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Nursery

Our final week at Nursery. What a year it's been! We spent the week having lots of fun with our friends and enjoying the sunshine. The Nursery staff made a picnic for all children, and we even had an ice lolly to finish.

Look at our Pirate Ship! We created it together and added all the different pieces it needed. The fancy dress costumes and jewellery came out and we did large scale painting to create the sides of the ship. We also read The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch. This was a favourite of ours! We created a basket to pull along the rope in our small world area, we added a box model lighthouse to the backdrop and went on a walk to the local shop to but ingredients to make our own lunch!

We used different materials to create a backdrop for all of our vehicles and creatures we would find when we got to the seaside. We also carried on making different vehicles using the boxes, this week we made an airplane, a cruise ship and a sailing boat. The warm weather is on it's way too, so out came the paddling pools!

This half term we are looking at "Going on a Journey". First, we are investigating different types of vehicles - our role play area is a Train Station. Can you see the home made trains using the cardboard boxes?

Celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee! (With a little help from the wonderful Year 6's).

Over the last half term we have been watching the development of these tiny caterpillars that arrived through the post! We had read the story of The Very Hungary Caterpillar, so new what might happen, but we needed to make sure they were taken care of first. They ate all of the food that was in the pot. Then after a while, they created their chrysalis, and after a long wait.... they turned into beautiful butterflies that we released in our Nursery outdoor area.

This week we concentrated on larger, wild animals. We had a Zoo Vet role play area in which many operations took place! We looked at a map of a local wildlife park and created our own, thinking about which animals we would want in our Zoo and what they would need.

We used our learning of Farm Animals this week to support our fine motor skills a little more. Lots of scissor skills, mark making, practicing using the hole puncher and connecting pieces of paper together with treasury tags. We also continued with our counting activities, matching numeral to quantity and using positional language.

Then we focused on Pets. Our grown ups sent on photographs of our family pets to help us talk to our friends about them. We looked at their similarities, differences, colours, features. We learnt about what they like to eat, where they sleep, what they like to play with. Then we drew them really carefully! This week we are also still carrying on with hearing initial sounds, as well as toasting 'marshmallows' and making breakfast on our camp fire in our forest school area.

After Easter, our topic was All Creatures Great and Small - we started off tiny, with minibeasts. We went on minibeast hunts, looked at their features, talked about where they might live, what they needed to survive, and drew our favourite!

Here is our Artist display board, showcasing the creative activities that took place during our Through the Secret Garden topic.

Happy Easter!

Our story this week is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We read through the story and talk about ALL the foods the caterpillar eats! We look at photographs of different fruit and vegetables growing and try to guess which ones they are. Using reels we attempt to create repeating pattern caterpillars with light and dark green paints. In Phonics we are still working on hearing initial sounds within words and some children are beginning to write the letter sound during our activities. One of our favourite activities this week was using the special metallic paints to create a beautiful butterfly. These were done in pairs, one of us doing one side and our friend doing the same on their side to make is symmetrical. We also introduced our Tree of Kindess this week, each time one of us does something kind it will be written onto a leaf and hung on our tree!

We continue to look after our sunflowers, giving them water daily and checking to see that they are growing. We have also been practicing our one-to-one counting by matching the correct amount of petals to the number on the bud. During our Wellie Wednesday session, we wanted our new bird box putting up somewhere high so that the birds would feel safe to come and visit. With a little help from the grown up, Willow wrote a letter to Mr Davies our caretaker. Miss Hewitt left it on his board for him and the next day he came to ask where we would like it. Willow went up to the field with Mr Davies and Mrs Clayton to show him where we would like it fitting. We've also plated some herbs in recycled milk cartons and hung them in our herb garden outside. Hopefully we can use some in our cooking when they have grown!

We planted sunflowers this week and talked about what they would need to grow. We looked too at the lifecycle of a sunflower, so that we know what will happen to it if we look after it. We made flowers to go into our role play Garden Centre using pipe cleaners and buttons as well as creating our own sunflowers by tearing tissue paper. In our Mathematics sessions we used cubes to measure the different height beanstalks and then write the number at the bottom of the page.

This half term our topic is Through the Secret Garden in which we will be learning about how plants and flowers grow, what kind of flowers you might find in your garden, what foods can you grow etc. This week we begin by reading the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. We recall the main events and characters of the story, thinking about their choices - were they good or bad? We look at their emotions at different points of the story and think about ourselves and our choices - would you climb a beanstalk if you found one in your garden? We drew character descriptions, colour mixed to make different shades of green leaves, and explored the puppets in the small world area. We had a new sand pit for outside this week too and our new sand was delivered, however, it was left at the bottom of the hill! We had to figure out how to get it up the hill and into the sand pit? It took a lot of heavy lifting and team work!

Pancake Day! We talked about the ingredients used to make pancakes and tried a variety of toppings. We then had a vote to decide which was our favourite.

This week we read 'Aliens Love Underpants' - it was very funny! We looked at the different patterns from the book and tried to design our own underpants. We continued with the Space theme when practicing our one-to-one counting skills and wrote lists of what we think we might find in space. We also watched a clip of an astronaut in the Space Station and learnt about how they live up there. We learnt about the different shapes stars can make and that these are called Constellations - can you see the ones we made ourselves? For our home learning challenge we created fantastic rockets with our grown ups, but the aliens came to pinch them! Thank goodness we cut the tape and rescued them.

After learning of different countries on Planet Earth, we read 'Whatever Next' and imagined shooting into space and thinking about what we might find. Our role play areas changed into the Space station and we explored moon dust in our small world area. In PE we learnt how to create new stretches, this week we tried the Straight, Pike, Star and Tuck. We also celebrated Valentines Day, lots of discussion was had about the people we love, why we love them, what they do for us, what can we do for them.

Chinese New Year - we linked this in to learning about different countries on our planet and looked at them both on maps and on a globe. To celebrate Chinese New Year we looked at their country's flag, read The Great Race story and talked about the different animals, made lucky envelopes, explored noodles and Chinese tea in our water tray, created a Chinese restaurant and tasted Chinese food!

This week we used Google Maps to find a photograph of our homes and painted a representation of them, thinking carefully about which shapes/colours we would need. We continued our hunt for shapes and made up games outside with a grown up and then carried it on ourselves. During our Wellie Wednesday sessions we watched a clip of birds eating from different places or containers and decided to make our own bird table using the logs that we have. They were a bit heavy to lift so we had to work together!

Our topic this half term is Earth and Beyond! We start off by looking at different types of houses, reading the story of The Three Little Pigs. We create a large straw, stick and brick house, colour mix to make pink pigs and recall the story. We are also learning about shapes - their names, how many sides/corners they have, and hunting for them in our environment. In PE we are practicing rolling, this week doing a log roll, trying to keep as straight as possible.

Christmas is coming! On the run up to our Christmas holiday we were VERY busy! We first learnt about the Christmas story and worked together in pairs to recall the main events. We continued to develop our mark making skills and wrote inside our Christmas cards. To make calendars this year, we rolled marbles through paint to create patterns - we watched how the colours mixed as we rolled the marbles in different directions. We practiced dressing us and learning songs for our Nativity performance, as well as creating our own performances on our 'stage' in the classroom. There were a variety of activities to take part in over this period; split pins, threading, salt dough decorations, playdough, and much more! At the end of term we had a Christmas party - eating party food and dancing. Merry Christmas everyone!