World Nursery Rhyme Week
Has your child been singing lots of Nursery rhymes at home this week? As it’s World Nursery Rhyme Week, we’ve been singing even more rhymes than usual!
Singing Nursery rhymes is a very important part of daily life in Nursery. There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that young children who regularly sing nursery rhymes, will go on to develop a love of literacy and language and will become confident readers
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We loved playing with the sticky jelly in the sensory area and had great fun making it wobble as we sang ‘Jelly on a plate‘.
Here are some of the rhymes that we’re learning to sing:
- Wind the Bobbin Up
- Baa Baa Black Sheep
- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
- I’m a Little Teapot
- Incy Wincy Spider
- Hickory Dickory Dock
Help at home: Listen to these Nursery rhymes and sing them together at home. Does your child have a different favourite rhyme? Let us know or send us an e-mail to scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
Outside, children continue to enjoy collecting leaves. They worked together to sweep them into a pile and took turns to use the sweeping brush. It was a great way to strengthen their upper arm muscles!
The rabbit shaped construction toys have been very popular. Children used their imaginations to make all sorts of creations and tall towers. We also enjoyed splashing in the water whilst singing one of our favourite number rhymes, 5 Little Ducks.
Next week’s learning:
Next week, we’re going to read ‘Peace at Last’ by Jill Murphy. In the story Mr Bear hears lots of sounds in his house and he can’t get to sleep. We’ll continue with our Phase 1 phonics learning, listening for environmental sounds around us and we’ll talk about ‘night time’.
Nursery rhyme of the week – 1,2,3,4,5, Once I caught a fish alive
Sound of the week – Pp
Penny Trail – Cancer Research collection
Thank you to everyone who donated to
last week’s penny trail in aid of Cancer Research.
In total, we raised
£99.32!
An amazing amount made from mainly 1p and 2p coins.
Thank you!
Bonfire Night celebrations
Everyone has quickly settled back into Nursery after the break and children were very excited to tell us all about their half term adventures and Bonfire Night celebrations.
We began the week talking about children’s experiences of Bonfire Night. Children enjoyed launching the rocket into the sky in our Bonfire themed small world area. Whooooosh!
We watched firework videos and talked about the colours, patterns and noises that we saw and heard. Outside, we listened to some firework sounds and pretended to be fireworks, dancing with ribbons.
What noise did the firework make? Pop! Bang! Whizz! Crackle, crackle! Fizz!
In the shallow sand tray, we looked carefully at the firework cards to try and create different patterns and shapes. There were crosses, zig-zags, spirals and wavy patterns.
Children also talked about the bright colours that they’d seen in the sky and enjoyed using chalks and brightly coloured paints, to make firework prints and pictures.
As part of our phonics learning, we’ve introduced the letter ‘s’ this week. At this point in Nursery, children are learning to HEAR the sounds in words. We took turns to pull some objects out of a bag that all started with the letter ‘s’. There was… a star, stick, snowman, sock, spoon, snake and even a sloth! We talked about the ‘s’ sound that we could hear at the start of each word. In Nursery, we focus on our listening skills. We’re not learning about letter formation just yet, that will come later in your child’s phonics journey.
Here is a link to a video to show you how we pronounce the letter sounds that we will be learning over the next half term. (The video is to help show how to pronounce each letter clearly, using the pure sound. Children don’t need to be able to recognise the grapheme (letter) yet, although they might begin to.)
Help at home: What can you find at home that begins with the letter ‘s’? Go on a sound hunt together and look for some…. ssssssocks, ssssssslippers, sssssssoap. We often exaggerate the sound at the beginning of the word when we’re first learning to listen for initial sounds and then we repeat the word afterwards, saying it as it should be. Sssssocks, socks.
What’s happening next week?
- It’s ‘Odd Socks Day‘ on Monday so your child might like to wear odd socks for the day to celebrate what makes us all unique and spread kindness!
- Looking for a school place for September 2024? There is an Open session in school on Thursday 16th November at 1.30pm, so please come along to find out more and visit some classrooms.
- Friday is a non-uniform day as we’ll be taking part in some spotty Children in Need fun!
- It’s been much colder outside this week and some children have been a bit chilly whilst playing outside. As we spend lots of time in our outdoor area, please make sure that your child has a warm coat, a hat and some gloves to wear. Don’t forget to add names!
Nursery rhyme of the week – We’ll be singing lots of popular rhymes as it’s World Nursery Rhyme week! If you’d like to send us an email with your child’s favourite rhyme and we’ll try to sing it at Nursery next week.
Sound of the week – T for tiger and teapot!
THANK YOU – charity collection coin trail
Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 created this amazing coin trail with all the coins you kindly donated. Counting is still in progress and we’ll let you know how much we raise for Cancer Research when we have finished counting all the coins.
THANK YOU!
School Gateway App
Make sure you keep up to date with the latest school information and news using the School Gateway App. You can select alerts on your app to ensure that you are reminded of key dates and important information.
If you haven’t logged on to the School Gateway App yet, look out for an email next week with more details or please contact the school office for further information.
Nursery Coffee Morning
Please join us at 9am on Tuesday 7 November for our Nursery coffee morning. It’s a great chance to chat to other Nursery parents and carers. After you’ve dropped your child off at Nursery, make your way to the Hub. We hope to see you there!
Harvest time
We’ve been harvesting some our Nursery vegetables this week including carrots and radishes. Children loved pulling up the carrots and comparing them with a friend to see which was the longest. After we’d washed and peeled the carrots, we enjoyed eating them at snack time. They were really crunchy!
In the maths area, we read a story about a giant carrot and sorted a selection of carrots and potatoes by size. There was lots of discussion about big, little, medium sized, tiny, giant, long and short – lots of size related vocabulary!
Help at home: Have a go at sorting a selection of objects together. Can you sort them by type, size or colour? Ask your child to explain how they have sorted them and why. This could be a selection of cars that are sorted by colour or perhaps some fruit sorted into groups of the same type. Can they find a car/fruit the same as yours? How is it the same? How is it different?
In the creative area, children had great fun rolling conkers through the paint and around the tub to create patterns (whilst also strengthening and developing their upper body and arm muscles).
And a few other snap shots of our learning this week…
Autumnal weather
It has definitely been a week of mixed weather; we’ve enjoyed playing in the sunshine and dancing in the rain! Children loved taking part in an obstacle course – they balanced carefully along the beams and across the stepping stones and took turns to crawl through the tunnels.
On the rainy days, we enjoyed singing and dancing to some ‘bean bag‘ songs. Children waved the bean bags high and low, balanced them on different body parts and skipped around them.
We continue to talk about autumn time and have been looking at some artwork by Andy Goldsworthy. Children used the ‘autumn treasure’ from their bags to create their own patterns and pictures.
Help at home: Our nursery rhyme for this week is ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep‘. Sing the rhyme together at home. Does your child know the words? Can they say the end of each line if you miss out the last word? E.g. Baa Baa Black Sheep, have you any….? You might like to change the words and create your own version, too.
Nursery Library and Wish List
- In the entrance to Nursery, we have a selection of books that you’re welcome to borrow. Please sign them out and tick when you return them. We hope you enjoy sharing the stories at home together.
- We also have a ‘Wish List’ board in Nursery where we sometimes add things that we need to enhance provision and learning in Nursery. We’ve added a few items for the next two weeks, so please take a look and if you are able to help out, please take the post-it note and bring in the item when you can. Thank you in advance for your help and donations.
We’re going on a Bear Hunt
It was great to see some of your autumn ‘treasure’ from the little brown bags that we sent home this week. Children have enjoyed telling us all about the things they have collected and where they found them. It sounds like lots of you have had fun visiting local parks or looking for autumn things on the walk to Nursery. We’ve heard some super descriptive language (shiny, spiky, smooth) and the conkers are providing endless opportunities to talk about size. We love to line them up in size order.
Thank you to everyone who has returned them already. Don’t worry if you haven’t had a chance to fill them yet, there’s still time! Please bring them to Nursery when they’re full and we’ll add them to our autumn tray.
In maths, we’re learning to match objects and to sort objects in different ways (such as by type, colour or size). Next week, we’ll be sorting our autumn treasure into different groups including conkers, pine cones, sticks and leaves.
In our story time this week, we’ve loved listening to one of our favourite stories, ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt‘ by Michael Rosen. Children are really enjoying this story and have been using the props in our story corner to re-tell the story. Have a listen to Michael Rosen telling the story using the link above – it’s great!
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: Go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
Reminders:
- We have a few more family photos to print and add to our home corner display this week, thank you for e-mailing us. Please see our previous posts if you haven’t sent us one yet – there’s still time.
- Please make sure your child has a rain coat with a hood at Nursery every day; we never know what the weather is going to be like and we play out in ALL weather! Thank you.
Old MacDonald had a farm
Children loved the new small world farm area this week. We sorted the animals into different pens and sang ‘Old MacDonald had a farm‘ as we played. Children enjoyed adding the animal sound effects to the song; we’re sure you could hear the ‘moooooos’ and ‘baaaaaass’ throughout school!
As part of our early phonics learning, we encourage children to listen to the sounds that they can hear around them, such as an aeroplane flying above or birds singing in the trees. We also explore the different noises that animals make.
Help at home: Sing ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ together to help your child become familiar with the words and tune. If you visit a farm or see some animals in a field, remember to use the animal names and talk about the noises that they make. You might like to play a game where you use some farm animal toys and choose an animal to describe. For example: It has 4 legs, a curly tail and a snout. Can they guess which animal you are describing and make the animal noise? Can they give you some clues? This is a great way to add new words to your child’s vocabulary and to develop their listening skills.
This week, we listened to the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and used the puppets in the story corner to re-tell the story with our friends. The construction area has also been popular. We saw some great team work as children worked together to build a boat. They added seats and some lights and set off on an adventure, sailing through a storm (on the windy day!).
We’ve also enjoyed picnics in the home corner and scooping, pouring and using sieves with fine sand in the sensory area.
Next week, we’ll begin to learn about autumn and we’ll read the popular story, ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’. Look out for a little brown bag in your child’s folder – we’d like you to fill it with autumn treasure and return it to Nursery.
Reminders:
- Thank you to everyone that has e-mailed a family photograph for our home corner display. Don’t worry if you haven’t sent it yet, there’s still time! Please send it to scholesnursery@spherefederation.org
- We play outside in all weather – please remember to send your child with a waterproof coat everyday.