The Evil Pea strikes!
Oh, what fun we’ve had in Nursery this week! Continuing with our love of the Supertato stories, this week, the Evil Pea visited Nursery and has been up to mischief.
On Tuesday, he kidnapped all of the carrots from our snack bowl and hid them outside. Children were very excited trying to spot them all from the window and couldn’t wait to get outside to find them and set them free. Children worked together to figure out how to get them down from all of the different places, high and low.
Once the carrots had been set free, we used a giant tens frame to count how many we had found and marked on our carrot clipboards.
The children were very excited and couldn’t wait to see what the Evil Pea would get up to next!
On Wednesday, he had visited Nursery and left us a letter.
The Evil Pea had captured all of the vegetables from our fridge and locked them up outside. Luckily for us, he must have dropped his map on the way out and so we had a clue to follow.
We drew on the locations of the keys that we could see in our garden and went outside to hunt for the missing keys.
Children quickly found the keys and began to try and unlock the mini padlocks. However, the keys didn’t fit! With a bit of team work, they figured out that the coloured bands on the padlocks must match the colours on the keys. Phew! The locks opened and the veggies were free.
Our visit from The Evil Pea caused lots of excitement in Nursery and stimulated some fantastic conversations as a result of his mischievous deeds.
Children demonstrated lots of the ‘characteristics of effective learning’ during these activities; they were… motivated, curious, exploring, engaging, pretending, solving problems, deciding, negotiating, thinking, focussing, persisting, concentrating and proud of their achievements.
Outside, we practised aiming and throwing by trying to knock Evil Pea and his friends off their spots and squirting them with water! These activities are a great way to develop both gross and fine motor skills from the Physical Development part of the Early Years curriculum. Squirting water definitely helped to strengthen finger muscles!
Get active with orienteering – FREE EVENT
Your local orienteering club, AIRIENTEERS, are hosting a FREE orienteering event especially for juniors, families and anyone new to the sport.
PLACE : Millennium Field, off Barleyfields Ct, Wetherby, LS22 6FZ
DATE : Saturday 11th May 1:30-2:30
There will be courses with electronic timing for all ages.
See www.aire.org.uk for more information about the races.
Start any time from 1:30 to 2:30. Just turn up and run.
Living and Learning – Mental Health
We have been talking about emotions this week and how they can affect how we feel, think and behave. We watched this video and talked about how we can help ourselves and each other with small emotions, and which trusted adults we might ask for help with big emotions.
We also listened to four different pieces of music and talked about how they made us feel, what colours they made us think of and what shapes they created in our minds.
Living and Learning – strong emotions
This week’s Living and Learning statement is …
I recognise emotions in myself and others.
In class, we discussed emotions and where they come from (our brain!)
Children came up with lots of different feelings and emotions and decided if they were of high / medium / low intensity.
We filled in a table to describe how we felt.
Charlie and Ellie, “High intensity happiness is feeling ecstatic and thrilled.”
Letter Names and Tricky Words
This week, one of the classroom challenges was to match lower and upper case letters and to name the letter e.g. A-a.
We found naming the letters a little bit tricky, so during phonics when we practised writing some tricky words the children had to say how to spell the tricky words by using the letter names and not the sounds. We watched the tricky words song to help us.
Challenge – 3 cubes
Please practise reading and writing the following tricky words:
- my
- by
- he
- she
- we
- me
- be
- they
- was
- you
- all
- are
- her
Can your child spell the words using the letter names? Please email or bring in your child’s tricky words work to share.
Year 2 SATs and Year 1 Phonics Screen
There are statutory tests approaching for both Year 1 and Year 2 children.
A letter has been sent home this week explaining the Phonics Screening Check. Help at home by reading with or to your child every day if you can (even if it is only for a few minutes).
The Year 2 children will also be taking the end of Key Stage tests (SATs) during May. Help at home by ensuring they are in school every day they can be. More information can be found here.
Cricket – Chance to Shine All Stars
Today, the year 1 and 2 children enjoyed some professional cricket coaching delivered by Nick Boyes from Yorkshire Cricket. He was promoting the Chance to Shine program which aims to give KS1 children the chance to experience cricket and hopefully transition into a club environment. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it!
Supertato to the rescue!
Children are thoroughly enjoying the Super Veggie themed enhancements to Nursery. They loved creating their own vegetable superheroes; thank you to everyone who supported us and provided their child with a vegetable for the home link activity.
In maths, we’ve been learning about heavier and lighter using the balance scales. Lots of children knew the word ‘heavy’ but many needed support to understand ‘light/lightest’. You could continue this learning at home by asking questions during everyday activities. Which bag from the supermarket is lightest? Which toy is lighter?
Outside, some children showed real perseverance when building a frame for a den. They had to work out where to put each connecting part and cooperate with each other, to help hold the poles in place until the cube was stable. Great team work, Nursery!
The tadpoles and arrival of our eggs have also created lots of excitement; we’ll continue to learn about their life cycles over the next few weeks as we watch them grow and develop and wait for the eggs to hatch!
Golden Star
Well done to our Golden Star from this week.
How we see things
We are just loving our Science mini-topic, Seeing, which has been very successful. This week, we have investigated how reflective materials are under a torch light.
First of all, we made predictions about which materials would be the most and least reflective. Most of us thought that tinfoil would be the most reflective. We then tested the materials and made conclusions from our results.
Actually, our results showed that the spoon was most reflective.
On one sunny day this week, we looked at how our pupils change size in light and dark.
Paige said, “My pupils are like pin holes in the sunlight.”
Super, Seeing, Science!