Crunching Munching Caterpillar
It has been lovely to be back at school this week. The children have enjoyed sharing their half term experiences with the class.
In Literacy, we have read the story – Crunching Munching Caterpillar.
After reading, the children noticed similarities and differences between this story and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Both caterpillars ate leaves. Max
There are holes in the book or an eaten page. Ella
They are both really hungry. Charlie
They both get into a cocoon. Bea
In Science, we have explored the lifecycle of a butterfly. We are looking forward to observing this with our own class caterpillars.
We have also created a wormery. By representing their habitat in a box, we have begun to observe how they tunnel through soil.
In Maths, we have been counting to 20 and beyond.
We ended our week with an egg rolling competition and a special visitor … singing sensation Egg Sheeran!
Well done to our winners.
In our areas, we have gone mini-beast mad! Check out some of our super learning.
Home Link
This half-term our topic is Life on Earth. For the next few weeks we are exploding mini-beasts.
Become a mini-beast detective!
You many choose to draw a picture of the mini-beasts you find, record how many mini-beasts you see in your garden or observe how different mini-beast move.
Supertato to the rescue!
Children returned to Nursery with beaming smiles and were excited to see their friends. We loved hearing about your holiday adventures which included cooking sausages on the BBQ and hunting for eggs in your gardens, visiting the seaside, feeding lambs at the farm and flying on orange or blue aeroplanes.
This week, we enjoyed listening to ‘Supertato‘ and finding out about what happens in the supermarket after dark! Children enjoyed making Mr Potato head characters in our fiddly fingers area, rolling little peas in the dough and using the small world figures to create their own superhero stories.
In the sensory area, the Evil Pea and his friends had escaped from the freezer! Children enjoyed scooping the frozen peas and watching what happened to them once they’d been out of the freezer for a while. They also loved mashing them to create mushy peas.
In maths, we continued to practise our sorting and counting skills, sorting the vehicles by colour and type and counting how many were in each group.
Following the children’s interest in magnetism, we’ve created a discovery area with lots of magnetic items to explore. Children carried out their own investigations around Nursery, taking the magnets into different areas to test what they would ‘stick’ to. We looked at the different items that they found the magnets were attracted to and some children noticed that lots of them were made from metal and not plastic. What super scientists we are!
Summer Term 1 Science: Plants
This term is all about growing plants. Included in this post is a list of our new vocabulary for this topic.
Yesterday, we looked at some typical flowering plants and identified their parts and functions. Photos are some children’s work will follow.
I was so impressed with the knowledge the children already had!
We progressed to ‘plant’ our own broad beans so we can see the journey they take from seed to shoot and root (simply put into a cup with water and cotton wool -we’ll check what’s happened next week).
You can support your child at home by planting your own seeds in your garden, or in a flower pot and just observe over time the changes that take place.
Or, you can watch these excellent video clips.
| stem | holds the plant upright and supports the leaves; contains tubes that allow water to travel from the roots to the rest of the plant | |
| roots | helps anchor the plant into the soil; takes up water and nutrients from the soil | |
| leaves | catch sunlight and use this to make food | |
| photosynthesis | how plants turn sunlight into food | |
| pollen | a dust-like powder that causes plants to make new seeds | |
| pollination | transferring pollen from the male parts of a flower to the female part of a flower so new plants can be made | |
| stamen | the male part of the flower which produces pollen | |
| stigma | the female part of a flower that pollen attaches to during pollination | |
| seed dispersal | the way seeds get from the parent plant to a new place so that they can grow into new plants |
Herea re some lovely pictures of children’s flowers they drew using oil pastels:
Science
Our new unit of learning for this half term is Electricity. The children had to recall their previous learning, including remembering the scientific symbols for the components of an electrical circuit. They were then asked to make a working circuit – some chose to use bulbs, whilst others used buzzers or motors. The children were then given images of different circuits using different components. They had to make predictions as to whether the circuit would work or not, and give reasons for their predictions. The children then constructed each circuit to test their predictions.
Sunny days
We’ve had some beautiful, sunny weather this weekend and we’re hoping that there’ll be more sunny days over the next few months. Please make sure that your child has a sun hat and water bottle in school every day. As always, please clearly label them with you child’s name.
We’ve also had a few questions about sun cream. On sunny days, sun cream should be applied before children come to Nursery. If your child’s sun cream requires it to be re-applied after lunch, please put a NAMED bottle of sun cream in their group’s water bottle basket just on the days that you would like it to be re-applied.
Welcome back!
Welcome back! We can’t wait to begin the summer term and find out all about your holidays. Thank you for your emails to share some of your learning with us from the last few weeks. It’s been great to see that you’ve been taking care of your bean plants and remembering to water them! Don’t forget to send us a photo of your plant to show us how much it has grown.
We’d also love to find out to how you’ve been getting on with your home learning targets. Have you been singing number rhymes and showing ‘finger numbers’? Have you been practising forming some of the letters of your name correctly or did you write a message in an Easter card? Maybe you decorated an egg with some patterns. Please take a couple of minutes to send us a brief email to let us know how your child is getting on. If you need any other ideas or support, please speak to a member of the Nursery team.
We’d also like to welcome Miss Thomas to Nursery this week. She will be joining us everyday and will be the Key Person for Green group. She can’t wait to start and to get to know everyone.
We’ll begin this week talking about the holidays and Easter celebrations as children settle back into Nursery routines. Look out for a post about our new topic and interests soon.
Computing – designing, making and playing our own games
Our computing topic has been a absolute hit this half term. We have learnt about algorithms and de-bugging, alongside online safety. We made our own games and tested them using the Blue-Bot robots. Some of the algorithms to complete the games we very long and had to be de-bugged (fixed) to make them work! It was great fun though, and very satisfying.
Using FE File Explorer on the iPads has also enabled children to learn how to take and save their own pictures into our class folders.
Happy Easter!
We’ve had a very egg-citing week learning all about Easter and taking part in some traditional Easter activities. We’ve sampled Hot Cross Buns at snack time, made Easter nests, decorated eggs and joined in an egg hunt.
In our sensory area, we looked at different types of egg – raw, scrambled, fried and boiled and talked about the differences that we could see. We also talked about the changes that occur when you heat an egg. Can we turn the scrambled egg back into raw egg? As we made Easter nests, we observed what happened when we heated the chocolate. We also noticed it got harder as it cooled in our bowls. It looked like the solid chocolate again!
Remember to plant your beanstalks! Children have been learning about the life cycle of a bean and talking about what plants need to grow. Can they remember what happened to the seed? They might also be able to name some key parts of their plant such as the seed, roots, stem and leaves.
We hope that you have a fantastic holiday and enjoy the Easter break. We’ll look forward to hearing all about it when we return to Nursery on Tuesday 19 April.
Reminders
- Please check that your child’s uniform/ clothing is named over the holidays.
- It was great to speak to you at our parent teacher consultations. If you notice your child achieving any of the targets that we discussed, or if you work on them during the holidays, please send a quick email to share their progress with us.
Rabbits don’t lay eggs.
We have really enjoyed our Easter themed book: ‘Rabbits don’t lay eggs.’ It does make us laugh! The children’s writing is really progressing. After the holiday we will have a really big push on this too. Prepare to be amazed!
Last week, we were in sun hats and sun cream. This week we’ve been in the snow with our wellies and woolly hats! We just had to go on a Winter walk in the snow before it melted. It was magical!
We also, collected the hail stones and enjoyed hands on learning about them.
A little Easter focus in the classroom.
What else we’ve been up to:
Home-link:
In Maths this week we have been using lots of different measurements. In particular we used the vocabulary: full, nearly full, half full, nearly empty and empty. Perhaps you could find containers and add liquid to match these labels. Photograph or video your child and send to our email address.
Reminders:
Egg rolling competition. Please send your child to school with a named (and decorated) hard boiled egg on Friday 22 April.
Have a wonderful Easter holiday! School reopens on Tuesday 19 April.
Living and learning : First Aid (treating a burn)
We have been talking about basic first aid this week. Children know they should ask for a first aider if they are hurt. We have also talked about burns this week, and how to treat them, following advice from the British Red Cross.
