Dinosaur Roar
We’ve enjoyed listening to ‘Dinosaur Roar‘ during our story times in Nursery this week. We talked about the different parts of a book, including the front and back cover, the title and blurb. As we read the story, we identified the words on the page and followed them with our finger as we read from left to right.
“Dinosaur weak, dinosaur strong, dinosaur short or dinosaur very, very long” We looked at the illustrations and talked about the meaning of the different words in the story
Can you remember all of the different types of dinosaurs in the story?
In the sensory area, we loved playing with the slime in our dinosaur swamp! Ergh.. it’s very sticky!
In the creative area we printed with dinosaur shapes.
We have continued to explore the concept of heavy and light this week by introducing bucket balances. The children have observed what happens when one side of the balance is heavier than the other.
“it went down”
“ it went up”
This week the weather has been very wet but we’ve still managed to have lots of fun learning outside too.
Help at home
Independence is an important skill for all of the children in Nursery. Being able to put on their coat, fasten it and go outside is a significant achievement. We support the children to do this independently at Nursery. Practicing these skills at home, maybe on a weekend when you have a little more time, will support the children’s development considerably.
Next week’s learning:
Story of the week.
We will continue to read Dinosaur Roar next week.
Nursery rhyme of the week
Jack and Jill went up the Hill
Can you join in with the rhyme at home?
Sound of the week
‘c’ for cat and ‘k’ for kite
Reminders
The weather is still very cold and we spend lots of our time learning outside. Please ensure that you child has a warm coat, hat and gloves/ mittens every day. As always, name everything.
Please remember to name your child’s packed lunch box on the outside. We have a number of identical lunchboxes at the moment so it is essential that they are all clearly named,
Thank you as always for your continued support. We hope that you have a happy and healthy weekend.
The Nursery Team
Supertato
Supertato
This last week’s book focus was the amazing Supertato by Sue Hendra. There was a real buzz about the classroom with the children enjoying all the linked activities. They designed traps to capture Evil Pea, wrote wanted posters for the villain, created patterns with vegetables, created observational drawings of different vegetables and used green pea counters to make words in the Phonics area.
Our new word of the week is: mischievous. A perfect word to describe the small, green villain in our story!
Help at home: you could read some other Supertato stories (there are many) or watch some episodes of Supertato on BBC iPlayer. Talk to your child after the story/episode to see if they’ve understood the story and the events Why did that happen? What do you think might happen next? Who was the main character? Why did they feel that way? Did you like it? All these types of questions help with reading comprehension.
Poem of The Week
This week’s Poem is A Little House. We enjoyed the rhythm and rhyme in this poem and talked about the new words we came across like curling and drifting.
Gross motor skills
Did you know that gross motor skills helps with early writing skills?
Gross motor skills involving large muscle movements like crawling, climbing, and throwing are crucial to early writing. This is because they build strength in core, shoulder and arm muscles. These movements enable children to sit upright, stabilize their shoulders for controlled pencil grip, and improve coordination. It also helps to improve stamina when writing. We practise lots of gross motor skills every day in our outdoor area.
Help at home: take your child to the park, ride bikes and scoot together. Play tennis, football, rugby or dance around your kitchen. All these playful activities help in your child’s writing journey.
Art
Following on from our visit to the ‘gallery’ last week, we begun to create some wintery art. The art work is inspired by Claude Monet’s magpie Painting. We created a wash with watered down blue paint and mopped some of the paint using different media to create different effects. Next week we’ll finish off our creations using tissue paper. Look out for photos of our finished art.
Dates for your diary:
Wednesday 4th Feb – Stay and Learn
Tuesday 10th Feb – Parents teacher meetings (booked appointments)
Thursday 12th – Parent teacher meetings (booked appointments)
Friday 13th – break up for half term
Writing – recount
This week, the children have written a recount as if they were a Celt getting prepared for the Roman Invasion.
In their writing, the children have included:
- similes
- subordinate conjunctions (as, when, since)
- thoughts and feelings
- past tense
Here are some examples of their work.
Violet:
‘It dawned upon me that today was the day of the battle. I felt a jolt of dread like a lightening bolt strike. I knew I had to be as prepared as I possibly could be.’
Stanley:
‘Eventually, I knew it was time to go. As we crept in the shadows of the forest, we could see the Roman soldiers.’
Kiera:
‘The sun from far below the clouds glistened in the cold breeze as I slowly pulled aside my sheep skin throw. A sea of fury washed over me as I thought about the battle ahead.’
Maths fluency
This week Year 1 have been learning to make 5.
4 is a part, 1 is a part, 5 is the whole.
3 is a part, 2 is a part, 5 is the whole.
2 is a part, 3 is a part, 5 is the whole.
We know that when we add, we can switch the numbers around. They are commutative!
In our Maths learning we have been writing add equations by creating fact families.
3 + 2 = 5
2 + 3 = 5
5 = 3 + 2
5 = 2 + 3
Help at home by writing simple add equations and asking your child to write it commutatively.
Living and Learning
I know the importance of the emergency services.
This is our living and learning statement for this week and we have been seeing whether the children know all the emergency service and when they would need to call them. The children now know that they can call 999 or 112 in an emergency and be able to contact the police, fire service, ambulance or the coastguard. We talked about different scenarios so that they were clear which service they would ask for.
We watched a short video explaining what information they’d be asked for if they rang an ambulance. The children found this useful as it isn’t something you have to do every day and emergency situations can be quite stressful. We also had chance to learn some simple first-aid techniques which the children could use if needed.
Help at home: Watch the video again with your child and make sure they’d know how to react in an emergency.
Packed lunches
Does your child have a packed lunch at school? If so, please download our Guide to Healthy Packed Lunches.
Did you know that popcorn and whole grapes are a choking hazard for children under 5? Lot’s of people don’t! The Food Standards Agency. has published the following advice on how to prepare food safely for your young child.
1,2B Abbey House Museum Trip
We visited Abbey House Museum to enhance our history topic learning. Seeing how things have changed, looking at artefacts helps to bring learning about things in past to life.
We enjoyed our workshops all about toys. We learnt about how old toys were often made from different materials to modern toys.
Experiencing the Victorian street was so exciting and helped immerse us in what it must’ve been like in the past.
Of course, the coach journey and lunch were actually the most exciting parts. Thank you for your voluntary contributions and to the family members who came as extra adult helpers too.
Getting busy!
This week we’ve created some amazing constructions, fantastic art work and continued to develop of mathematical thinking in provision. Working together and sharing our ideas.
Our new starters are settling in so well, becoming more familiar with the Nursery routines and finding their way around. Great work green group! Our September starters have done a fantastic job in welcoming them. Lots of new friendships are beginning to form which is wonderful to see.
In Maths this week we’ve been exploring the concept of heavy and light. The children have been searching nursery for objects that are heavy and those that are light. We found lots of different things. How did you get on at home ? Remember to let us know using the nursery email address scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Each half term we have vocabulary that we focus on. The adults in nursery use this vocabulary when they play with the children in the areas of provision. Over the past few weeks the vocabulary we have focused on has been-
winter
frozen
melting
igloo.
We have used our small world area, sensory area and our outdoor area to introduce and reinforce this vocabulary. The igloo in the small area has supported this learning.
Help at home
You could continue this learning by continuing to use this vocabulary, where appropriate, at home too.
Next week’s learning
Story of the week
We look forward to reading ‘Dinosaur Roar’ by Paul and Henrietta Stickland in our story times next week. This is always a very popular story to share
Nursery rhyme of the week
Can you join in with the rhyme and the actions at home?
Sound of the week
Make your mouth into a round shape and say o.
We need your help?
The children are really enjoying making models from boxes, kitchen rolls, plastic pots etc. You’ve probably noticed as so many amazing creations have been making their way home. We’re sadly running out of resources to make these models. If you have any of the items listed below, instead of popping them into your recycling bin, we would love them in nursery.
Items we need
cardboard boxes (cereal box sized are the largest we need)
kitchen roll tubes (not toilet rolls)
plastic pots
plastic lids
plastic bottles
Have a happy and healthy weekend and thank you as always for your continued support.
The Nursery Team
Abbey House Museum 2C
What an amazing day! 2C have been absolute super stars! We are so proud of every single one of them. We have had the best day learning about the past through real life interaction with historical artefacts. Wow! Ask your child to tell you a new fact that they have learnt today.
Penguin Huddle and Claude Monet
In our literacy lessons this week, we enjoyed reading Penguin Huddle by Ross Montgomery. In the story, the penguins huddled together during an icy storm but it was so cold that they got stuck together and couldn’t break free!
Our word of the week is: huddle. Ask your child to tell you what it means. Can they use it in a sentence?
Here is some of our super writing from this week.
We also watched a short clip from an episode of BBC Frozen planet to find out more about where penguins live. We located the UK and the Antarctic on a map and found their locations on a globe.
How is the Antarctic environment different to the United Kingdom? After watching the clip, we looked at some photographs of the Antarctic and compared them to the United Kingdom to find similarities and differences.
Focus Artist: Monet
This week, children loved exploring the art of Claude Monet. We found out about his life and his amazing pictures of the natural world! On Thursday afternoon, we visited a special ‘pop-up’ Art Gallery in the Hub.
When looking at the artwork, we used sentence stems to talk about our opinions.
I like it because…
I don’t like it because…
Children’s examples of speech.
“I like it because it’s looks the same as outside, look outside the window, it’s the same.”
“I like the colours, the pink and the blue.”
“I don’t like it because it’s a bit grey and it looks cold”
After looking at the gallery, we took inspiration from some of the pictures to create our own Monet inspired artwork. We’ve also been exploring colour mixing to find out what happens when you mix two of the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) together.
Maths -composition
This week, children consolidated their understanding of the composition of 5 using the familiar rhyme ‘5 Little Ducks’ By singing the rhyme and moving the ducks during each verse, children investigated part–part–whole relations, e.g. seeing that 5 can be made of 3 and 2.
There are five ducks in the pond but when one duck swims away, we can see that there are four ducks in the pond and one on the hill. 5 can be made of 4 and 1. When another duck swims away, there are 3 ducks and 2 on the hill. 5 can be made of 3 and 2.
We also used our fingers to show this, first holding up 5 fingers and then putting one down each time.
Poetry Picnic
Our poetry sessions this week have been a little different as we learnt and recited a traditional nursery rhyme.
The children used gestures and expression to recite ‘Jack and Jill’.
Phonics
Spring 1 week 3 has focused on the digraphs ur, ow, oi and the trigraph ear.
We’ve learnt the tricky words; my, by, all. Tricky words are words that should be read by sight.
Help at home:
Each week, we’d like to give you an idea of a game you could play at home to make reading even more exciting.
This week’s game is: Tricky Word Splat
- Write a selection of tricky words on paper/sticky notes.
- Place around the room/floor.
- Say a tricky word for your child to splat. You might jump on the words, splat with a masher or create your own ideas.