Chips, cheesy pizzas and caterpillars
We’ve followed a number of different interests in Nursery so far this week, from chips to caterpillars!
On Monday morning, whilst having ‘tea’ in the home corner, we were eating chips and talking about where they came from. Many children suggested the supermarket and Chinese take-away, but nobody knew which vegetable they were made from. We read a story called ‘Oliver’s Vegetables’. In the story, Oliver loves chips and they’re all he wants to eat. When he visits his Grandad, Oliver is only allowed to have chips for his tea when he can find the correct plant growing in his Grandad’s allotment. After a quick trip to the shops for some potatoes, children enjoyed making chips in the afternoon. They cleaned the potatoes and were very careful when cutting them into chip shapes. Their favourite part had to be eating them!
We also found a very unusual caterpillar in Nursery on Monday. It had green and black stripes and was very hairy. It even had a big, red spike on its back. Children were really excited about it and enjoyed using the magnifying glasses to look at it closely. They drew some great observational drawings and tried hard to copy the stripes and prickles. We tried to find out more about what type of caterpillar it was; we used a nature book and searched on Google until we found an answer. It was a Pale Tussock caterpillar which will eventually become a moth.
Look what I’ve found. It’s very prickly!
After lots of pizza shop role play, children became real pizza chefs on Tuesday and made their own pizzas. They spread the tomato paste onto the pitta breads, sprinkled the cheese on top and added a few basil leaves. This provided lots of opportunities for discussion, as we watched what happened to the cheese as it melted.
Nursery rhymes
So far this week, we have enjoyed singing lots of Nursery rhymes and favourite children’s songs. They seem to keep popping up everywhere in our play! Singing Nursery rhymes is a very important part of daily life in Nursery. There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that young children who regularly sing nursery rhymes, will go on to develop a love of literacy and language and will become confident readers.
- In our water area, children have loved making and pouring cups of tea. We wonder if you can guess which nursery rhyme we sang as we poured?
- We’ve made boats in our construction area and enjoyed singing ‘Row, row, row your boat’. Our favourite verse is when the crocodile appears in the stream, Arghhhhhh! Follow this link and you can enjoy singing along at home too.
- In the Quiet room, a group of children noticed a very large spider hiding behind the whiteboard. We counted the legs and talked about where spiders liked to live. Lots of children enjoyed singing Incy Wincy Spider!
Crazy about conkers!
As you will have probably noticed, we have a lot of conkers in Nursery at the moment and children are still enjoying finding more! It’s amazing just how many learning opportunities they have provided:
- counting
- weighing
- comparing sizes and ordering
- making patterns
- using tongs to pick them up (This is a great way to help children develop and strengthen the muscles of the hands and fingers.)
- observational drawing (Make sure you have a look at some of the artwork on display in the Rainbow room)
- conker rolling paintings
- discussions about texture
- conversations about the changes in seasons
- hide and seek games with friends outside
There are lots of Autumn activities you could do at home:
- The Woodland Trust has a selection of Nature Detectives activity sheets that you can download and print. Here is a link to the Autumn leaf Nature Detective sheet – you could go on a leaf hunt and see which leaves you can find. Talk about the different shapes, colours and sizes and don’t forget to tell us about your adventures at home.
- There are lots and lots of Autumn activities on the Imagination Tree’s website. We particularly like the creative ideas involving painting with different sticks and leaves and conker rolling in paint. It’s great to explore different ways of making marks and patterns.
- There are a few links to Autumn themed games and activities on the CBeebies website. We like to count leaves in our Nursery garden and enjoy having a go at ‘squigling’ using zig-zag and wavy lines.
Autumn treasure
Autumn has definitely arrived. Lots of children have been out exploring this weekend are were keen to show us the Autumn treasure that they had collected. This generated a lot of discussion about the windy weather and conkers falling off trees.
We looked at some conkers that children had brought into Nursery and talked about the different shapes and sizes. Some of the conkers that Mrs Long had found were still in their cases. We looked closely at the shells and felt their prickles carefully. Children were excited to see a crack down one of the shells; we carefully opened it and found not just one, but two shiny conkers inside!
The Autumn woodland small world area was popular today and the tractors were very busy collecting hay bales in the fields. Some children tried to stack the hay bales in the trailer. It was quite tricky and took a lot of perseverance to stack them in a tall tower. It was even harder to stop them from falling off as the tractor moved across the bumpy field to the farm!
The Sunshine room was buzzing with excitement this morning. Children loved ordering and making pizzas in our new role play area. They played together, taking turns to take orders and to make and cook the pizzas. Some pizzas cost “5 dollars” and some were “2 pounds”. Children counted out the coins carefully as they paid.
Making friends and exploring Nursery
We’ve had a great start to the week in Nursery; most children have now had their first session and we’ve been really proud of how well they’ve all settled in. Children are beginning to make friends and it’s been lovely to see them playing alongside each other and starting to become involved in role play together. The home corner has been a hive of activity with children enjoying making cups of tea and some breakfast for Mrs Long.
In our Nursery garden, we’ve been collecting lots of apples from the trees. Miss Backhouse, and a group of little helpers, used them to bake some delicious apple buns. The children helped to count out the apples, weigh the ingredients and mix them together. We enjoyed eating the apples and buns at snack time. Yum yum!
In the Early Years Foundation Stage, physical development is one of the important Prime Areas. Children should be able to move freely with pleasure and confidence in a range of different ways such as slithering, shuffling, rolling, crawling, walking, running, jumping, skipping, sliding
and hopping.
As you can see, we’ve been busy developing our climbing and balancing skills already this week.
Welcome to Nursery
We had a busy time visiting all of our new children and their families at home last week. It was great to meet everybody and to begin to get to know each other. Ferdie, our Nursery fox, enjoyed making lots of new friends and is looking forward to seeing everybody again when they visit Nursery this week.
It was lovely to see our older Nursery children again on Monday and Tuesday; we think they’ve grown over the holidays! We’ve enjoyed finding out about their holiday adventures to farms and beaches (and even a trip to a hospital!)
All of the children noticed lots of changes in Nursery. They spotted our super, shiny new toilets and sinks straight away. They also enjoyed exploring the Rainbow room and finding out what new toys there were in each area.
As well as seeing our old friends again, we have also begun to make new friends in Nursery during the ‘Stay and play’ sessions this week. We’ll post some photographs soon.
Welcome to Foundation!
We’ve been very busy getting the classroom and outdoor environment ready today. We’re excited for your child to see their new classroom environment in the next few weeks.
Miss Morris (Foundation 1) has been busy gardening and digging up some vegetables we have grown.
Mrs Beesley (Foundation 1) has been busy in the water area!
Mrs Long (Foundation 1) has been on the bikes!
Miss Backhouse (Foundation 1) has been with the dinosaurs!
Mrs Myers (Foundation 2) has been working hard trimming the den!
Mrs Flynn (Foundation 2) and Toffee have been on the slide!
Miss Daniels (Foundation 2) has been digging in the sand tray!
Miss Eckersley (Foundation 2) and Treacle have been busy in the mud kitchen!
We’re looking forward to welcoming some children into Foundation 2 tomorrow.
Teddy Bear’s Picnic
Teddy Bear’s Picnic
Monday 16th July 12.30-2.30 pm
- If your child is moving to Reception in September and they don’t attend Nursery on a Monday afternoon, they are welcome to join us from 12.30pm-2.30pm. Please bring them to the Nursery door and sign them in as usual and you can collect them at home time, which is 2.30pm.
- Children can wear summery clothes and bring their favourite teddy.
- We will provide picnic food that the children are going to help make in the morning. They have told us all the things that they would like, including honey sandwiches for the bears and some watermelon. Children will have lunch as usual at Nursery.
- Thank you for your donations towards to the cost of the picnic food. If you’d still like to contribute, there’s a bowl in the Nursery entrance.
Health Week Highlights 2-6 July 2018
What a jam-packed week! We focused on learning about our physical and mental health and engaged in a wide variety of activities including:
- Whole school sports roundabout
- Tag rugby sessions with 5 Star Sports
- Tutti Frutti production of ‘Keepy Uppy’
- Fruit tasting, drawing, smoothie and kebab making
- Living and Learning lessons – healthy choices and sun safety
- Crucial Crew – personal safety and risk assessing
- KS2 competitive sports afternoon
- WUSU Crew performance
- Dodgeball – Leeds City Finals
- Netball, rounders, football
- Mindfulness
- Yoga
- Change for Life – Train like a Jedi
- Visit from Doodles the donkey from the Donkey Sanctuary
- Flex Dance – World Cup dance workshops and dance-off in front of the whole school
- Whole school health related homework
- Leeds Rhinos Rhinestones street dance workshops
- Health Fair after school
Home link – Seasides
This week, we’re going to be talking about going on holiday and visiting the seaside. If you have a photograph of you at the seaside, we’d love to see it and put it on our display for everyone to share. If you don’t have one, you could draw or paint a picture instead.
This week’s letter sound is ‘v’ if you’d like to play Eye-spy and spot things that begin with the letter ‘v’ at home. You can listen to the Jolly Phonics song here.