Pumpkins and potions
It doesn’t seem like two minutes ago that we were visiting our new children on their door steps and now we’re writing our final post of the half term! We’ve had a fantastic start to the autumn term and have already seen children making lots of progress with their learning and becoming much more independent.
Here are a few things that we enjoyed in the final week, some of the most popular activities involved exploring pumpkins! We investigated what was inside them, enjoying putting our hands in the slimy, squelchy flesh and picking out some seeds. Children also loved decorating and painting them in the creative area and joining in with the ‘Five Little Pumpkins’ counting story in our maths area.
Children enjoyed re-telling the story of ‘Room on the Broom’ and working together to complete jigsaw puzzles of the witch and dragon. The water area was a hive of activity with children working together to share eye balls, spiders and bugs to mix into their potions!
We hope that you all have a lovely, relaxing holiday and we look forward to hearing all about your adventures when we return to Nursery on Monday 01 November. If you have any photographs that you would like to share with us, or if your child achieves something that they’ve been working towards, don’t forget to send us a quick email – scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Reminders
- Please ensure that your child’s water bottle only contains water.
- As detailed in our letter, please let us know if you are interested in increasing your child’s sessions in Nursery. We will be welcoming new children in January and may not be able to guarantee extra hours after this point.
- As the weather has most definitely become more autumnal, please ensure your child has a warm, waterproof coat at Nursery (with a hood) every day.
What a Half Term
It has been a fabulous half term in both Sunshine and Rainbow class. We are so proud of how well all the children have settled in and have begun their learning journey in reception.
This week, we have particularly enjoyed: dressing up in costumes, making patterns with pumpkins and scooping seeds out of pumpkins.
In phonics, we have learnt the new sounds – o, c, k, ck. We have been using our new segmenting and blending skills to write words.
In Maths, we have continued to deepen our understanding of the numbers one, two and three. We created our own number stories.
In PE, we enjoyed using the equipment to climb, balance and hang. This is all great for our core strength.
We have loved using dough to strengthen our fingers. Check out our different moves.
pat
ball
squeeze
roll
two finger dancing
Have a lovely half term break!
Living and Learning : Mental Health (mindfulness)
We have talked about how mindfulness techniques can help us to control our emotions. We are learning how to use different techniques such as ‘bee breathing‘, ‘tree breathing’ and ‘okay breathing’.
Reading journals
Well, half term is upon is and I just wanted to say a big thank you to those children who have been trying super hard with their reading at home. It’s brilliant that so many children are reading frequently and appear to be enjoying a good book. Thank you to adults for signing the journals and listening to children read aloud. Some children have put huge efforts into the weekly tasks – their journals look amazing. Below are a couple of examples that must’ve taken a lot of time and effort to complete. You’ve set the bar very high – well done.
Conkers, conkers, conkers!
1,2B have collected a massive 2711 conkers over the last few weeks. We have used them to count into the hundreds in ones, put them in groups of 10 to count in 10s and to represent 2 digit numbers. It was also a lovely feeling just putting your hands in the box.
Today we went on a muddy welly walk and returned them to nature on the field – for the squirrels to eat or grow into trees. We had a great time throwing them into the bushes!
Autumn days are glorious days.
This week the weather has been very kind to us. Our Autumn walks have seemed rather magical with crystal blue skies and sunshine. The children have been so impressive observing the world around them and making links to their existing knowledge. We saw aeroplanes, tractors, buses, sheep, horses and much more. We collected conkers, sticks, leaves and stones. The children enjoyed using their maps to locate local landmarks. Our learning has been endless and joyful.
Here are a few quotes from the children:
Keep holding hands-Esmé
Stay with the grown-ups -Ella F
Up there is Chippy’s Pond – Bea
That’s to remember the soldiers – Reuben
Three aeroplanes! WOW! – Raife
I live there!- Stanley
In Literacy, we have focused on ‘The Everywhere Bear’ by Julia Donaldson. Each child planned their own story of where the bear could go. Our children have been most kind and taken the bear to the seaside, a castle, the zoo, soft play, a hospital or a park.
In Maths, the children have been working on subitising numbers 0-3. This is where we show children a number of items e.g. 3 conkers and they can instantly tell you that there are 3 (without counting them).
In phonics we have introduced the new phonemes m, d, g and the Tricky Word ‘and‘. Please find the new sound strip in your child’s bookbag and add it to the treasury tag of sounds.
Home-Link
Can you find the Tricky Word ‘and’ in your books, home, shops or out and about? If you do so, please send a photograph to our email address: scholesreception@spherefederation.org Thankyou.
Diary Dates
Monday 18 October- Parent Teacher Meetings.
Wednesday 20 October- Harvest donation collections.
Wednesday 20 October- Parent Teacher Meetings.
Thursday 21 October– School closes for half term
Autumnal art and magnetism
It definitely felt more autumnal this week with the arrival of some windy and cooler weather. Outside, we enjoyed using some of our Autumn treasure to create our own autumnal artwork inspired by the artist, Andy Goldsworthy. Whilst doing this, we also used some of our sorting skills to sort the leaves into different colour piles. Some of them were quite tricky to sort as they were a mixture of colours.
At the end of the week, this little toy duck was the topic of much conversation! Children realised that they could move the duck on the pond by turning a dial but they couldn’t see what made it move. This generated lots of questions about how it worked.
As a result of this curiosity, we talked about magnets and began to explore magnetism around the garden. Children worked together to see what they could find that the magnets would be attracted to, or ‘stick’ to. They also noticed that some things didn’t ‘stick’.
Do you have anything that’s magnetic at home or any toys that use magnets? Have a look and let us know if you find any.
In the water area, we used large tongs and ladles to collect the apples that were floating. We talked about their size and counted how many we’d collected in our bowls.
Following on from printing a few weeks ago, this week, we printed with leaves. We also discovered that when you paint over a leaf and remove it, it leaves the outline on the paper!
We also enjoyed threading beads onto twigs in our fiddly fingers area which is a great way to develop our pincer grip and fine motor skills.
In group time this week, we enjoyed drawing different patterns on some wellies. We drew horizontal lines, spots and some children created their own patterns including ‘x’ and zig-zags.
Next week…
At this time of year, it’s inevitable that children begin to talk about pumpkins and all things magical! Next week, we’ll read one of our favourite stories, Room on the Broom and lots of our learning will be pumpkin related!
Notices
- If your child doesn’t attend Nursery full time and you would like to increase their sessions, please look out for a letter this week and speak to Mrs Beesley or Mrs Long.
- School (including Nursery) is closed on Friday 22 October for a training day and the following week is half term. Nursery reopens on Monday 01 November.
Living and Learning – Mental Health
We have started talking about mental health this week. If you break your arm or catch a cold, everyone can see you’re poorly. It’s obvious. Mental health problems are much harder to spot because they start inside our heads. They affect how we think, feel, our behaviour and how we cope with things. They can affect anyone at any time.
Mindfulness (we like some of the Go Noodle ones) gives your brain a moment of pause to assess any situation without responding irrationally and full of emotions. Mindfulness means paying attention in the present moment.
Ask your child what their top tips are to keep a healthy mind.
Maths – counting, ordering and representing numbers
We have been spending a lot of time counting and ordering numbers. We have used 100 squares, number lines, songs, numbers tiles and cards.
Children chose number tiles and put them in order from smallest to largest and compared objects or numbers. We have also partitioned numbers into 10s and 1s, representing them in different ways.
Geography fieldwork – traffic survey
We have been learning how to collect data in our topic lessons. We did a traffic survey, counting how many different vehicles passed our school. We were surprised how many cars and vans we saw in a short space of time. We also though about what we liked and dislike about the area around our school.
It would be better if there weren’t as many cars going past.
Cars make it dangerous to cross the road near school.
The smoke coming out of the cars doesn’t smell nice.
