Incy Wincy Spider
On Tuesday, it was very wet and miserable outside. We said lots of rainy day related rhymes, including ‘Doctor Foster’, ‘Rain, rain go away,’ and of course, ‘Incy Wincy Spider’.
Doctor Foster went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain.
He fell in a puddle, right up to his middle
And never went there again.
Whilst singing in the Nursery Rhyme corner, a big spider ran across the carpet. We caught it and looked at it closely before letting it go again. A few minutes later, somebody found another spider in the bottom of a box. Sadly, this spider was dead, but that also meant that we could use our magnifying glasses and Exploroscope to look at its eight legs very closely. (The Exploroscope is a digital microscope that connects to the iPad. It is easy to use and very child friendly.)
Children were fascinated!
“Look at all those spikes,” one child commented when they saw the tiny little hairs on its legs. Once we’d finished looking at the spider, children went on to explore other items including shells, pine cones and their own hands and hair!
“It’s on the iPad and its really, really big!”
“Can I see my finger nail? Closer, closer,”
World Nursery Rhyme Week
We’re looking forward to joining in with World Nursery Rhyme Week. We have lots of fun activities planned around some of our favourite rhymes. Look out for more information in your child’s folder this week.
Here are a few of the popular rhymes that we’ll enjoy learning and singing along to:
Remember to take part in our Home Link activity. Please bring in an item that is linked to your child’s favourite Nursery rhyme. We’re going to create a collection of Nursery rhyme props in the Rainbow Room for children to share with their friends.
If you’d like to find out more about why singing Nursery rhymes are so important for your child’s early literacy skills and language development, there are lots of links on the World Nursery Rhyme Week website and an article here that summarises some of the many benefits.
Run, run as fast as you can…
Children loved listening to The Gingerbread Man story this week and quickly began to join in with the repeated refrains in the story. We re-told the story outside and enjoyed baking our own gingerbread people at the beginning of the week. In maths, we practised lots of important counting skills when putting the buttons on our ginger bread people.
One of the highlights of the week had to be investigating what would happen to the Gingerbread Man if he got wet in the river. The children were fascinated watching as the gingerbread ‘melted’ (we talked about melting and dissolving) in the water.
We will remember them – Remembrance Day 2018
The children listened to poems and stories, then talked about Remembrance Day this week at school. They made poppies and some wrote messages to the soldiers.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Laurence Binyon
Thank you to Mrs Thorne for her artistic input and Peter Smith, from Lyndhurst View, who made the central piece.
Bang! Pop! Whooosh!
There were lots of happy faces in Nursery on Monday morning and lots of excited tales of Halloween parties and firework related fun.
We enjoyed talking about the photographs that some parents and carers sent in from their holidays, but we’d love to see more. They’re a really great starting point for conversations and help to remind children about their activities at home. The ‘Understanding the World’ part of the Early Years Foundation Stage requires children to be able to freely communicate about their home life. Having a stimulus to look at with children, such as a leaflet for somewhere they have visited or a photograph, is a really big help when trying to begin a conversation. Equally, something as simple as you telling us at the beginning of the day or emailing us about something you have done, is a helpful way for us to initiate conversation with your child about their experiences.
Here are a few ideas of things that you can do at home to support your child in the ‘Understanding the World’ and ‘Communication and Language’ areas of the curriculum. They’re taken from a really useful document,‘What to expect, when?’. It breaks down the Early Years Foundation Stage into a more user and parent/ cared friendly version.
As you can imagine, conversations at the beginning of the week were largely about fireworks and Bonfire night parties.
We listened to music with loud firework sounds and talked about the noises they made. We tried to re-create the sounds in our small world area with the moving rocket, whoooosh!
We enjoyed lots of creative activities this week, both inside and outside. Children really enjoyed our large scale firework artwork; they practised some gross motor movements, splattering paint onto a large ‘night sky’. As you can see from the photographs, we try our best to keep messy activities as clean as they can be!
In maths, we’ve been investigating patterns and repeating colour patterns.
We always try to look out for children’s interests to guide our planning and create relevant learning opportunities. This week, children showed an interest in the Gingerbread Man story so we’re looking forward to exploring this story a little bit more next week.
Please read the Weekly Up-date for information regarding our Nursery Parent consultation meetings and lots of exciting Christmas dates. We’ll post them here soon.
Home Link – Half term holiday adventures
Please remember to tell us about your holiday adventures. You could send us some photographs or bring in a leaflet of somewhere you visited during the holidays.
You could tell us about baking, art activities, trips to the park, swimming, visits to farms/ museums or anything else that your child has enjoyed.
Children love to show their photographs on our interactive whiteboard and tell friends about their adventures. It’s a great way to increase confidence and also provides lots of conversation and opportunities to extend vocabulary.
We’ll look forward to seeing your emails in our inbox: scholesf1@spherefederation.org
We hope you’ve had a good holiday and are looking forward to seeing everyone this week.
Is there room on the broom?
There were some unusual footprints on the floor in Nursery on Monday morning!
Following on from the children’s interest in footprints last week, we looked closely at the shapes and sizes of the mysterious visitors’ prints. Children suggested different animals that they might belong to. The dog was the easiest to guess; many children recognised it because it looked like their pet dog’s muddy footprints. The frog, bird and ‘dragon/monster’ prints caused a bit of confusion.
In group time, we read ‘Room on the Broom’ and children joined in with the repeated refrains in the story. They’ve enjoyed using the story props to re-tell the story in the small world area.
Outside, we created a dragon’s cave and then decided that it would be a good idea to make our own dragon. We looked at some pictures of dragons and talked about the different colours and body parts. Next, we worked together to paint our dragon and added different materials to create scales and spikes.
Whilst reading ‘Room on the Broom’, children enjoyed the part of the story where the witch makes a magic potion in her cauldron. We made our own fizzing potions…
Iggity, ziggity, zaggety, ZOOOOOOOM!
If you’d like to try it at home, there’s one way to do it here. We just used bicarbonate of soda, white vinegar and food colouring in Nursery but there are many different versions. Not only is it fun, but it’s a good talking point and provides lots of opportunities to extend children’s vocabulary. We used pipettes in Nursery, which are a good way of helping to strengthen and develop children’s finger muscles.
We’ve made slime and investigated its properties: stretchy, slimy, sticky, runny…
On Monday, it was very windy so we went onto the KS1 playground with ribbon sticks to watch them dance in the wind.
It’s been a busy week so far and there are still two more days to go before half term.
Home Link – Room on the Broom
Our Home link activity this week is to enjoy reading ‘Room on the Broom’ together at home.
If you don’t have a copy, you could visit the library or watch an on-line version of the story here.
There are some fun activities and colouring sheets available to download on Julia Donaldson’s website. We’re going to try and make some mini broomsticks in Nursery this week. You could also print off some of the animal masks and try re-telling the story together at home using them.
Pumpkins
Children have loved exploring the pumpkins this week; we’ve rolled pumpkins, weighed pumpkins, drawn and painted on pumpkins, made pumpkins in the playdough and explored patterns on pumpkins in the maths area. At the end of the week, we especially enjoyed cutting them open to explore their slippery, slimy contents. What a lot of pumpkin-themed learning!
Thank you to everyone who completed our ‘Autumn bag’ Homelink activity. Children enjoyed sharing the contents of their bags with their friends during group time. This is a great way to encourage children to speak in front of their peers and to build their confidence. Children love to talk about things that they have done at home with friends and family and they especially like to show items that they have found.
If you’d like to do something creative at home over half-term, we’re sure that children would love to have a go at making a pumpkin bowl. They’d love tearing up the paper (which is good for developing finger strength) and getting messy joining in with the papier mache part of this art project. Some parts are trickier and would need an adult to help.
There’s a fun CBeebies ‘Peter Rabbit and the Giant Pumpkin’ story available to read on the Storytime app too.
Harvest Festival – a big thank you!
Thank you for all the kind donations to our Harvest Festival today. Henry, from the Salvation Army, was overwhelmed by the generosity of the families at Scholes. Thank you for each and every donation.
