Lots of Learning
September 2024 - Rain, Rain, Go Away!
The Nursery garden has been flooded with water this week and children have fully embraced the wet weather. There has been lots of exploring going on and children have been keen to tip and pour the water into as many different containers as they could find. We added bubbles to see what would happen and the children made the water foamy by splashing and brushing the water. Lots of new words were introduced such as pour, sink, empty, soaked and drenched!
September 2024 - Welcome to Nursery!
We are so proud of our Nursery children and how well they have settled into their new environment. They have quickly got to know their new routine and are coming into school very independently in the morning. Children have had lots of fun exploring the setting both indoors and out. With the sandpit and climbing equipment being a firm favourite outdoors and the playdough table, home corner and snack table being very popular inside!
July 2024 - Forest School Fires!
Children in Nursery have been learning the fire circle rules all year and this week they got to put into practise everything they had learnt about fire safety. Kate spent time with each child in Nursery cooking crumpets on an open fire and afterwards they got the chance to add butter to their crumpet and have a yummy snack! Kate was particularly impressed with children's ability to use the fire starters independently to make sparks!
June 2024 - Butterflies
The children in Nursery have loved watching our caterpillars make the change into butterflies and have observed the changes with great fascination. We have been reading the story of the 'Hungry Caterpillar' with children and alongside this making fruit kebabs that match the fruits from the story.
May 2024 - Exploring clay
We have been exploring clay in Nursery for the last few weeks and children have loved using this medium to create their own pieces of artwork. Many children chose to make bears, based on our core book 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears'. We have been using the words; small, medium and big and some children were able to show their understanding of these words by making three different sized creatures!
April 2024 - Using watercolours
Children in Nursery have been exploring watercolours in the setting. We looked at the artwork of Kandinsky and his vibrant circles and used this as inspiration for our own paintings. Children have been learning how to load their brushes with water and paint, clean their brushes when changing colour and some have begun learning how to mix colours too.
March 2024 - Jack and the Beanstalk
The children in Nursery have been busy planting beans, linking with our core book Jack and the Beanstalk. They have been learning to take care of their plants, watering them daily and making sure they have been getting enough sunlight. Some children have planted their beanstalks in the Nursery growing area and some have been taking care of them at home.
February 2024 - The Gruffalo
The children have loved listening to the story 'The Gruffalo.' They have been very excited to learn new chopping skills when making Gruffalo crumble (actually apple crumble as we couldn't source any Gruffalos!) Some children have been building homes for the Gruffalo characters using the big bricks and even making their own using junk modelling. Children have especially loved using the puppets and characters from the story to act it out using our stage area.
February 2024 - Owl Babies
We have been listening to the story 'Owl Babies' in Nursery the last few weeks and thinking carefully about how the babies owls were feeling in the story. We were very lucky enough to have a visit from four real life owls! Children learnt about the different owls; where they live, what they eat and how female owls make a 'too-twit' and a male owl makes a 'too-woo' sound. We talked about where eggs come from and how birds lay eggs and even made our own mini quiches using eggs we cracked ourselves!
January 2024 - We're Going on a Bear Hunt
Children in Nursery have loved listening to our core book 'We're going on a Bear Hunt'. They have learnt some new words through our key vocabulary which they have been putting into action during their puppet shows. Kate has been building dens with children in Forest School and we have been making soda bread rolls (that bears might like to eat!) Children have also been learning to keep the beat to the story using our African drums and have loved learning how to colour mix brown to paint their own brown bears!
December 2023 - Christmas
Nursery have had a very busy few weeks getting ready for Christmas. From learning some new songs for our Christmas performance, making Christmas cards and having a visit from Santa, were just some of the activities that added to the festive excitement.
December 2023 - Room on the Broom
Room on the Broom has been one of children's favourite stories in Nursery. They have loved joining in with the story's repetitive language, learning new words such as 'cauldron' and acting out the story using props and costumes. Children have also enjoyed mixing potions outside, cooking star biscuits and making their own spooky salt dough spiders!
November 2023 - Diwali
Children in Nursery have enjoyed learning about Diwali. They have had the opportunity to make clay diva lamps, creating Rangoli patterns and trying new foods such an vegetable samosas for snack. They also enjoyed listening to the story 'The Best Diwali Ever.'
October 2023 - The Colour Monster
Children in Nursery have LOVED reading the story 'The Colour Monster'. We have been having such fun making play dough with different colours to represent our feelings and chopping different coloured fruit for our fruit kebabs. The children have become experts at retelling the story using different props and have developed an excellent understanding of how the different colours represent different emotions.
October 2023 - Happy in our Skin
We have started reading children our first core book for the term 'Happy in our Skin'. With this story in mind, we have been creating loose part self portraits with children. Some children have also chosen to draw or paint their own self portrait!
September 2023 - First few weeks at Nursery
We have been amazed at how well our Nursery children have settled. They have quickly adapted to the routine and have been busy exploring their new setting and getting to know their key people.
