Happy half term!
What a super half term we’ve had at nursery!
We can’t believe it’s the end of our first half term together. We’re amazed by how well the children have settled and really begun to forge some lovely friendships with old and new faces. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed to the ‘interests’ board. ‘Paw Patrol’ has been mentioned several times by the children and parents alike. So much so, that we decided to turn our large construction area into a Paw Patrol look out tower! This has provided fantastic opportunities for the children to develop their communication, imagination and number skills-all whilst ‘just playing’ of course! Outdoors, several children really enjoyed creating ramps and slopes for different vehicles to use. We made predictions about which cars would travel the furthest, tested our guesses and then made marks using chalks to compare the results. Lots of super language: “The green truck will go the furthest, look it’s going down the very steep ramp.”
We enjoyed learning about Diwali, too; we listened to the story of Rama and Sita and found out about the Festival of Lights is celebrated. Some of our children told us all about the fireworks they were going to see on Thursday evening.
It’s nearly good bye… Miss Logan has worked closely with Mr Gledhill over the last few weeks to ensure a smooth transition for the children in green group. Miss Logan will be returning to school to work her remaining four weeks in Year 1 (so she can sit down a little bit more!) However, we’re lucky to have her back for her final day in nursery on Tuesday 31 October to say a final goodbye!
What are we learning after the holidays?
We’ll have a Halloween theme throughout nursery upon our return with a focus on pumpkins as we enjoy the story ‘Pumpkin soup’ in key worker time. We shall be getting messy in the sensory area, squishing and squashing the flesh and looking closely at the insides. Best of all, we’ll be making a delicious and healthy pumpkin soup! There will be lots of opportunities to develop our creative sides as we make glittery playdough spiders and explore capacity in the ‘magic water’ with different sized bottles and containers. Outdoors, the mud kitchen will be a real hive of activity as we explore what happens when we use vinegar and bicarbonate of soda in our spells! We hope someone remembers to write the magic potions down on the notepads so we can talk about them afterwards (and develop our mark making skills!)
Have a super half term holiday!
Harvest: 13 October 2017
Thank you for the generous donations. The Salvation Army collected the tins and packets for their food bank.
Home Link – Shapes
Can you make a picture using different shapes?
You could make a house, vehicle, pattern… Be as creative as you like!
Remember to talk about the names of the shapes you use.
For this week’s activity, please write any vocabulary your child uses as they make their picture. For example: ‘It’s a circle, like a wheel’ or ‘The house has a triangle for a roof’. This important feedback from home link activities helps to inform our assessments and plan the next steps in the children’s learning.
You could always email us a photograph and any comments to our Foundation One email: [email protected]
Whoosh!
We had great fun making delicious currant buns, carefully weighing the ingredients and stirring the mixture together. The smell was amazing! They were, of course, decorated with a cherry on the top! The children really enjoyed extending their play into the ‘playdough’ baker’s shop and even into the maths area where they used the balance scales to weigh different ingredients. Last Wednesday, we had a wonderful ‘wellie walk’ around the school field. We collected a huge bag of leaves, sticks and feathers which we enjoyed sorting by shape, size and colour. Some children were sure we would find fairies in the big tree trunks! No luck this time but maybe we need to think about how to attract them into the nursery area… watch this space!
What are we learning this week?
We’ll be extending our play and learning about 2D shapes by going on a shape hunt and using shapes in our creative areas. The children have absolutely loved using props as they sang the currant buns song; this week we shall be using the rhyme ‘5 little speckled frogs’ to develop number and language skills.
The frog theme also links in nicely as we begin to prepare for all things magical at the end of October. Watch out for magic potions, spiders and spells in the water area!
We shall be reading ‘Room on a broom’ by Julia Donaldson in our key person groups. We will use the story as a stimulus for small world play using props to retell the story. There are some fun activities available to download on the Room on the Broom website, including a memory game for you to play. You could also watch the story on line if you don’t have a copy at home.
Autumn walk
Nursery children enjoyed listening to the ‘We’re going on a leaf hunt‘ story before we went on our own hunt around the school grounds. We thought about the things that we might find and took a big bag with us.
It was very muddy so we wore our wellies to walk through the squishy mud. Squelch, squerch, squelch, squerch! We found colourful autumn leaves of all different shapes and sizes, twisted ivy around tree trunks and we spotted a squirrel gathering some acorns. We even found some mushrooms that we knew not to touch!
Afterwards, we took our autumn treasure back to nursery and sorted it using our senses.
Baking, bear hunting and building apple runs.
Welcome
We’d like to begin by welcoming Mr Gledhill to our Foundation One team. He has already been joining us during the day and has been busy getting to know the children. Mr Gledhill is going to be covering Miss Logan’s maternity leave and whilst she isn’t leaving just yet, she will soon be moving to Key Stage One for the remainder of her time at school. Miss Logan and Mr Gledhill have been working together during group times as he will become the Key Person for green group.
What are we learning this week?
The children have continued to enjoy singing ‘Five currant buns in a baker’s shop’, so much so, that we’ve decided to make a bakery role play area. This will provide lots of opportunities for children to communicate with each other, write receipts and count pennies to pay for their currant buns. You may even notice a lovely aroma in the rainbow room next week… Can you guess what we’re going to bake?
Autumn is really upon us now; we’re always talking about the changes that children can see in our nursery garden. On Wednesday, we’ll be ‘going on a leaf hunt’ to search for more signs of autumn in our school grounds. Don’t forget to send wellies (named) and a waterproof coat!
Many children have shown an interest in rolling things recently, from balls to trucks and apples. As a result, we’ve introduced some ramps to our vehicle area and we’ve used apples that have fallen from our tree to create apple runs using the guttering and stands. We’ll also be rolling conkers next week to create some autumn art work. Look out for it in our art area soon!
Home Link
Thank you to everyone who enjoyed completing the Home Link activity last week – we can see a few stars starting to appear on children’s handprints but we’d love to see some more! This week’s activity, is to read one of our favourite stories, ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’. We have a small world area linked to this story in our outdoor area and children are enjoying re-telling the story using the props. Swishy swashy… Squelch, squerch… Hooo wooo…
If you don’t have a copy of the story, you could visit the library or watch Michael Rosen telling the story online- it’s great! www.jointhebearhunt.com
Interests
Hopefully, you will have noticed our current interest notice board as you come into nursery each morning. We’ve added some of the things that we have noticed that the children are interested in and we’d really love to find out more about what your child loves at home at the moment. Please take a post-it note from the board and tell us – don’t be shy! It’s there for all parents/carers to use and allows us to continue making learning fun and relevant to children.
Alternatively, you could e-mail us: [email protected]
Reminders
- Please ensure to collect your child on time from nursery. We finish at 3.00 on Mondays and 3.15 Tuesday to Friday. We always have a member of staff on the door 15 minutes before this time in order to allow a calm end to the day and to enable us to speak to you.
- Remember to check your child’s folder for accident letters, changing notes and other information each day.
Home Link – We’re going on a bear hunt
Do you have a copy of one of our favourite stories, ‘We’re going on a bear hunt”? If so, we’d like you to share it together at bedtime.
If you don’t have a copy of the book, perhaps you could visit the library or enjoy watching Michael Rosen telling the story on-line. He’s a brilliant story teller!
We’ve a small world area linked to this story in our outdoor area and children are enjoying re-telling the story using the props.
Swishy swashy…Squelch, squerch… Hoooo wooo…
Remember to tell us about your favourite part in the story and you’ll get a star for your hand print.
Home Link – Five currant buns
We love to sing! If you walk through nursery, you can usually hear someone singing somewhere. One of our favourite songs to sing at the moment is ‘Five currant buns in a baker’s shop‘.
For our Home Link activity this week, can you sing the song? 
You could act out the song using pretend buns and pennies!
Remember to take one away and talk about how many you have left.
Don’t forget to let us know you’ve been singing it at home so that you can get a star sticker for your hand print. You could sing for your key person or go to the nursery rhyme table and sing along with the singing pegs!
Counting conkers, Autumn treasure and splashing in puddles.
Wow! We’ve had another really busy week in Nursery. We continue to be really pleased with how well children are settling into Nursery life.
In the Sunshine room, the construction area has been popular. Children have loved using the bricks and other props to build trains, buses and planes. We’ve been on some exciting journeys; we even remembered that we needed tickets and made our own in the creative area.
There has been a lot of interest and enjoyment in playing with shapes and exploring colours. We shall continue with these themes next week as we add some shapes and colour enhancements to our provision to help consolidate the children’s learning.
In our maths area, the conker themed enhancement is providing lots of counting opportunities. Children have especially enjoyed trying to balance the conkers onto the Numicon pieces and dropping the correct number into the matching egg box.
Despite the varied weather, the children have continued to enjoy investigating and playing outdoors. Thank you to all those who brought things in for the Autumn investigation table or emailed pictures of your Autumn observations.
Each time your child participates in the home link activity they will get a star for their hand print. Our home link activities provide a great opportunity for your child to share and extend the activities they have enjoyed doing at Nursery.
‘We can’t go over it…’
Over the next few days, we’ll bring one of our favourite stories to life in our outdoor area – ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’. There’ll be lots of opportunities for small world re-telling of the story and making the props to go on our very own bear hunt!
Autumn is here!
We had another exciting week in Nursery as we all continued to get to know our new friends. We’re amazed by how well our new starters are settling into their new environment and remembering to do all of their little jobs!
The children have really enjoyed exploring and playing outdoors; the water area and dinosaur small world have been very popular. We have also noticed the changes to the leaves and found our first conkers under the horse chestnut tree in our garden. It was great fun harvesting the carrots and radishes that the children planted earlier in the year. This gave us lots of opportunities for counting and talking about different colours and textures. Best of all, we got to eat them at snack time along with some apples and pears from our trees… totally organic!
We’ve been playing lots of listening games to develop both our listening and sound discrimination skills. Covering objects and encouraging your child to listen carefully to the sound is a good game you can play at home. Alternatively, putting objects in socks to create ‘sound socks’ is a fun way to develop listening skills.