Nursery
Nursery News ~ 8th October 2021
Happy Friday! This week, we have begun our first season topic – Autumn. We have used the faces on our cupboards to spot and name the children whose birthday is in Autumn. Our Autumn babies are beginning to turn four already. I wonder if you can remember any faces on the Autumn cupboard? Our circle times and forest school are in full swing, here is a little taster of what we have been doing: Circle Time 1 – Our Write Dance has been the ‘Row the Boat’ song as we have been rowing and digging to the tune. We giggled when we made the largest boat ever around the outside of the cabin. Our Listening Game has been the “Kims Game” where you have been spotting which object is missing from a small group. This is a great skill for your brains and also for Staying Quiet (another listening rule) as you have shown you know the answer by touching your nose and not shouting out. We also began our reading journey during this session with our Phonics circle time. We start right at the beginning by listening to sounds in our environment, the cabin. We played sound lotto to match sounds to pictures. Take some time this weekend and find things that make a sound in your home – can your families recognise them if they cover their eyes? Circle Time 2 – Our Maths has been all about “number 2” following on from last week’s “number 1”. We have been looking at our blue Numicon two and collecting two objects the same for our blue hoop. The outdoor disco was a big hit where, when the music stopped, you paired into teams of two. Dancing in wellies isn’t easy so there were a few tumbles. We also “chalked and walked” the shape of number 1 and number 2 on the patio. Circle Time 3 – Our dough disco song this week was ‘The Excavator Song’, Charlie’s choice - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAguWAJTmBM We have been moving the dough to the music in different ways and keeping up with Mrs Mander! With our topic being Autumn we have been sharing the story ‘The Little Red Hen’ and talking about some of the tools used in the story – gardening fork, scythe, hoe, digging fork. We also enjoyed looking at the Autumn objects you have started bringing in. We have found out what spiky and smooth both feel like thanks to Mrs Allen’s conker. Forest School – Mrs Allen has taught you how you can create your first piece of artwork with a conker and some paint. We look forward to putting these in your Learning Journeys. These are a book all about you and your time in Nursery. During our Forest School time, we have also been on two Autumn walks. The first one was around the school grounds, practising following the leader wearing our bright yellow jackets. The second was over the road to the bigger Forest School. We have collected colourful leaves but we still need more! If you spot any multi-coloured (Bobby’s word) ones this weekend, please send them in for our Autumn table alongside any other Autumn things that may have fallen out of the tree! A message for parents – Expensive toys are starting to arrive with the children and as we do not have the space to store them safely, they could get lost/damaged. The children only require a small soft toy for Quiet Time that ideally fits in their bag on arrival. Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen, Mrs Franklin, Miss Turner (am), Mrs Hampton (pm) X |
Nursery News ~ 1st October 2021
Please see the parentapp for "Our First Month" photographs.
Mrs Mander
Nursery News ~ 24th September 2021
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 |
Nursery News ~ 17th September 2021
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 |
Nursery News ~ 10th September 2021
Nursery news
Nursery News ~ 16th July 2021
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 |
Nursery News ~ 9th July 2021
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. |
Mrs Mander and the Nursery Team. X
Nursery News ~ 2nd July 2021
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! |
Mrs Mander and the Nursery Team. X
Nursery News ~ 18th June 2021
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”. |
Mrs Mander and the Nursery Team. X