Bang, pop, whizz!
Welcome back to Nursery. We hope that you all had a good half term. Thank you to everyone who emailed some photographs of your days out; we loved seeing your Halloween costumes, campfires and trips to the seaside.
This week, children were very excited about Bonfire Night. We talked about the different sounds that they had heard ranging from big bangs, to popping, crackling, whizzing and whoooshing! Outside, and in the mark making area, we drew spirals, lines and dots to make fireworks.
As we talked about safety on Bonfire Night, this inevitably lead to an interest in firefighters and fire engines. Children have enjoyed lots of firefighter role play; building fire engines in the construction area and putting out fires in the small world area.
When children take part in role play activities like this, we’re looking to develop several areas from our Early Years curriculum, including ‘Communication and Language’ (which includes speaking and listening skills) and elements from the ‘Personal, Social and Emotional Development’ strand. Here are just a few things that we look for and develop during play:
- Children’s use of language – we may introduce new vocabulary related to the topic and model using it in longer sentences.
- Listening skills – we encourage children to listen and respond to their peers and to take into account their ideas.
- Making relationships – some children need encouragement to join in with group role play and others may require support to take turns and share resources.
There are lots of benefits of role play, some are outlined in this article.
On Tuesday, we talked about Bonfire Night traditions, including looking at some toffee apples. Children especially enjoyed making their own chocolate apples; we talked about how the chocolate melted and then became hard as it cooled. We hope they enjoyed eating their apples whilst watching the fireworks!
Despite the wet weather, we still took part in lots of outside activities, including strengthening our arm and shoulder muscles by sweeping, raking and hammering.
Boccia club
Living and learning: self-esteem workshop
Many thanks to the volunteers from Dove, who ran our self-esteem workshops in year 5 and 6 today. All the children were able to talk maturely about body image and learnt about the difference between professional and personal media.
Library Book
We have changed our library day to Tuesday.
Please can your child return their library book every Tuesday.
Living and Learning: Democracy
At Scholes, we democratically voted for our school councillors during the last week of term.
Here are our new school council representatives.
We look forward to their enthusiasm and leadership qualities.
Half term Home Link
That was a very busy and long half term but we’ve enjoyed getting to know all of our new children. We hope that you all enjoy a rest over half term and have some family fun. When we return to Nursery, we always love to hear about your adventures but sometimes, children find it difficult to remember! If you would like to send us a photograph or bring in a leaflet from some where you visit, it usually helps to jog children’s memories. It’s a good way to improve their speaking and listening skills too; they enjoy sharing their photos with friends.
Email Us – scholesf1@spherefederation.org
Homework – memorise and perform a poem
We had some wonderful recitals of poems children had been learning this week in our homework review sessions. Being able to remember or memorise things is a useful skill for all children.
Living and learning : democracy, pupil voice and School Council elections
The children took part in the School Council elections today. Everyone had a chance for their ‘voice’ to be heard and cast their vote. Well done to the children who were elected and will represent us for the next year.
Whoosh! They were gone.
On Monday, we loved reading ‘Room on the Broom’ at story time. Some children are really familiar with the story and have been joining in with their favourite parts and words from the book. We could see lots of children using the story props and heard some saying “Whooosh” as the witch flew away on her broomstick and “Iggity, ziggity, zaggity, zoooooom!” whilst stirring the cauldron.
The Early Years Foundation Stage includes ‘reading’ in the specific area of literacy. Children working within the 22-36 months developmental band can usually join in with words and phrases that appear over and over again when listening to stories. Children working in the 30-50 months developmental band are able to listen to longer stories and talk about them more confidently. They may guess what might happen next in a story or suggest how it might end.
How can you help your child with reading at home?
- Enjoy sharing a book regularly. We like reading books at any time of the day, but we especially love bed time stories!
- Children like to help turn the pages – let them.
- Let them use toys to help them tell you stories that you’ve shared.
- When you read stories that your child knows really well, stop at different parts and let them tell you the missing word.
- Let them explore lots of books from the library or nursery with their friends and by themselves.
Here’s a sneaky peak at some of the other activities that we have enjoyed so far this week.
- Pumpkin counting and reading ‘5 Little Pumpkins’ in our maths area.
- In the sensory area, we’ve been exploring the inside of a pumpkin. Ask your child what it felt like.
- Mark making by painting patterns on large pumpkins outside.
- In the malleable area, we’ve been applying some of our ‘dough disco’ skills; we’re getting much better at rolling ball shapes with the playdough.
Science with socks…
This week’s science lesson, we tried to find out which sock was the stretchiest. We worked scientifically to measure the socks before and after stretching and talked about how we could find out which was the stretchiest. The children love science and always have lots of ideas, suggestions and opinions when we are investigating.
