Home Link – Holidays
February half term
Please bring in a leaflet from somewhere that you visit or send us one or two photographs of your adventures and activities during the holidays. We will share these throughout the week when we return to Nursery. They’re always a great way of starting conversations and children love to show their friends.
Please email [email protected]
Sport Relief – The Big Summit Sofa Challenge Friday 06 March
We are very excited to announce that Scholes (Elmet) Primary School will be the starting point of the BBC’s Big Summit Sofa Challenge on Friday 06 March.
Harry Gration, Amy Garcia and Paul Hudson from BBC Look North will join in with Wake Up Shake Up as their warm-up before they set off at 10am. They will then head towards Barwick, pulling and pushing their red sofa 100 miles, incorporating some of Yorkshire’s biggest climbs. We will be making banners, flags and as much noise as we can to create an amazing send off for the celebrity team.
It would be amazing if we were able to start this challenge off with a generous donation and so we are inviting the children to come to school in their sports kit, in exchange for a £1 contribution.
The BBC television cameras will also be in school to film us and talk to as many people as they can – some may even feature on the news that night.
They have asked that we encourage as many parents, family and friends to stay after they have dropped children off in the morning, so please feel free to show your support and join in with the fun!
Thank you in anticipation of your support.
Home Link – More or fewer?
During some of our maths activities and during day to day play in Nursery, we have been comparing quantities of objects. Many children understood the concept of who had ‘more’ or the ‘most’ but children were less familiar with the word ‘fewer’.
Try to use this language at home as you play and during everyday tasks. You could make a game to play by gathering a handful of objects e.g Lego bricks, coins, buttons, beads or anything small that can be counted. Put them into a bag or box and take turns to put your hands in and pull out a handful of objects. Who has more? Who has fewer?
To encourage your child to think even more, try asking questions, such as:
- What can you tell me about the number of objects?
- I think I have more than you – how could we check?
- What makes you think you collected more?
- Who do you think collected more objects?
- Who collected fewer objects?
- Have a go at taking handfuls of different sizes. For example,
sometimes take a big handful of items and the next time only take
a small handful of items.
Handy hint – we have been learning to use the word ‘fewer’ to describe
a smaller number of countable objects, such as coins, buttons, people or
pencils. ‘Less’ would be used to describe smaller amount of something
that cannot be individually counted, such as money, water or time.
Unicorns, dinosaurs and balancing on the cracks!
Whilst we haven’t had much frost, snow or ice yet this winter, it was quite chilly one morning this week. So much so, that children decided they needed to do something to warm up. We had great fun chalking an obstacle course on the path. It began with children talking about cracks in the ground; we drew some lines/cracks to carefully balance along and then drew some lava to jump over and stepping stones to hop between. Children took turns to balance along the cracks and jump over the hot lava.
Physical Development is one of the Prime areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage. Children working within the 30-50 month developmental band should:
- Move freely and with pleasure and confidence in a range of ways, such as
slithering, shuffling, rolling, crawling, walking, running, jumping, skipping, sliding and hopping. - Mount stairs, steps or climbing equipment using alternate feet.
- Walk downstairs, two feet to each step while carrying a small object.
- Run skilfully and negotiates space successfully, adjusting speed or direction to avoid obstacles.
- Can stand momentarily on one foot when shown.
Children continued to enjoy the dinosaur enhancements and as requested last week, the new unicorn rainbow drops in the sensory area were very popular, with both boys and girls. There was lots of scooping, filling, emptying and pouring.
Over the last few weeks, children have continually returned to a game where they play ‘librarians’. As a result of this continued interest, we’ve created a mini library role play area in the Sunshine room and during group time, children enjoyed visiting the school library.
Reminders and Home Link
Reminders
- Please name all shoes, hats, coats, cardigans, jumpers and wellington boots! If it might come off in Nursery, name it! Thank you for your help, it will enable us to reunite children with their property.
- Remember to sign your child up for a school lunch or packed lunch on the signing in sheet. Please also write your child’s NAME on their PACKED LUNCH BOX. Remember we have a NO NUTS policy.
- If you are new to Nursery and haven’t returned your snack payment, please do so as soon as possible. Thank you.
Home Link
We regularly post an activity for you to take part in at home. This is usually something fun and easy to join in with and should only take a few minutes. It’s often an activity that is linked to some learning that has taken place in Nursery and is great way for you to share this with your child and help them to make links between home and school. Please remember to tell your child’s Key Person when you have completed your home link; children love to share their learning and be praised.
Dinosaur Roar!
As you’ll remember from last week, many children have shown an interest in dinosaurs. We’ve captured this interest successfully in our maths area; it’s been a very popular area with children enjoying exploring number and mathematics in different ways. Some children have chosen to line dinosaurs up in size order, some have grouped them according to colour and others have enjoyed counting how many they could find of each type.
In group time, we’ve been working on ‘subitising’ numbers. This is where we look at a small group of objects and can instantly recognise how many there are without the need to count them. Lots of children can already do this for dot patterns on dice as well as for a small number of objects in front of them (eg. 3 or 4). It’s an essential part of early mathematical development and will also help children begin to understand how a number is made up. For example, four dinosaurs scattered on the table could land in different ways. There could be three close together and one on its own, two groups of two dinosaurs, or four scattered separately. There are still four dinosaurs on the table, just split in different ways. Being able to recognise small groupings within a larger group, is an important skill that will help children as they begin to explore partitioning numbers as they get older.
Other dinosaur related learning involved…
- reading rhymes and stories about dinosaurs stomping, flapping and roaring down by the swamp
- exploring slimy swamp water
- investigating colour mixing and painting patterns on dinosaurs
- learning about volcanoes in our dinosaur small world area
In other non-dinosaur related areas of Nursery, children have loved our new role play area in the Sunshine room. We have created a cafe where children can order from the menu and enjoy making food to serve to the customers. This has been a hive of activity and has helped to engage some children in an area of Nursery where they might not usually play. It has been great to see some new faces venturing into the Sunshine room to explore.
Next week’s interests could involve some mythical creatures, as requested by a number of children. Watch this space!
Home Link – Listening for sounds
This week, children enjoyed reading ‘Peace at Last’. In the story, Daddy bear can’t get to sleep because there are so many sounds that he can hear in the night. He can hear Mummy bear snoring, the owls hooting, the fridge buzzing and the clock ticking.
What can you hear? Listen carefully to noises that you can hear in different places around your home and whilst you’re out and about. Talk about the sounds that your child can hear. Are they loud? quiet?
Remember to let your key worker know what sounds you heard.
Listening for environmental sounds is an important skill and is part of our early teaching of phase one phonics from Letters and Sounds. As well as listening to sounds, we also try to copy and make sounds using our voice and body.
I’ll huff and I’ll puff…
We’ve loved listening to the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ this week and by the end of the week, many children were beginning to join in with the repeated refrains in the story. They enjoyed using the props in the book corner to re-tell the story so we will continue and consolidate this next week.
Many children have shown an interest in dinosaurs since we returned to Nursery. We’ve gradually added a few dinosaur themed enhancements to our provision to capture this interest. We have been exploring printing with dinosaur shaped stamps and making dinosaur footprints in the playdough. A few children were fascinated with the imprints and textures that the dinosaurs body/feet made as they pushed them into the dough. We also saw some great pictures in our mark making area; we had ‘Daddy and baby’ dinosaurs as well as children enjoying experimenting with patterns (stripes, circles, dots) on dinosaur outlines.
In maths, we’ve continued to look at repeating patterns (colour, shape and size) and children are beginning to be able to select what would come next. For example, in the game shown on the interactive whiteboard in this photograph, children had to look at which shape and/or colour would come next on the train.
Home Link – ‘What makes us tick?’
Please complete a post-it note this week when you bring your child to Nursery to add it to our ‘What makes us tick?’ board. There are clips underneath your child’s photograph on the red, green, blue or yellow display boards.
This display helps to tell us all about your child’s current interests and fascinations. We often see common themes between children and they help us to plan exciting and relevant learning activities in Nursery. Common interests often include dinosaurs, a particular animal, a favourite book, song or nursery rhyme.
Making new friends
This week, we enjoyed meeting all of our new children and families in Nursery. It was lovely to see our older children welcoming the new children and helping them to find their way around and settle in.
Whilst there were many happy faces at our waving window each morning, don’t worry if your child wasn’t one of them. It can often take a while for children to settle and it’s also quite normal for children to have a little wobble after a few visits. If this happens, remember to talk to your child about Nursery in a positive way; they’ll soon get used to their new environment and settle into routines.
The medical role play enhancement in our home corner continued to be very popular this week. We’ve lost track of the number of broken arms, bandaged heads and fevers that we’ve treated! Children have been engrossed in their role play; it’s provided lots of opportunities to talk to other children, cooperate and take turns during play.
Following on from an interest that we noticed from the new children’s ‘All about me’ information, we’re looking forward to reading ‘The Three Little Pigs’ next week. Please enjoy reading this story at home together so that your child is familiar with it when they come to Nursery.