As detailed in our letter, please let us know if you are interested in increasing your child’s sessions in Nursery. We will be welcoming new children in January and may not be able to guarantee extra hours after this point.
- As the weather has most definitely become more autumnal, please ensure your child has a warm, waterproof coat at Nursery (with a hood) every day.
Autumnal art and magnetism
It definitely felt more autumnal this week with the arrival of some windy and cooler weather. Outside, we enjoyed using some of our Autumn treasure to create our own autumnal artwork inspired by the artist, Andy Goldsworthy. Whilst doing this, we also used some of our sorting skills to sort the leaves into different colour piles. Some of them were quite tricky to sort as they were a mixture of colours.
At the end of the week, this little toy duck was the topic of much conversation! Children realised that they could move the duck on the pond by turning a dial but they couldn’t see what made it move. This generated lots of questions about how it worked.
As a result of this curiosity, we talked about magnets and began to explore magnetism around the garden. Children worked together to see what they could find that the magnets would be attracted to, or ‘stick’ to. They also noticed that some things didn’t ‘stick’.
Do you have anything that’s magnetic at home or any toys that use magnets? Have a look and let us know if you find any.
In the water area, we used large tongs and ladles to collect the apples that were floating. We talked about their size and counted how many we’d collected in our bowls.
Following on from printing a few weeks ago, this week, we printed with leaves. We also discovered that when you paint over a leaf and remove it, it leaves the outline on the paper!
We also enjoyed threading beads onto twigs in our fiddly fingers area which is a great way to develop our pincer grip and fine motor skills.
In group time this week, we enjoyed drawing different patterns on some wellies. We drew horizontal lines, spots and some children created their own patterns including ‘x’ and zig-zags.
Next week…
At this time of year, it’s inevitable that children begin to talk about pumpkins and all things magical! Next week, we’ll read one of our favourite stories, Room on the Broom and lots of our learning will be pumpkin related!
Notices
- If your child doesn’t attend Nursery full time and you would like to increase their sessions, please look out for a letter this week and speak to Mrs Beesley or Mrs Long.
- School (including Nursery) is closed on Friday 22 October for a training day and the following week is half term. Nursery reopens on Monday 01 November.