Hello Nursery!

Wow. A huge thank you to those of you who brought in all your Autumn finds! We have such a range from acorns to the most beautiful coloured leaves. They have certainly been a talking point this week. We have extended our learning of Autumn through story as we have learnt about the change in temperature and the mornings/nights getting darker. See if you can spot these changes over the weekend. We have started to link the season Autumn to our birthday wall where everyone has a face displayed and sorted into seasons. We only have two Autumn babies – can you remember who they are? Which season has the most faces? Next week we are going to use the names on our faces as we add an extra job in the morning for you by finding your name on the balcony bench and sticking it to your face. We have noticed that some of you are already able to recognise and read your name – you will all be able to before you leave us next year!

Sound lotto of indoor cabin sounds was a huge hit – definitely a game we will repeat. Some of you played on your own and others took turns and played with a friend. We moved on later in the week to go for a walk outdoors IN OUR SLIPPERS (don’t tell anyone) as we tried to listen to sounds outdoors. Unfortunately our environment let us down and we heard only a few. Perhaps this weekend, you will be more successful by hearing some outdoors sounds when you are “out and about” of the home. Could you come and tell us what you heard so we can use for a game? We had so many giggles with our Nursery Rhyme of the week – Little Miss Muffet. We created a “tuffet” in the cabin and some of you had a turn role-playing the main character – Khadijah was by far the best as she did the best face for feeling scared. We played with the words to the rhyme as we changed it to Little Miss Neve and Little Mr Parker and we changed where the spider could land rather than always “beside”, on one day he landed “on top of” you. In Maths we have been learning all about the Ten Frame (egg box) arrangement to help us with our counting. We began by ensuring we all understood what the word “corner” meant and looked like. We used this knowledge to then help us with where our number 1 object should always be placed. You astounded me today when lots of you were laying out different objects in the ten frame arrangement! Learning how numbers can look in different ways is one of things we leave Nursery understanding. Our listening game was the looking game of “Follow my Leader” and this week I challenged you by choosing a friend to look at rather than always the adult. It is so important that we look at both adults and friends when they are talking to show them we are a good listener. Ensure your grown-ups practise this at home at the weekend as we all have a habit of talking and giving instructions when looking at something else! Our Dough Disco song chosen by Noah this week was my favourite singer George singing Shotgun. Next week, it is Neve D’s choice! Please please can you send in some favourite song choices for us to have some dough fun with!

Outdoors, in our own Forest School, we continued to explore Autumn as every time the wind blew, more colourful leaves fell - it felt like it was snowing at times! We took the opportunity of looking at the artwork of Andy Goldsworthy to create some of our own leaf art. You had to sort leaves of the same colour and create different patterns. Pippa did a wonderful job, a definite artist in the making! Later in the week, Mrs Allen moved on to show you how to use natural materials to create your own artwork. The Autumn basket came in handy for this as we saw some lovely creations with acorns and conkers up on the balcony bench. In the afternoons, you have been sharing the story of “The Star of the Zoo” all about animals working as a team to achieve a goal. We took this important message with us all week and it was lovely to see you working as a team this morning with Mrs Franklin to create a sand tuffet to sit on. It is great to bring our indoor learning outside and our outdoor learning inside (not the mud though J ). You all had fun with Mrs Allen using the jungle animals and the crates to build a tower to reach the stars and you were extending yourself by thinking of other things that could be used to build vertically.

A message for the grownups for this weekend, please could you help support us by practising handwashing with the children. Next to our sink, we have photographs of what the hands should look like whilst washing = like wearing a pair of bubble gloves. Please ensure they add water and soap to their hands and BEFORE they wash it all off, give them time to create their Bubble Gloves! We have noticed there are some children who are still not washing their hands properly and never has it been so important at a time like this. The practice at home will ensure we can get up to 24 children in a line doing it. 

Have a lovely weekend – hope to see lots of you hunting those scarecrows tomorrow!

Mrs Mander and the Nursery Team X