Emmaville Primary School

Crawcrook Nursery

Welcome to the Crawcrook Nursery Class Page.  Here, you can find out about everything that we've been doing this term.
Week Ending Friday 24th March 2023
 
This week has been our whole school enrichment week with the theme- Enterprise. We began the week by finding out about different jobs and about making money.
 
We decided to make a product to sell to reception class. We sampled some jammy pastries and recorded words to describe them using our senses. We then designed logos and came up with the name ‘Strawberry Swirls’ for the delicious pastries. Later, we prepared and baked them and set up our stall for reception class.
 
Friday was very exciting, with a visit from two police officers. They told us all about their job, let us try on uniform and even brought the police car onto the school yard for us to look at!
Week Ending Friday 17th March 2023
 
One of the children's favourite activities this week was 'Tasting the Rainbow'!
 
We used a lovely book to introduce lots of different healthy foods of various colours to the children so that they could talk about ones that they had tried/heard of before as well as some less familiar ones.
 
Next, we introduced a big basket of different coloured foods for the children to name and sort by colour. Then came the fun part, trying them all! 
 
I have also attached a booklet with some healthy packed lunch ideas that you may want to use for inspiration for some new ideas for your child to try. 
 
 
Week Ending Friday 10th March 2023
 
This week, we have attended the superhero training academy and all graduated as amazing superheroes after completing our active assault course.
We have read the Supertato book and explored various real vegetables from the story.
We also read the book Superkid and talked about what powers we would have as superheroes. The children drew pictures of their powers, such as super strength, flying and jumping high.
In our Theraplay session this week, we played a game called ‘funnybones’ when everyone had to listen to commands and work with their partner to get into different positions.
We have ended the week with a superhero hunt in the forest and also made super smoothies to give us super strength!
Week Ending Friday 3rd March 2023
 
The week containing World Book Day certainly called for an important text for our focus this week - as ever the children loved and embraced 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'. 
The repetitive patterns in the book encourage children to join in, and the simple storyline makes it the perfect choice for working on children’s sequencing and narrative retelling skills. Basic descriptive language is modelled throughout the story, allowing children to improve their story retells through the use of adjectives.
We also worked on retelling the story by creating our own textured story maps - each texture representing a different location in the story. The children also retold the story practically by going on their own bear hunts in the forest area and throughout the school.
Week Ending Friday 17th February 2023
 
Every week the children work hard in our 'Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle' sessions.
The purpose of these sessions is to work both gross and fine motor muscles, strengthening and training them whilst mark making, for the purpose of forming letters, which will lead to formal handwriting.
The children first dance the movement to lively music with a 'flapper' in each hand. This week the movement was up and down. This will help with the formation of letters i, l, and t. The children then draw the same movement with both hands on large pieces of paper on the floor. 
Week Ending Friday 10th February 2023
 
Our youngest members of nursery have settled in fabulously after starting in January. Their group times in The Rainbow Room this week included lots of pretend play using the doll's house, puppets, train tracks, and a shop setup. We spend lots of time modeling how to use the toys with others and the language needed, such as 'my turn, your turn, please and thank you.' This supports the children's self-confidence and communication as they play in larger groups with the older children in the main nursery.
Week Ending Friday 3rd February 2023
 
This week, the hairdresser role-play props proved to be very popular.
Role play like this may first appear to be simply a fun game, but at this age, the benefits of role-play are huge.
In young children, role play develops skills such as:
  • imagination and storytelling
  • problem-solving skills
  • understanding of mathematical concepts
  • language and communication
  • self-regulation through negotiation, cooperation, and conflict resolution as children agree on the roles and rules of play
  • gross and fine motor skills.

 

 

Week Ending 27th January 2023
 
Lunar New Year
 
This week we learned all about Lunar New Year. We found out that this year was the year of the rabbit. We listened to the Chinese New Year story, which explained the origin of why and how the years are named after animals.
 
We also looked at some traditional Chinese artifacts and tried some Chinese food, opened up some fortune cookies, then had a go at making our own.
 
We learned dragon songs and dances and worked as a team to reenact the big dragon dances that we had looked at from the Chinese New Year parades in Newcastle China Town. 

Week Ending Friday 20th January 2023
 
On Friday we had the great pleasure of participating in a session with the author, Adam Bushnell.
Adam had the children enthralled with his story about a superhero tortoise named Toto.
The children were all so engrossed and enthusiastic and loved joining in with the actions and phrases, it was so much fun
Week Ending Friday 13th January 2023
 
We have had a fabulous and very busy first week back in nursery. It was so nice to see the children so pleased to see each other after the Christmas holidays and get straight back into playing together again.
We also spent the week hosting induction visits for all of the new children that are starting with us this term. Our existing children did a great job of showing them around and taking them 'under their wings'. 
We ended the week with a range of Talk For Writing activities. We looked at the story of The Little Red Hen. We learned the story by using actions and drawing a story map to use alongside oral retelling.