Week Ending Friday 27th March 2026
We have had a very exciting week in Nursery!
This week we have been learning about the Life Cycle of a Butterfly. We began by reading the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and talked about the changes that occurred in the story. The children were fantastic at recalling the order of events from Caterpillar to Butterfly. We then created our own Life Cycles using pasta and rice, to show the order of events. We have had lots of fun with lots of different activities connected to the topic.
The highlight of the week was when our own real life Caterpillars arrived. We are excited to watch them grow and turn into Butterflies.
Week Ending Friday 27th March 2026 - Purple Poppies
This week we have been reading a new story called Spring. We have had fun doing lots of lovely spring activities and even got to meet some baby Caterpillars. Hopefully we will see them turn into Butterflies.
Week Ending Friday 20th March 2026
This week in nursery we have enjoyed The Enormous Turnip story. This is one of our Talk For Writing texts and the children have learnt the story through props, puppets, role play actions, story maps and repeated re-telling.
Lots of the children also had a go at drawing their own story maps to re-tell the story, including all of the characters.
At the beginning of the week, the children also used all of their senses to explore turnips; raw and cooked...some enjoyed the taste more than others!
This also led on to a wider exploration of lots of different fruits and vegetables during a 'taste the rainbow' activity.
Purple Poppies
Our two year olds also enjoyed discovering fruits and vegetables this week, focusing on some new language and encouraging full sentences as they talked about what they liked and didn't like.
Week Ending Friday 13th March 2026 - Purple Poppies
The Purple Poppies have been reading the Julia Donaldson story "Monkey Puzzle" this week and also lots of lovely stories about our Mums and our families, leading up to Mother's Day.
We have done lots of fun activities linked to our stories and also made something special to give to our Mums on Sunday.
Week Ending Friday 13th March 2026
Another great week in Nursery!
This week has thrown all weather types at us, but it hasn't dampened our spirits. We've still seen blue skies and signs of spring.
We have also been talking about the special people in our lives and our families. We've discussed how they come in all different shapes and sizes, but are all very special. We have done some lovely activities around this topic.
Week Ending Friday 6th March 2026
Nursery and Purple Poppies
What a fabulous day we had on Thursday for World Book Day!
Of course, the most important part of the day was reading and listening to lots of different stories and books.
The children loved having the children from Year 6 come to share stories with them.
Week Ending Friday 20th February 2026 - Purple Poppies
We have had a very exciting week, learning all about space. We were also very excited on Tuesday, because we got to make and eat pancakes, because it was Pancake Day!
During our space week, we have been star spotting, with our very own telescopes and got to see the solar system with Miss James' very spacial projector. We have sang space themed Nursery Rhymes, while travelling around in our own Rockets and even became scientists to experiment with "fizzy" Moon Rocks.
Happy half term holiday Purple Poppies!!
Week Ending Friday 20th February 2026
Chinese New Year and Pancake Day
It's been a very busy week in Nursery!! We have been learning all about Chinese New Year, but also, on the same day, we had Pancake Day.
We have loved learning about Chinese New Year. The children enjoyed learning about the race of the animals, to decide the order of the years. They felt very sorry for the cat and were shocked at the cheeky rat for cheating.
We have also tried Chinese food, explored chopsticks and looked at the special red envelopes that are given as gifts, containing money.
Enjoy your half term holiday!
Purple Poppies
This week the Poppies explored identifying Feelings and Emotions - what they can look like on our faces and what they might look like on someone else.
Week Ending Friday 13th February 2026
Each half term, we teach the children a new poem. By the end of their time in Early Years, the children will know and be able to perform 12 poems!
We use repetition, visual, props and actions to help the children to remember and perform the poem. We regularly revisit the poems that we have learned throughout the year.
Here is the Zebra groups performance of the poem that we learned this week - Popcorn.
Week Ending Friday 6th February 2026 - Purple Poppies
This week, we focused on Nursery Rhymes as part of National Story Telling Week. Each day we learnt a different Nursery Rhyme and took part in lots of fun activities to help with our gross motor, fine motor, creative, literacy and maths skills.
Week Ending Friday 6th February 2026
What a busy week!!
This week was National Story Telling Week and we decided to focus on Traditional Tales. Everyday a "Magic Basket" delivered a different Traditional Tale. We read each story together, acted it out and completed lots of fun activities connected to each book. Some of our activities included, planting "Magic Beans" when we read Jack and the Beanstalk. Making Rice Cake Bears, when we read Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Exploring sensory bags, when we read The Gingerbread Man and in the creative area, we used different materials to represent The Three Pigs houses.
Week Ending Friday 30th January 2026 - Purple Poppies
This week, the Poppies explored colour - using colour naming language, colour collections, matching and sorting games and lots of colouful art.
Week Ending Friday 30th January 2026
This week we have celebrated an important Birthday!
Our class bear, Fraser Bear; turned 4!
This led to lots of fabulous opportunities for the children to talk about their own birthdays and their own experiences of parties and presents.
There was lots of mathematical opportunities as we looked at numerals on Birthday cards, counted out candles on playdough cakes and compared the size, shape and weight of birthday presents.
Mark making featured as the children made cards, presents and invitations.
At the end of the week, the children enjoyed decorating cakes and hosting a range of singing and dancing party games!
Week Ending Friday 23rd January 2026 - Purple Poppies
This week week have been reading The Three Little Pigs. We read the story and used the story sack to retell the story ourselves.
We have also been working very hard on our gross and fine motor skills. Some activities have involved using scarves to make big movements and then transferring this onto paper to make our "Piggy Squiggles." To work on our fines motor skills, we used tweezers to pick the piggy tails out of the "pigsty" and match them by colour to the matching piggy's bottom.
Well done Purple Poppies!!
Week Ending Friday 23rd January 2026
This week we have been learning about Birds. We are so lucky at Emmaville, we get to see lots of different birds in our little forest and surrounding trees. The children's knowledge of different birds has been brilliant and they have enjoyed learning even more about some of their favourites.
Some activities this week have been, making bird feeders, bird spotting with our very own binoculars, learning interesting facts about UK birds, learning the Nursery Rhyme, 2 Little Dickie Birds with our very own "Peter and Paul" and much more.
Well done Crawcrook you have superstars!
Week Ending Friday 16th January 2026
This week, we welcomed lots of new friends into nursery.
We were so pleased with how quickly they seem to be settling in, but also so proud of our existing children for showing them the ropes!
Week Ending Friday 9th January 2026
Welcome Back Nursery - we have heard lots of lovely stories about how the children spent their Christmas holidays.
This week we are focusing on going back to routines and lots of Personal, Social and Emotional support through focused activities and play.