Headteacher: Anna Moss

Happy Friday!

It was so lovely chatting to you all over Zoom and telephone this week and catching up about how the children are all settling in.  We are now at the end of Week 3 and what a difference we are seeing as they are feeling more settled with us.  They are getting more confident with knowing the adult’s names – next the children’s.  We will start playing games over the next few weeks so they become clear who everyone is.  In their bags, you may have spotted a list of children’s names who are with us this year in the nursery – hopefully this will help when they begin mentioning names at home.

We have had a fun week with our circle times and Forest School fun.  Here is a little taster of what we have been doing:

Circle Time 1 – Our Write Dance has been the Wheels on the Bus as we have been wheeling, swiping and beeping with big arms actions (we are on a bus after all).  Our Listening Game has been the “Blinking Game” where children take a turn with a blink instead of their name.  Buckaroo and Pop up Pirates always make us giggle.  Get ready for a popping Funny Face!

Circle Time 2 – Our Maths has been all about “subitising”, counting with your eyes.  We sang the subitising song to the tune of Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes – “Subitise with your eyes, with your eyes. Subitise with your eyes, with your eyes and put your hands behind you back. Subitise with your eyes, with your eyes.  We moved around the cabin counting soft toys, slippers and numicon.  In Forest School we looked and spotted no 1, 2 and 3.  Keep practising this weekend by looking for 1, 2 and 3 objects in and out of the home.

Circle Time 3 – Our dough disco song this week was Head and Heart - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk3KhRyfa-M and we have been continuing playing musical dough where the music stops, so does the dough.  We have also started trying out some of the dough actions – pat, pass, pinch, disco.  With our topic being All About Me we have been sharing the story You Choose where you have begun talk partner work making your own choices on where to travel to, which house to live in and which bed to sleep in. 

Forest School – Mrs Allen has opened up the mud kitchen this week and what a hit it was.  She showed you how you use the new tools to make some cakes and even how to decorate them with leaves around you.  We have all enjoyed lots of strawberry, chocolate and even blueberry cupcakes this week.  The sand continues to be a huge hit, especially with the animals and dinosaurs and chalks have now made it from the patio floor to colouring in the wooden blocks and building with them.  We definitely have some future builders in our mix!

A message for parents – please could you help support us over the weekend with the listening skill – “A good listener always looks at the person talking”.  Allow time to stop what you are doing, come down to their level and encourage looking at you when you are talking to them.

Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen, Mrs Franklin, Miss Turner (am), Mrs Hampton (pm) X

Happy Friday!

Another successful week over.  Our daily routine is becoming established as we are now following the same pattern of events throughout the day.  We have been using our visual timetable to help us see what is coming next.  You will find one in your bags today so take some time over the weekend to share with your families.  Can you spot three circle time pictures?  These are the times of the day when we play games as a whole class.

Circle Time 1 – Write Dance and a Listening Game, Circle Time 2 – Maths, Circle Time 3 – Dough Disco and a shared story. 

During our Write Dance sessions, we move to music with a focus on moving our hands, wrists, arms and shoulders to make them strong for handwriting later in the year.  This week’s song has been “We can do anything” and we have been jumping, swinging, stretching and shaking our hands/arms.  Our Listening rule this week has been “Good Listening is Looking at the Person Talking to you”.  We have been using our “looking glasses” to spot objects in the cabin, our friends and the grown1-ups.  We then enjoyed a matching game where you had to find two grown-ups that were the same.  During Maths we have been counting forwards and backwards to 5 with our song Five Green and Speckled Frogs.  We giggled as they splashed in the cool pool and got some of you wet.  Our dough disco is an outdoor game as we use our Quiet Area to move the dough to a song each week – this week it has been Mrs Mander’s choice of Happy.  Enjoy this weekend.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOWDb2TBYDg  If you have a favourite disco song, let us know as we have a lot of dough disco sessions throughout the year and always need new (and current) suggestions!  Our shared story, again in the Quiet area, has been Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  Our favourite game was when Mrs Mander blindfolded herself and tried to turn the pages in the book and listen to the animal sounds you made.

On top of all this circle time fun, we always have two daily Play and Explore sessions in the Forest School.  This week, Mrs Allen has been talking to you about playing safely in the sand.  Keeping those tools down low, keeping sand away from friend’s eyes/faces and most importantly, sharing the tools on offer.  She has practised using her whistle a lot and every time you heard it, you had to stop and show her empty hands.  You have enjoyed chalking on the patio area with our new chunky chalks; it is so great to see that tripod grip so early in the year.  Mrs Allen also had the ribbons out as you decorated the sand netting with some excellent weaving.

A message for parents – please could you help support us during mealtimes at home as we are working on using tools (knife, fork, spoon) not fingers for our food, tasting/licking/nibbling something new every day (even if we don’t like it) and sitting still, waiting for our friends to finish their food before moving on.  Thank you!

Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen, Mrs Franklin, Miss Turner (am), Mrs Hampton (pm) X

Happy Friday!

We all made it to the end of our first week and how far you have come in just five days!  Saying goodbye to your grownup with a playground full of unknown adult faces and big children is very daunting, but by today – lots of you were strolling down to the cabin on your own.  Well done you.  Our focus this week has been purely on getting you settled, ensuring you feel safe and happy as we all get to know one another.  Although you may not know friends names yet, I am hoping you are starting to know the grownup names.  Use your transition booklet this weekend to look at the adult page – can you see us all?  There are two faces missing – Miss Herlihy and Mr Beattie.  Miss Herlihy is going to be our teacher-training student this year and Mr Beattie is a familiar Blackwell face for our old nursery friends who is with us for only two weeks before he heads off to BIG school himself called a university.

In the cabin this week we have begun our handwriting journey with our Write Dance “Just Like This”.  My arms are aching today from all the marching, building and zig zagging so it must be working.  During our indoor circle time sessions we have been learning how to make bubble gloves!  Water + soap make the best bubbles for the cleanest hands.  Keep practising this weekend!  In Forest School we have opened up the sand and the patio and you have been learning about those orange ropes.  Can you remember what we do where we see an orange rope?  Our Forest Friends should be able to tell us!

A message for parents - please can you help support us at lunchtime?  Spend a little time this weekend looking at the school menu for the meals we will be having next week.  If there are days when you know they will struggle, please let us know on the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. email address.  Any information on foods they do not like, haven’t tried, mealtime habits they may have will help us to help support them.

Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen, Mrs Franklin, Miss Turner (am), Mrs Hampton (pm) X

What a hot Friday!

Our final full week in nursery and what a smashing week of weather we have had.  We have managed our second week with all of our day spent outdoors (except for lunch and quiet time) and finished with a bang today as we watched Red class have a fire.  We have enjoyed revisiting many of our old games using Hedgehog and Badger, a beanbag and Freddie’s favourite song, “Happy” which was actually our very first dough disco song.  The visit to Red class for most of you was very special as Mrs Webb shared s story with you, played a listening game and you enjoyed the play choices on offer in the classroom.  How grown up you all looked as you lined up to go in – Mrs Webb is now very excited to have you in September with all those listening skills you showed her on Wednesday!

We have spent the day today sharing your Learning Journeys with you, such a treasured book “all about you” to keep forever – “until I die” in the words of Hamish!  We hope you enjoy these with your families – you have changed so much since the Autumn season.

Three more days to go next week and they continue to look like hot days.  Please remember to send in the children with their sunhats and suncream (first layer applied before they arrive!) so they can enjoy all that is on offer in our outdoor space.

Have a lovely weekend all.

Mrs Mander and the Nursery Team X

Happy Friday!

Well we managed it for the first time ever – a whole week with the cabin shut and all of our mornings spent outdoors.  We have been dough discoing in the fire circle to Connie’s disco choice of song “I’m Gonna Be” by The Proclaimers.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ4Ib-7fJqY  We have surely walked those 500 miles now?  We have continued our work on shortest, tallest and the same as we had to find someone and something that was taller than us, shorter than us and the same as us. Can you remember which objects you found?  We then had a go at working as a team to build a short and tall tower with the challenge of building one the same height.  We had fun with Phonics in the forest as we have been searching for the animals pig, cat, dog and hen and hunting down our own letter sound.  Can you remember which colour was yours?

In Forest School with Mrs Allen, you have been talking about summer and creating a list of summer words.  The sandpit had a revamp as the new buckets and spades made an appearance and in keeping with the talk of football, some popular flags were added to your creations.  In the afternoons you have been talking about travelling abroad on an aeroplane (if only!) and you had fun creating an aeroplane using the crates.  I wonder which exotic location you travelled to?  There has been a lot of gully play this week as the water is always welcome to cool us down and a popular choice of play was decorating the fence with your paint/water.  We have also enjoyed lots of talk of the football thanks to Joseph and Ralph wearing those England tops – our dough disco song next week is football themed but we have a backup song choice if it all goes wrong at the weekend!

A message for parents – thank you to those who joined in with our ‘Break the Rules day’ today.  Who would have thought being able to bring in your own unhealthy snack would create such excitement!

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

Happy Friday All!

Mr Beattie has had a huge smile on his face all week as we have been dancing with our dough to his disco song ’Reach’ by S Club 7.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50kP4S0peAs  After watching this clip, I think it is safe to say our disco moves were so much better with our shake, point and reach/rainbow.  I know some of you have been singing and dancing to this at home.  Get ready for next week as we have Connie’s choice with a classic Proclaimers song – there is going to be some walking actions somewhere in this song!.  Our listening game has been all about the beanbags as we have had to listen to the words and follow the actions of putting the beanbag on our head, under our chin and in our left and right hand.  In Phonics we have continued blending our CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words with the /e/ sound in the middle.  Ben’s face made us all smile when he realised we were moving our robot arms to his name.  Have you shown these robot arms at home yet?  Try it with ten, hen, den, pen.  We have also used our scissors skills to snip up our names and tried to piece our very own puzzle back together.

With the weather being so warm towards the end of the week, we decided to shut the cabin doors and take the rest of our learning outdoors.  We have explored who is tall, who is short and began using the measuring stick to see how tall we all are.  Our gross motor skills have been tested as we have been learning how to hang safely on the monkey bars.  It always make me smile to see those of you who can hook your feet across the top and hang upside down.  We have begun talking about our new topic “Summer” as we have shared the story On the Beach.  It was fun spotting which vehicle the little boy was going to travel on next in the pictures.  We have looked at our summer bingo boards too and talked about signs of summer – can you remember any of them?    With the weather predicted to rain, Mrs Allen had planned some lovely wet weather activities but it never came!  You helped her make rain collectors to fit around Forest School and predicted which one would catch the most rain.  They may be there for some time now whilst we wait for them to fill up.  The tiny bit of rain they did collect was used to water the fast growing lettuce.  Next week, like our story, the sandpit is having a transformation and becoming the beach.  Mrs Allen will bring towels, buckets and spades and blankets – what do you think the chances are the rain will come then!?

A message for parents – it was lovely to see lots of you at the summer fayre last week and thank you for helping support the school by purchasing the sunflowers the children have planted and created.  We still have some left and so if you would like to buy, please send £2.50 in and they will come home with it.

Have a lovely weekend everyone – summer holiday is almost here!

Happy (almost) Father’s Day weekend!

In the cabin, we have begun our final Music topic using instruments as you have had a go at choosing how an untuned instrument is played and seeing if your friends can match to the correct action.  Can you remember how you moved the tambourine to make your friends clap, slap their knees and roly poly their arms?  Our dough disco has been Neve Yorke’s choice this week, Wannabe by the Spice Girls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkmxCl1dsDw – enjoy!  In Phonics, we have worked hard on matching our letter sounds to those of some old nursery friends as we have played Sound Bingo.  We have even begun to turn the photo over to read the grapheme – Reception here we come!  This is a good point to remind your grown-ups of the importance of “pure sounds”.  This clip is one to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCI2mu7URBc to help support you with this.  In Maths we have had fun with the dice bucket.  We began the week by recalling our dice patterns from memory up to six, we talked about the smallest and largest number on the dice and worked out how we could make more – with two dice!  It was so lovely to hear lots of you talk about “doubles” when rolling them e.g. double 2 makes 4, double 4 makes 8.  We moved on to play our own human board game where one player was the piece and one player was the roller.  We talked about the Start and Finish Line and how we never count the one we are on.  Snakes and Ladders on the patio here we come!

Outdoors we have continued with our Daddy topic as you have taken your Daddy photos out on an adventure in Forest School.  Miss Turner has been sharing one of her favourite Daddy stories with “Are we there yet?” and she has had you planning your perfect trip with Daddy – I wonder if you can remember where you chose?  The butterflies took flight on Monday afternoon as it was time to say goodbye to them.  Luckily for us (!) we had one, Bob, who just did not want to leave us and so we will continue to feed him our melon skins in the hope he will summon the strength to leave his nest.  Fingers crossed for Bob everyone.  The tadpoles are feeling much the same way, they just do not want to grow up – much like some of you when we talk about moving on.  I think maybe it is time to release them into the school pond and hope a bigger space without eyes watching them all the time will mean they transform!  I know this will make Nina happy as she is a huge frog fan!  Mrs Allen has had you gardening this week as you have been watering your own planted seed (I wonder what it will be?), planting a large planter for the mud kitchen revamp and watching the beans grow shoots!  These aren’t the only things growing are they?  Finishing off your Learning Journey of the whole year ready for you to take home, has had us smiling at how young you were nearly a year ago – a real treat for your grown-ups to have at the end of term.

A message for parents – a quick reminder on times for pickup.  These are 11.30 (no lunch), 12.00 (with lunch), 1.40 (end of the “official” school day), 3.10.  Please do let us know on drop off (or before the day via email) if there is a change to the usual pattern.  If they will not be attending at all, please let Mrs Mander know the night before or the school office on the day. If you plan on holidaying in the next five weeks, please do let us know so we don’t have to bother the office making phone calls to find out.

Enjoy your special day daddies – we hope you like your cards!  The words were genuine responses to “tell me about daddy”.

Welcome back to our final half term!

The sun has certainly shone for us this week and what a difference it makes not having to wear those waterproofs.  Thanks to you all for coming in wearing hats and cream applied (or in bag) – that sun can get a little warm when you are out in it all day long.

In the cabin, we have started our final Phonics topic of “Voice Sounds”.  We had fun looking at the faces of our old Nursery friends (now in Green class!) and trying to work out from looking at their mouths, which letter sound they were making.  The fun begins when we put three friends together to make words – that reading journey really has begun!  Our “Singing Games” music theme has finished this week with the song Lost my Partner.  I am looking forward to sharing our video clips with Mrs Cutler, our music specialist next week.  In Maths we have had fun with our new numicon necklaces.  It was great to see you comparing yours with a friend and talking about the same, different, more, less and even combining to make a new total.  To watch Martha and Neve Y connect their 3 and 1 to make 4 and Joseph and Harry connect their 6 and 6 to find out double 6, makes 12 – shows how far you have come on the number journey.  Our dough disco has been Miss Turner’s choice, Fireworks.   We have enjoyed making Catherine wheels with our dough, lighting them and making them spin.  There is only one clip to watch for this one J  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFWnVdsSgxs 

Outdoors we have been sharing our Daddy photographs with our peers and talking a lot about him.  Our special “Olympic” cards are almost ready to come home but ssshhhh, don’t tell them.  It has been lovely that some of you are bringing in stories from home – I wonder whether next week, you could bring in a Daddy themed story to tie in with our topic?  Mrs Allen has been over the moon this week as her “babies” have finally made it out of their cocoon.  I think it was the sheer volume of melon skin that enticed them out – we do get through a lot of melon!  The tadpoles on the other hand are not doing quite as well, especially after a little trip home in half term with me.  In filling up their container with more pond water and weeds, I didn’t notice I had also given them a new friend to play with – a newt.  Needless to say there were less tadpoles the following morning.  The last surviving seven have really been through the mill but we aren’t giving up on them just yet!  Mrs Allen has been talking all things seeds with you as you have been planting a special one in the hope it will grow ready for the summer fair.  You have been all arty up on the balcony by creating your own colourful labels for the pots and some of you have made a paper sunflower plate.  In the afternoons, you have been exploring the seeds in fruit using the magnifying glasses to spot them.

Have a lovely sunny weekend everyone.

Happy Half Term Everyone!

We have been all things sporty this week for our Sporting Topic – the children must be exhausted!  We have been talking about the different races at the upcoming Olympic Games in Japan this summer and have printed our own Olympic logo ready for some special cards we will be producing for a special day in June.  Our dough disco has had us moving to Khadijah’s choice with Run DMC, It’s Like That.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlUJUYnFXjw.  In Forest School, Mrs Allen has been sharing a range of Sports Day stories and practising all your favourite sporting events ready for our own Olympic event which we did this morning on the school field.  I am amazed you are still standing after all that racing – walking, running, egg and spoon, jumping and even a balancing the quoit on your head race.  I can tell you that all five of the Nursery adults will sleep well tonight as we raced against one another and you all – you can certainly run fast for people with little legs!

We hope you have a fun filled half term now life is returning slowly to normal.  Fingers crossed the sun shines for us all and keep them crossed for our tadpoles and caterpillars who will be getting some well-deserved peace and quiet whilst we are away.  Let’s hope they manage to finally grow some legs and wings. 

Enjoy your week everyone