Precious, pretty plants in pots
We’ve had many WOW! moments this week with our science topic, Plants.
We’ve watched our wonderful cress seeds germinate in just a few days, while testing which conditions are best for growth. Amazingly, some of the cress seeds have germinated without water – but after careful discussion we came to the conclusion that there must have been some moisture in the soil already allowing them to germinate. We’ve been nurturing with much care.
Now outside the classroom, we have repotted our broad beans now that they have started to grow. We carefully planted our delicate beans into the larger pots as we’ve learned that they space for the root to spread out. These we germinated without soil, just simply tissue paper and water. Hopefully soon, we’ll see a bit more growth in the soil over the next couple of weeks.
Inside the classroom, we have set up another observation experiment which is testing how water travels up the stems of flowering plants. The white flowers are in coloured water (food dye) to show how water is transported up the stem (like a straw). At the time of this photo, nothing had changed… look out for our results. The children made some accurate predictions about what they think the flowers might look like tomorrow.
Maths – learning doubles
We have been working really hard on our maths fluency. We are trying to learn our doubles by heart, up to double 10. There are some excellent games on White Rose One Minute Maths or Top Marks. We’ve also played matching games, snap and used ten frames and part whole models to help.
Science – green plants
In our science topic we are learning all about green plants and growing. We have planted seeds and they have started growing in some classes already!
We will learning all about what plants need to grow and the difference between evergreen and deciduous trees.
We are measuring how much our seedlings grow each week.
Caterpillars
This week, we read another very famous book written by Eric Carle, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. Many children were already very familiar with the story, which allowed them to use their story telling skills in the book corner. If you have a copy at home, enjoy reading it together and see if your child can tell you the story in their own words using the illustrations on each page.
As we read the story, we also talked about the life cycle of a butterfly and learnt some new words including hatch and chrysalis. Can your child remember what a chrysalis is? In the story, Eric Carle refers to the home that the caterpillar makes with a different name – can they remember what word he used?
We’ve been watching our own hungry caterpillars very closely; they’ve already grown a lot. We’ll keep checking them next week to see what happens. Watch this space!
We added a few other caterpillar themed areas to Nursery, too. In the Fiddly fingers area, children enjoyed refining their fine motor skills by threading tiny beads onto a pipe cleaner to make some very tiny caterpillars. There were caterpillars to count in the maths area, caterpillars to make using playdough and spaghetti caterpillars to catch in the sensory area.
In maths, we’ve been talking about ‘more and less’. To begin with, we revisited some learning from earlier this year. We looked at 2 plates of cookies and talked about which plate had the most or fewest cookies. We asked children which one they would prefer and why. There were lots of comments which demonstrated their understanding: “I would choose that one because it has more” and “I want that one because there are 4 and that one only has 1 cookie on.” Children were very familiar with the terms ‘more’ and ‘most’, but they were less confident with the words ‘fewer’ and ‘fewest’. Try to use the words fewer/fewest at home this week to help consolidate this learning at home.
Next, we put 2 cookies on a plate that had been labelled with the numeral 3. Children were very quick to comment that we needed to put ‘one more’ cookie on the plate to make the number of cookies match the numeral. When we put 4 cookies on the same plate, they also knew it needed ‘one less’ and they took one cookie away. Great work, Nursery!
Outside, we continued with our gardening work; we’ve planted some more vegetable seeds and some ‘flower seed bombs’ near the fence at the bottom of the garden. There were lots of cars whizzing down ramps on the hill and the new fairy garden small world area was very popular.
Mad About Minibeasts
We have all been ‘Mad About Minibeasts‘ this week. This is a fantastic book that has educated us on many of the minibeasts that we can find in our outdoor area.
It has been wonderful to see children turning over stones and tree stumps to find woodlice, worms or centipedes. Children have also been finding spider’s webs and following ants to their nests. We have been trying to build our own minibeast house. Our provision indoors has also reflected our book.
In Literacy we have been looking at rhyme in the book and making up some of our own. We have also written some short acrostic minibeast poems. Please continue to help your child at home by encouraging them to write for a variety of purposes (lists, maps, letters, stories etc). When helping them perhaps point out a letter they may need to practice the correct formation of or enable them to write the correct sound that they can hear in a word. This will really help your child on their journey to achieving the age related expectation for Reception. Remember the following too:
We certainly do enjoy writing and drawing!
In Maths we have been composing 5 in lots of different ways.
Here are some other photographs of our learning this week:
Home Link
This week could your child draw a picture of their favourite minbeast and write a fact about it.
Can fruit produce electricity?
We are continuing with our electricity unit in science and have been investigating whether fruit can produce electricity. How would this show how a battery works?
Lemons can be used in a circuit to power an LED. The juicy part of the lemon contains electrolytes that conduct electricity – approximately 0.7 – 0.9 volts. Four lemons are needed to power an LED. The children turned the lemons into batteries by using zinc nails and copper coins. The copper acts as the positive terminal of a battery and the zinc nail becomes the negative terminal. They then added the LED, wires and a switch. The LED lit up – hooray!
What other fruits or vegetables can be used in a circuit?
Living and learning – democracy
In Living and Learning, we have been learning about democracy. We try to be democratic about lots of decisions at school so children feel they have ownership and a ‘say’ in what happens.
We have voted on which book to read at storytime, which PE game to play, which Go Noodle dance to do and which maths game to play.
Help at home by maybe voting on things as a family – which movie to watch or what to have for dinner?
Learning Journey – Drop in sessions
Now that Covid-19 restrictions have eased, we are pleased to be able to give you the opportunity to view at your child’s learning journey and look at what they have been learning this year. You are welcome to visit Nursery on one of the following dates:
- Monday 09 May– 2.30pm – 3.30pm
- Wednesday 18 May – 4.15pm – 5pm
Spiders
This week, we have been very busy in the garden. Children helped to prepare the planters, adding in some new compost before helping to sow some vegetable seeds. Once they’d planted the seeds, children remembered that they needed to water them to help them grow.
As we were out in the garden, we found lots of insects and bugs, including some big spiders hiding in the tyres. Children loved developing their gross motor skills as they climbed carefully through our giant spider web!
We listened to a story by Eric Carle called ‘The Very Busy Spider‘ and children joined in with the repeated refrains such as, “The spider didn’t answer. She was very busy spinning her web.” We have also been learning about the different parts of a book, including the title, front and back cover and the blurb. As we read the story, we pointed to some of the words so that children start to learn that the words have meaning and are read from left to right and from top to bottom. Understanding these key concepts of print are part of our literacy curriculum.
Next time you read a book, see if your child is aware of these five key concepts:
- print has meaning
- print can have different purposes
- we read English text from left to right and from top to bottom
- the names of the different parts of a book
- page sequencing
To extend children’s interest in bugs, we have a new ‘minibeast’ themed small world area in the Sunshine Room. In the playdough area, we practised rolling ‘sausage’ shapes like we do in dough disco; we used them to make legs for our spiders. At the beginning of the week, we spotted a fly had got trapped in a spider’s web. We looked at it closely, and used the illustrations from the story to help us draw some spiders webs using chalk.
During group times, we’ve been practising our mark making skills by drawing spiders. Children drew circles for the head and body and lines for hairy legs. Some children remembered that spiders had eight legs and they counted them carefully as they drew each one. We learnt all about the number 5 and we know that when a five frame is full, there must be five objects.
Next week, we’re going to read another story written by Eric Carle. Can you guess which one? We’ll give you a clue… some caterpillars arrived in Nursery this week!
The Bad Tempered Ladybird
This week, we’ve been reading The Bad-Tempered Ladybird by Eric Carle.
We spotted lots of new features the author had used in the book, when comparing it to another of Eric Carle’s books we have recently read. We used the book to practise our reading skills and came up with alternative words for parts of the story. It sparked a discussion of time (clocks on each page) and size comparison, as the animals (and text) got increasingly larger throughout the story.
Clay sculptures…
We have started a minibeast art project. This week we’ve been creating minibeasts out of clay and collage materials. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be painting our sculptures and creating habitats for them to live in!
Doubles…
This week, our maths saw us return to doubling. We are becoming experts at adding “the same amount” and recalling our doubles number facts! We’ve also been spotting patterns of six, to support our number composition.
Writing…
We are developing independence in our writing, with additional morning challenges. We’re ensuring that our sentences feature capital letters, a full stop and finger spaces. We have special actions to remind us of these.
Skipping…
In PE, along with the rest of our school, we’ve been developing our skipping rope skills. We look forward to seeing how the children progress over the next few weeks.
More photos of our learning this week…
Home link…
Continue your minibeast hunts in the garden, or out on a walk. This week, have a go at writing a list of any that you find, to share with your class. You might want to extend your writing by adding a description to make a sentence, for example:
I see a black ant with six short legs.
The worm is long and thin.
Don’t forget those sentence features shown in the ‘Writing’ section of this post!
May Bank Holiday…
School will be closed on Monday 2 May 2022, for the early May Bank Holiday. We look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday. Enjoy your long weekend together!