Week ending 11th April 2025
What a lovely week we have had celebrating Easter together. The children have been so creative designing their amazing Easter Egg creations for our school competition - our overall winner was Henry with his super cute Spring Chicks - well done Henry! The children have all worked so well together finding the eggs that the Easter Bunny hid around our forest area, and wait until they tell you all about the cheeky bunnies who had hidden all around our school too, they were SO good at hiding, but the children found them all! On Friday, we enjoyed our last day of the Spring term together in the sunny forest before enjoying our chocolate nests that the children had made throughout the week. The Purple Poppies have made some gorgeous chick handprints before practicing their 'Spring Chicken' dance with Miss James.
We hope you all have a lovely break before we return for our Summer term together. Have a very Happy Easter :-)
Week Ending Friday 4th April 2025
This week we loved joining in with the whole school STEMMAVILLE Enrichment Week, celebrating all things Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.
Some of the children's favourite bits were all of the fabulous Forest School activities that Ella from Lovely Learners set up for them.
They also loved the 'wow' science experiments including Mega Bubbles, making gloop, slime and magic colour changing milk.
Purple Poppies
This week, our two year olds have loved the opportunity to take over the important job of looking after our caterpillars.
They have read caterpillar stories, sung caterpillar rhymes and also made their own caterpillar fruity snacks!
Week ending 28th March
We have had a lovely week enjoying the first few days of Spring in the sunshine. We have been very lucky to welcome our tiny caterpillars into nursery too! This week has been all about the Very Hungry Caterpillar and the children have been doing some brilliant counting of the fruits that the caterpillar eats, as well as creating moves for the life cycle of a caterpillar in the forest area. The children have also been using their fine motor skills to create a beautiful Mother's Day card for their special female grown up at home.
Purple Poppies
The Purple Poppies have been learning all about Spring this week. The children have explored a Spring tuff tray before creating their very own rainbow with an April shower, and then going on a Spring nature hunt in the forest area.
Week Ending Friday 21st March 2025
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 14th March 2025
Another busy week in nursery! The children have all been planting sunflower seeds ahead of World Down Syndrome Awareness Day next week. We have been investigating different fruits and identifying their seeds. The children also took part in a Jigsaw PSHE session involving the children learning about where their heart is. We talked about how exercise makes our heart beat faster which is a good thing!
Purple Poppies
The Purple Poppies have been busy using flowers as paintbrushes before planting their sunflower seeds too. The children have taken part in some lovely role playing in the Rainbow Room. Miss James has been so impressed with the children's kind hands!
Week Ending Friday 7th March 2025
This week in Nursery we have celebrated Shrove Tuesday by reading Mr Wolf's Pancakes, learning a pancake poem and of course, eating lots of pancakes!
It was also World Book Day on Thursday and like every day in nursery, we read lots and lots of books. It was extra special being able to come to school in your pyjamas or a fancy dress costume through, and we also enjoyed lots of book themed activities such as treasure hunts and paring up with reading buddies in Year 3 for a reading café.
Week ending 21st February
This week has seen us blasting off into space! The children have absolutely loved learning about the different planets and some of the children have blown our minds with their knowledge of the solar system. We have found some lost aliens in the forest before they blasted off on their new adventure; we have made some delicious space buns for our snack and the children have made some beautiful planets.
Purple Poppies
The Purple Poppies have been super busy learning all about bugs. They even went on a bug hunt in the forest area but it was maybe still a bit too cold for the bugs because there wasn't a lot of bugs to be found!
Week ending 14th February
We have had a very busy week in nursery. We have been learning all about our zones of regulation and we have all been fantastic at identifying different feelings and the colours that represent them. Using the colours, the children have been creating their own simple patterns using two colours - we saw some red, green, red, green patterns which the children said looked like Christmas colours! I wonder, if the children could make patterns like this at home? The children have also been fantastic at learning our poem, 'Popcorn, Popcorn' before we fully embraced 'love' day on Friday!
Purple Poppies
Colour week! The children have been fabulous at identifying different colours this week, we even went on a colour walk around school, identifying lots of different colours on our journey... We almost blew Miss James' socks off!
Week ending 7th February
This week has been National Storytelling Week and Children's Mental Health Week.
The children have become storytellers using different props in nursery before exploring characters in books, and we even built our own stories in our groups. In the forest area, we have read a beautiful story called 'What Will I Be' which has allowed the children to think about what jobs they could have when they're older.
As part of Children's Mental Health week, the children have created their own beautiful Mindfulness Jars to help them feel calm; Jigsaw Jenie has come to visit as part of our PSHE learning, supporting us to learn about our emotions and how to be kind to others. We have taken part in daily yoga and we have loved dancing to Meghan Trainor's 'Better When I'm Dancing' to make us feel happy and regulated!
Purple Poppies
The Purple Poppies have had a very busy week exploring the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears as part of National Storytelling week. They have done some fantastic ordering with the items from the story in the forest area. The children have had fantastic recall of the story, and have decorated our very own bears using play dough. I wonder if the Purple Poppies can become story tellers and tell you the story of Goldilocks at home?
Week Ending 31st January 2025
This week we have been learning about Chinese New Year ready for the celebrations at the weekend. The children in Nursery enjoyed learning about Chinese New Year traditions and looking at the props.
We read and acted out the story of Chinese New Year and also practised using chopsticks to eat noodles.
Bird Week - Week ending 24th January 2025
This week we have been learning all about birds.
It was the RSPB's Big School Bird Watch so we spent time outdoors counting and identifying different species of birds.
Some of the birds that we saw were small like the robins and the blue tits, but others were big like the red kites and the pigeons.
We talked about how in Winter it is harder for the birds to find food, so we made some delicious bird feeders that we took home to peg in our gardens.
We also got creative and made some amazing bird pictures too!
The Purple Poppies have also been learning about birds this week. Miss James created a fabulous bird hide so the children could do their own bird spotting in the rainbow room before we engaged in some sensory activities to explore some of the features of birds.
Week Ending Friday 17th January 2025
This week we have celebrated an important Birthday! Our 'Star of the Week' bear; Starry 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!
Our two year old children have been very interested in vehicles lately. Their book of the week was 'Car, Car, Truck, Jeep' which included lots of lovely repeated refrains that the children could join in with. Their nursery rhyme of the half term is 'The Wheels on the Bus' and they have loved acting this out with bus props.
Week Ending Friday 10th January 2025
Brrrrrrrrr...that was a chilly week!
We still got outside to enjoy lots of lovely sunny, crisp winter fresh air though. The children are becoming much better at putting their outdoor clothes on independently...keep practicing that 'flip trick' for your coats!
This week the children enjoyed listening to We're Going on A Bear Hunt. We read the story over and over, encouraging the children to join in with the repeated refrains and actions to join the words.
We also went on our bear hunts around the school and the forest area; practicing teamwork, counting, positional language, and listening skills.
Our two year olds have also had a great first week back.
This week they have been exploring 'feelings and emotions' through books, identifying what emotions might look like on themselves and others. We also introduced the children to some calming activities such as making rain shakers to play alongside calming music and deep breathing.