Headteacher: Anna Moss

Hello Nursery!

Talk of Autumn was in the air as we started to notice the changes around Forest School – leaves changing colour, leaves falling off the trees, colder weather.  Did you manage to spot some signs on the weekend?  It was lovely that some of you brought in your Autumn objects in – if you are out and about this weekend, please collect some more and bring them in to share – we may have enough to create an Autumn table on the balcony!

We have officially begun our Phonics journey! Hurrah! We always begin by seeing if we can listen to the sounds in the environment.  We started the week by exploring the cabin for objects that make a sound – you make such good explorers with those Looking skills! Your top ten were chosen and when you were in Forest School that day, Mrs Mander snuck into the cabin and recorded them on her music machine.  We used these sounds for the rest of the week by playing a matching game with the object pictures.  Next week, we will have a go at playing Bingo!  Our Nursery Rhyme this week was Incy Wincy and you were introduced to the special sound boxes.  These are boxes which have objects in that begin with the same sound.  We used the /s/ box to sing our rhyme as we chose different spider names.  Can you remember which object wasn’t in the box?  Sweet, snake, seal, sun?  The number three was our Maths focus as we sung away to “You can clap your hands”.  Have a go at clapping, stamping and shaking that head three times – this was a real challenge for most of you as you just cannot stop those feet moving!  J Numicon three made a visit off the wall and we talked about the colour, the shape and matched to the number 3 shape on your faces – a special number this week with it being all of your ages.  Next week, we move on to learning about how we can count using an egg box – so much to look forward to.

Outdoors, in our own Forest School, we have had fun with learning about Autumn.  After our Autumn walk, Mrs Allen was feeling brave when she decided to get the paints out on the balcony.  You all had an opportunity to come and do some colour mixing to see if you could make some Autumn colours.  Using the collection of Autumn leaves to create crowns and bracelets was another hit this week.  You had fun taping masking tape around your wrist and sticking the leaves on – maybe you could have a go at doing this on the weekend with your families?  The grand finale was using the coloured leaves to make a rainbow.  This tied in lovely to the whole school “Rainbow Project” where we have started listening to our chosen song “You are my Sunshine” and will hopefully be making a dough disco dance to match.  Watch this space.  In the afternoons, a new area was opened up – the building blocks.  You have learnt how to take them off and place them back on safely.  The story the Gigantic Turnip has been shared and you had fun role playing the story in this area.

A message for the grownups, during those mealtimes this weekend, could you work on sitting still on the chair, knees under the table, arms in front of you.  We have noticed a lot of the children are struggling to sit still during our lunchtime.  We do practise this every day, three times a day including our fruit/vegetable snacks, but practising at home would help us to establish these good eating habits early on.

Mrs Mander and the Nursery Team X