A chilly week!
We hope that you enjoyed some extra family time this week and had lots of fun in the snow. On Friday, we wrapped up warm and ventured outside to complete a ‘snow hunt checklist’ and, of course, we just had to make a snowman!
As a result of the adverse weather, we’ve rearranged our World Book Day celebrations for Monday 05 March. Unfortunately, some children that were due to be in nursery on Thursday won’t attend on Monday and some children that were going to miss it, will be in nursery! If you haven’t got a costume prepared, don’t worry, children don’t need to dress up. If your child was going to take part, but won’t be in nursery on Monday, they can still wear their costume when they next visit. Please remember to make sure that children can easily play inside and outside whilst wearing their costume and we’d prefer superheroes to stay at home!
Parents and carers are still invited to join us for our ‘Stay and Read’ session from 8.30-9.10 on Monday 05 March. There will be different story-telling activities in nursery for you to take part in with your child including re-telling the story of ‘What the Ladybird Heard’, making gingerbread men in the playdough and mixing porridge for the three bears in our sensory area.
Have you heard about the eggs in nursery? Children (and some parents) are very excited about the eggs that we have in the incubator. For the next three weeks, we’ll be looking after them and we’ll hopefully be able to watch the chicks hatching just before we break up for the Easter holidays. We’ll learn all about the life cycle of a hen over the next few weeks.
On the days that we were at nursery this week, we enjoyed… Building a den frame, transporting objects on a sledge, building a snowman, looking for very long worms and ordering numbers on the whiteboard.
Week 3 – What are we learning this week?
We’re sure that the World Book Day celebrations will provide us with lots of new interests next week – we’ll be watching to see what the children are really excited about and will adapt our nursery provision accordingly. In our maths area, we’ll learn to name and describe basic 2D shapes (circle, triangle, square and rectangle). Children will take part in lots of shape activities over the next few weeks, so you could begin to spot shapes in the environment when you are out and about.
In our group times, children are continuing to listen for the initial sounds in words and some children will be learning to ‘robot talk’ words. This involves them breaking up/segmenting the word into each sound. For example, s-u-n and p-i-g. We’ll use ‘pure sounds’ to do this; if you’d like to listen to the correct pronunciation for each sound, please follow this link to see the Foundation 2 teachers, Mrs Flynn and Miss Eckersley, demonstrating how to pronounce each letter with the corresponding Jolly Phonics action!
An exciting discovery…
Week 1 – An exciting discovery…
We had a very chilly start to the week! Thankfully, the engineers were able to get the parts they needed to fix our boiler as quickly as possible. When we returned to nursery on Wednesday, children made a very exciting discovery in our nursery garden. There appeared to be three egg-like objects that had appeared since Monday. After much discussion, the children decided they were eggs and that we needed to help them to hatch. We talked about what the eggs would need and children found things to keep them warm and safe. After a few days waiting, the eggs finally hatched on Friday (with some keen, small hands to help them!). It was great to see how excited the children were and it provoked many questions… What did dinosaur eggs look like? How big were they? What other animals come from eggs? Are these eggs real? What does extinct mean?
We investigated the shape and size of dinosaur footprints by making ‘fossils’ in salt dough and drawing a life sized footprint of an Aptosaur. To find out just how big it was, we put ALL of our shoes inside it and counted them!
Week 2 – What are we learning this week?
This week, we’ll enjoy reading our favourite stories and we’ll celebrate World Book Day on Thursday. We hope to see lots of parents and carers in the morning to join us for our ‘Stay and Read’ session from 8.30-9.10. There will be different story-telling activities in nursery for you to take part in with your child, including re-telling the story of ‘What the Ladybird Heard’, making gingerbread men in the playdough and mixing porridge for the Three Bears in our sensory area. Please remember children can dress up, but please help us by choosing characters that are not superheroes. As you can imagine, a nursery full of Spidermen and his friends can become quite lively!
We also have some very EGGciting news… We won’t share it with you just yet, but hopefully the children will tell you all about it this week.
In phonics, we are learning to hear the initial sounds in words. Silly Sidney Snake is introducing us to letter sounds using Jolly Phonics songs and actions. We have learnt ‘d‘ for dinosaur and ‘s‘ for Stegosaurus. This week, we’ll be learning about the letter ‘a‘. You can click on each link to hear the Jolly Phonics song and see a picture/video with the action that children will learn to associate with each sound. For example, ‘Sssss’ is a snake slithering through the grass. At this point in nursery, children are learning to hear the sound and may begin to recognise the letter, rather than focussing on how to write the letters.
Home Link – World Book Day
On Thursday, it is World Book Day.
- What is your child’s favourite story?
- Who is their favourite character?
Please bring in your favourite stories for us to read at group time (don’t forget to write names in!).
You could also:
- Visit the library or a book shop
- Read your favourite story together
- Draw/paint/collage a picture of the story or a character
- Re-tell the story using props
If you’d like a few ideas for new books to read, you could visit the World Book Day website.
Look out for our ‘Reading’ information booklet at the Stay and Play or in folders later this week.
Home Link – Holiday adventures
Don’t forget the Home Link activity for this week was to let us know all about your holidays! We look forward to hearing all about your adventures. Please scroll to our previous post if you need any more details.
Welcome back!
Week 1 – What are we learning this week?
Welcome back to nursery. We hope that you all had a relaxing and fun week off and are ready to learn. We’re sure that the next 6 weeks will bring us lots of eggcitement…
We’ll begin our week in nursery continuing with our dinosaur themed learning. Children were really interested in all things to do with dinosaurs before we broke up and when we asked them about their interests and what they’d like to learn about, they were keen to keep our dinosaur enhancements. In the last week of term, Freya brought in some ‘fossils’ of dinosaur footprints that she had made as part of her home link activity; they created lots of discussion about fossils and how they were made and so she is going to help her nursery friends make their own this week. We’ll be looking at the different sizes and shapes of dinosaur footprints. Have you ever wondered how big a T-Rex’s footprint was? We might try and find the answer to this, and any other dinosaur questions that children have, using non-fiction books and the internet.
We’ll be looking for any new interests and fascinations that occur during children’s play this week. Please let us know if your child has suddenly become interested in anything new – jot it down on a post-it note on our interest board.
Before the holidays, we had a few children who were obviously enjoying the cold weather and ‘Frozen’ themed role play. We’ve responded to this with a new small world area in the Sunshine room; we’re sure this will be very popular! You may also have noticed that we’ve had a move around! We’ve expanded our construction area and it now includes a selection of interesting props. Children have already begun to incorporate them into their role play.
Chil
dren began to make their own Valentine’s Day cards in the week before the holidays so we enhanced the writing table with lots of Valentine’s themed craft resources. It was a very busy table and it was great to see so many children writing/mark making!
Reading Workshop
Thank you to all the parents who attended the reading workshop during parents’ evening last night. Don’t worry if you missed it because the workshop will be running again during the parents’ evening on Wednesday 07 February between 5pm and 7pm.
The workshop provides tips and advice on how to support your child’s reading at home. The year 6 children running the workshop demonstrate games and activities to encourage a love of reading. If you have five minutes after visiting your child’s class teacher, then pop in and see what the children have to offer.
Below are some comments from parents who attended the workshop:
- “This was a useful and informative workshop. Useful for our two younger children.”
- “Good descriptive information to support at home.”
- “Really fun and enjoyable. I’d recommend coming.”
Home Link – Half term adventures
Please remember to complete the Dinosaur Home Link if you haven’t already. Children love to see their pictures on display and enjoy sharing their favourite story books from home with their friends.
There are lots of dinosaur related games and activities on-line. You could listen to a story all about a dinosaur on CBeebies bedtime stories.
Holiday fun
We always like to find out what the children have been doing in half term, but their usual response is, “I can’t remember!”
Please can you help them! Send us some photographs, save a leaflet from somewhere you visit or draw a picture together of something that you do. It usually opens up a great conversation and other children will often then join in. Thank you – we look forward to hearing all about your holiday activities.
Here come the dinosaurs… STOMP, STOMP, STOMP!
Week 5 – Dinosaurs
It was great to see the excitement and interest in our new dinosaur enhancements last week. Children were particularly drawn to the maths area where they lined up the mini dinosaurs to count them and to sort them according to various categories including size, type and colour. We began to find out lots of facts about dinosaurs; we talked about their body shapes and what type of food they ate. Children enjoyed learning some new big words, including herbivore and carnivore. We wonder if they can remember what they mean? Many children became interested in volcanoes and lava throughout the week. We watched some videos of volcanoes erupting and the children were set a challenge… Could they make their own erupting volcanoes using the Duplo bricks? There was a lot of team work as the children created a volcano shape using the bricks and with a bit of vinegar and bicarbonate of soda magic, they enjoyed watching the fizzing and bubbling as their volcano erupted!
Mark making was a popular activity outside last week. Children used the giant chalks to draw lines, circles and crosses on the playground. (Great for developing their gross motor skills!)
Week 6 – What are we learning this week?
Wow! The final week of half term already. As the children are still keen to find out more about dinosaurs, we’ll continue to see where this interest leads us this week. In group time, we’re learning to hear the initial sounds in words and we’ll be learning a new letter. It’s the first sound in one of our favourite dinosaurs… stegosaurus. We’ll play eye spy with objects beginning with ‘s’ and will sort objects into those beginning with ‘d’ and ‘s’ sounds.
You can listen to the ‘s’ Jolly Phonics song that we will be listening to here. Children don’t need to be able to write the letter ‘s’ just yet, we will focus on the ‘s’ sound that it makes and will identify words that begin with this sound. What can you find at home that begins with ‘s’? If you notice your child becoming more aware of sounds, remember to e-mail us their Wow moments.
The Big Ink Cartridge Collection
WANTED!
School council are collecting used ink cartridges to raise money for our school and our chosen charity – The Donkey Sanctuary.
All collected used ink and toner cartridges are recycled in an environmentally friendly way and the money raised is donated back to us! The more cartridges we can collect, the more we can raise.
If anyone’s workplace throws their ink cartridges away, we’ll be happy to recycle them for you!
An ink cartridge recycle box is waiting for your donation in the main office reception.
Home Link – Dinosaurs 29.01.18
We’re going to be learning about dinosaurs this week, so we thought you would like to surprise us with your dinosaur-themed activities.
You could…
- Read a dinosaur story and tell us about it, or even better, bring it in for us to share together.
- Find out some Dino facts in a non-fiction book.
- Send us a photograph if you have lots of dinosaurs at home. Can you line them up and count them?
- Draw/paint a picture or make a model of a dinosaur.
- Make a dinosaur shape picture.
- Find other objects that begin with the letter ‘d.’
- Bake some dinosaur shaped biscuits.