Green fingers? Help needed!
Scholes in Bloom judging day is Monday 6 August this year. If you are available and would like to join the effort for gold, please come and collect a plant from Mrs Myers or Mrs Latham. All you need to do is look after it and meet us at the flower bed outside school on judging day at 10am. If you prefer, you could make a ‘scarecrow’ and bring it on the same day. The theme is ‘all creatures great and small’. Hope to see you there!
Home Link – L for ladybird
This week we are learning about the letter sound ‘Ll’.
What can you find around your house or outside that begins with ‘l’?
Please bring something into nursery that begins with L to put on our sound shelf. Remember to put your child’s name on it!
Minibeast madness!
Week 1 – Minibeast madness!
Welcome back to nursery. We hope that you all enjoyed the half term break. It was lovely to see everyone’s smiling faces on Monday morning; there was a real ‘buzz’ in nursery as children enjoyed chatting and playing with their friends again. This week, we enjoyed looking in the garden for minibeasts. Children spotted lots of different types of bugs. We made a list outside every time we found a new one and used the digital microscope to have a closer look.
Some children had remembered finding some tiny eggs and insects on the leaves before the holidays and went back to see if they could find them. They couldn’t see them, but they did find some ladybirds, including a black one, and lots of aphids. We talked about the lifecycle of a ladybird and how they change when they grow, just like the tadpoles did.
Week 2 – What are we learning this week?
Following on from our children’s interest in ladybirds, we will continue with this theme this week. In maths, we will count the spots on ladybirds and find ladybirds that have one more or one less number of spots. We’ll enjoy playing this ladybird counting game on the Smartboard.
Children have also been asking lots of questions about bees when they’ve seen them flying between flowers in the garden. We’ll enjoy finding out about how bees make honey; at snack time, we’re going to make toast and enjoy sampling some honey. If you don’t want your child to take part, please speak to a member of staff.
In the creative areas, we’ll experiment with different printing and drawing techniques to create spotty and stripy patterns. Can you make some spotty or stripy pictures at home? Please remember to encourage your child to mark make (draw) in lots of different ways. Children will enjoy listening to ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ – we’ll talk about what the music reminds us of.
In literacy, we’re going to read ‘The Bad Tempered Ladybird’ and use pictures and props to re-tell the story. Please continue to play eye-spy games with your child to help them to hear the initial sounds in words. This week’s letter sound will be ‘Ll’ for ladybirds. Click on the link to hear the Jolly Phonics song. What can you find around your house that begins with l?
Scholes Gala and Scholes in Bloom
Please come and support our Skipping Crew and WUSU Crew at Scholes Gala this Saturday, 9 June 2018. We would also like as many children as possible to visit the planting stall. Children can take them home, look after them and then bring the plants and join us on judging day for Britain in Bloom on 6 August 2018 at 10am outside school. Scholes in Bloom are going for gold this year!
Home Link – Minibeasts
Over the last few weeks, children have loved ‘bug hunting’ in the garden so we will begin this half term learning about different minibeasts. We’ll also be looking out for any new interests, so please let us know if your child developed a fascination in anything new over the holidays.
Here are some activities that you could do…
- Look for minibeasts in your garden. What can you find? Where do they live?
- Talk about your child’s favourite bug. What would they like to learn more about?
- Look in non-fiction books to find out some facts about insects.
- Sing ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ together.
- Read a story about a minibeast e.g. The BadTempered Ladybird or The Very Busy Spider. If you have a favourite, please bring it in to nursery for us to share.
- Solve some number puzzles together. Eg. If there are 6 ladybirds on a leaf and 2 fly away. How many will be left? You could use fingers or get children to draw a picture to help work it out.
Royal Wedding Celebrations
We had a great day celebrating the Royal Wedding. Here are a few photos from our wedding and castle themed activities.
Home Link – Royal Wedding
We’re sure that there’ll be an interest in weddings, castles and royalty after the events this weekend. On Monday 21 May, can you find something red, white or blue to wear to nursery?
For this week’s home link, please talk about the Royal Wedding. Here are a few things that you could do…
- Make a crown or tiara
- Decorate/paint a wedding dress
- Bake a wedding cake or some buns
- Look at family photographs of weddings. Have you been to a wedding? What happened? How do people celebrate weddings?
- Look at Windsor Castle. Have you been to a castle? Who lives in castles? Do you have any stories with castles in?
- Read a story about a wedding, castle or prince/princess.
- Look for objects that begin with ‘c’ for castle, crown and cake!
There are lots of different opportunities for discussion around this topic! What interests your child?
Worms and minibeasts
Week 5 – Worms and minibeasts
Children enjoyed hunting for minibeasts at the beginning of the week. Some children chose to use the clipboards to write down what they found. Their lists included slugs, snails, spiders, worms and butterflies. Whilst searching for caterpillars on some leaves, we found a group of tiny eggs and little insects. We used the digital microscope to look at them closely; we think that they were ladybird eggs and ladybird larvae.
We’ve enjoyed learning all about worms. On Monday, Miss Backhouse and her group of helpers went outside to create a wormery. First, they collected leaves, sand and soil and put them into a tank in layers. The next part was the most fun: they went digging for worms! In group times, we read ‘Superworm’ and we compared the length of toy worms. Children put the worms in order of length and measured them using Numicon pegs. We talked about which worm was the longest and shortest.
At the end of the week, we had a special ‘wedding’ lunch menu and we began to talk about the Royal Wedding that will take place at the weekend.
Week 6 – What are we learning this week?
We’re sure that many children will watch or see photographs of the Royal wedding this weekend and that some of you may even be going to a party to celebrate. On Monday 21st May, we’re going to have a mini wedding celebration in nursery. Children are invited to wear RED, WHITE or BLUE clothes. We’ll watch some video footage of the wedding and see what the children are interested in learning more about… castles, weddings, kings and queens?
Keep encouraging your child to hear the initial sounds in words by playing eye-spy games. This week’s letter sound will be ‘Cc’ for castles, cakes and crowns! Listen to the Jolly Phonics ‘c’ song and sing a long at home.
What can you find around your house that begins with c?
A very busy, sunny Monday!
We enjoyed talking about wriggly worms today. In group time, we measured worms and ordered them by length. Outside, some children helped Miss Backhouse to make a wormery. We talked about where worms live and what food they need to survive and be healthy.
Sadly, some of our bean plants haven’t germinated so we talked about why this might have happened. We have planted some more beans and have also taken some selfies to create ‘cress heads’!
There was also a lot of excitement when some of the children realised that one of the tadpoles was no longer a tadpole! It had front and back legs and its tail had shrunk. We carefully caught the froglet and have released it back into the pond.
Finally, we have been busy looking for minibeasts all day! We found slugs, snails, ants, worms, spiders, butterflies… and the last thing we found was really exciting!
We found some little eggs that were surrounded by tiny creatures. It was quite difficult to see them so Mrs Long got the digital microscope to look at them more closely. We counted six legs and looked at the shape of their body. We think that the eggs were ladybird eggs and that the tiny insects were very young, ladybird lavae. When we looked on Google for more information, Daksh noticed that the matching picture on the Ladybird Lifecycle picture said ‘June’ so we could be right!
Home Link – Technology
As part of the Early Years Foundation Stage, children need to be confident using a range of technology. Please write a few things down and return this sheet to nursery to let us know what technology your child likes to use at home. You could also e-mail us a photograph of them using it: scholesf1@spherefederation.org
Here are a few examples of technology that your child may enjoy using at home…
- Toys with buttons, switches or remote-controls
- iPads, tablets, computers, phones – What are their favourite apps or games
- CD/DVD players
- TV with remote control
- Cameras