Party time!
We all had a great time at our Nursery Christmas party on Monday. First, we went into the hall to play some party games including pass the parcel and ‘pin the nose on Rudoph’!
After the games, we enjoyed sharing some party food. The pineapple and watermelon were popular, but maybe not quite as much as the Christmas cup cakes! Yum, yum.
We also enjoyed singing along to some of our favourite Christmas songs. You could join in at home with Jingle Bells or ‘When Santa got stuck up the chimney’.
Christmas reminders
Just one more week to go! Here are a few things to remember this week…
- Our Nursery Christmas party is on Monday afternoon. Please make sure you add your £1 contribution to our pot when you sign in. We are using your donations to buy the party food and treats. Thank you.
- Please send children to Nursery wearing their Christmas clothes.
- If your child doesn’t usually attend on Monday afternoons, you can bring them to Nursery at 1 pm and return to collect them at 2.30pm.
- If you are joining us for one of our ‘Stay and decorate‘ sessions on Wednesday or Thursday, please check the notice board for the date and time that you have selected.
- Have you returned your Story Time with Santa letter and payment? If you haven’t please send your £1.50 contribution to Nursery this week. Thank you.
- Finally, please take home all of your child’s belongings including their wellies on their last session and remember to check their going home folder for Christmas cards and pictures.
O Christmas tree…
In between our performances this week, we managed to make the most of some outdoor learning time. Children had great fun working together to create some giant artwork by decorating a Christmas tree. They loved adding the loose parts to the Christmas tree outline and were very pleased with their finished tree.
Here we go round the Christmas tree, the Christmas tree, the Christmas tree. Here we go round the Christmas tree, doesn’t it look lovely!
In our water tray this week, we removed the water and added some festive sparkle instead! Children loved the sensory experience of the shredded paper; exploring it’s texture, how it moved and scooping and pouring it. There were also some hidden presents to find. The presents were all different shapes which provided lots of opportunities to talk about the properties and names of basic 2D shapes (square, triangle, circle and rectangle). Please continue this learning at home. What shapes can you find on the presents under the tree? Can you see any shapes on the patterns on the wrapping paper?
It’s Our First Christmas Play
Well done, Nursery! We were very proud of all of our children this week during our performances of ‘It’s Our First Christmas Play’. It’s not easy to stand in the bright lights on a stage in front of so many adults, especially when you are just 3 or 4! We thought the children did brilliantly; they joined in with singing and dancing and were well behaved throughout. We hope you thought so too! Thank you for all of your positive comments regarding the performance and for your support with their super costumes.
Home Link – Christmas story
A few children brought in their favourite Christmas stories last week and we enjoyed sharing them during story time. We enjoyed looking at all of the miniature letters and cards that were inside the ‘Jolly Christmas Postman’ and the children loved peeking through the postbox at the end of the story. ‘Stickman’ was also very popular at story time too; many children could join in with the repeated parts of the story.
We haven’t had chance to read of all your books yet though so we’re going to continue this Home Link for the week beginning Monday 9 December. If you haven’t had chance yet, please bring in your child’s favourite Christmas story (or any favourite story if you don’t have a Christmas one) this week. Thank you
Christmas has arrived in Nursery!
December has arrived and children came to Nursery on Monday morning full of excitement and with tales of decorating Christmas trees and visits to see Santa.
We’re sure you’ll have already noticed the Christmas themed enhancements in Nursery this week. Here are a few of the areas that we have adapted to promote learning though different areas of play.
In our Maths area, we have a selection of baubles, bells and pom poms. Children can use tweezers to pick up the objects and sort them onto the Christmas tree shapes. This is an open ended activity to promote counting and sorting. It also doubles up as a fiddly finger challenge too, helping to strengthen children’s hand muscles as they squeeze the tweezers. We have a similar activity in our water tray, but on a larger scale. Children are enjoying catching the floating baubles using larger tongs and both hands.
In our small world areas, children have been learning about the Nativity story and delivering presents in Santa’s sleigh. Children have even started to tell their own stories involving Santa’s sleigh getting stuck in the snow!
Many children have been talking about writing a letter to Santa. In our mark making area, we have been practising our scissor skills by cutting out toys that we would like. There are some very long lists! Some children wrote their name next to their chosen toy and others practised writing the first letter of their name.
In our new North Pole role play area, children, or should we say elves, were very busy wrapping presents ready to put in Santa’s sack. We’ve seen some great team work as children used the bricks to make a sleigh for Santa. We counted how many elves there were and worked out how many seats the sleigh would need to have.
Home Link – Christmas story
We love to listen to stories in Nursery, whether they are stories that we have heard lots of times or new ones.
Do you have a favourite Christmas story?
We’d love to hear it in Nursery. Please bring your favourite Christmas story book into Nursery and we’ll enjoy reading it at story time throughout the week. (Please remember to write your name in it.)
More rhyming fun!
Has your child been singing more rhymes this week? We hope so!
‘The Wheels on the Bus’ has been very popular and has provided lots of mathematical opportunities too. Children have been counting people on to the bus, taking them off again and working out how many spaces were left and how many more passengers could get on.
In our creative area, we’ve continued to explore printing and patterns that we can make. We used Duplo bricks to make a wall for Humpty Dumpty to sit on. We talked about the shapes that the bricks made when we printed with them. Is it a rectangle, square or lots of little circles?
In our maths area, we sang ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ and talked about the different stars. Children lined them up to count them and were also able to sort them by size (big, small), colour (gold, silver) and appearance (shiny, dull).
‘Incy Wincy Spider’ had a great time in the water tray. There was lots of problem solving going on as children worked out how to get the spiders to move down the guttering. They used different containers to re-create the rain to help ‘wash the spider out’.
Christmas costumes
Please send in your child’s costume by Friday 29 November. Remember to write your child’s name on all items and on the outside of the bag. Thank you for your support. We’re looking forward to seeing all of the children in their costumes!
World Nursery Rhyme Week
We’ve really enjoyed singing lots of Nursery Rhymes this week, so much so, that we’re going to continue with the theme next week too!
If you haven’t completed our Home Link activity yet, there’s still time. Please bring in a picture/prop/toy that reminds you of your favourite Nursery rhyme. Here are a few that we had from last week… a dish and a spoon (Hey Diddle Diddle), a rabbit (Sleeping Bunnies) and a monkey (5 Little Monkeys). What is your child’s favourite rhyme?
Some of our enhancements in Nursery this week were linked to popular rhymes, all of which can be found on the Nursery Rhyme booklet that we sent home at the beginning of the week.
In the water area, we sang ‘I’m a Little Teapot’ whilst investigating capacity and pouring, filling and emptying. If you look carefully, you can see we had teabags too. This was a good conversation starter. What happens to the colour of the water? What’s inside? Does it smell?
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In our sensory area, children had great fun building a wall for Humpty Dumpty. Sadly, he didn’t survive his fall and we couldn’t put him back together again! At the end of the week, we had some very sticky hands as children explored the texture and properties of jelly! Jelly on a plate, jelly on a plate, wibble wobble, wibble wobble…
We also enjoyed singing lots of other rhymes including ‘12345 Once I caught a fish alive’ and ‘Jack and Jill’.
