We were very excited this week when the Animal Man came to visit! Take a look at the photographs we took of a selection of the visitors he brought with him, along with a few of the quotes from some of the children . . . Do you have a favourite animal?
We would love to hear which one it is, post us a comment and let us know!
0 Comments
We have been talking about growing plants and flowers and Delilah told us: "You get a seed and you use your finger to make a hole and you put the seed in. You have to wait for a long time and then it grows up when summer comes" The children have been identifying the different parts of a sunflower plant which we then labelled . . . Next week everyone is going to plant their own sunflower seed - we will make sure that we give them a drink of water when they need it and keep them in a warm place until they have grown strong enough to stay outside! As part of our 'Big Feelings' focus for this half-term, we have been reading the book 'The Surprised Sprite' written by Kay Brophy. The Sprite has some important lessons to learn about friendship alongside her friend Dan and after sharing and discussing the story, the children thought about their own special friends before drawing a portrait of them! "Delilah, she makes me laugh!" We have welcomed two new children to our Nursery family this term and so have
some new friends to enjoy getting to know and helping to settle in - we are all looking forward to seeing them again next week! The children have been sharing their knowledge of Easter time and Delilah told us "You get chocolate eggs and you've got to find them at your house or in your garden - it's exciting!" We watched some video clips of a little boy named Toby as he prepared for, and then celebrated Easter with his friends and family. As well as eating hot cross buns, he helped to prepare an Easter garden window display and together they decorated a wooden cross with lots of spring flowers for their church. We went outside and helped the Easter bunny to sequence some eggs from one to five before singing and acting out our song 'Five Easter eggs in a chocolate shop'. Each time the bunny bought another egg, the children worked out how many would be left. Afterwards they were very excited to receive their own little gift to take home from the Easter bunny! We would like to wish you all a very 'Happy Easter'! We have been very fortunate to be able to welcome a special visitor into the Nursery - Toby Glover is a children's author with over 20 books. He has written a range of fun, rhyming stories and during his visit he selected three of them to share with us! It was with great enthusiasm that everyone joined in with the repetitive text and we all loved getting to know the different characters in Mark Shark 3, Crazy Daisy and A Pug's Life! We have been singing and acting out the rhyme 'There was a princess long ago' and afterwards we spent some time exploring outside in the castle play area.
This week the children have been very excited to each receive not only a World Book Day token, but also a wonderful special pack of books from the BookTrust too! The GSA had also very kindly purchased and wrapped some new books for us to share . . . We combined our celebration of World Book Day and Mother's Day and painted beautiful daffodils on our bookmarks to give to someone special! Happy reading everyone!
Big Yellow Friday is the Children's Liver Disease Foundation's national fundraising day, which this year took place on Friday 1st March. Every week in the UK, 20 children are diagnosed with a liver disease, leading to a lifetime of medical care, possibly even a liver transplant. The Liver Disease Foundation help to raise awareness of these serious yet sometimes overlooked conditions, as well as raising much needed funds to help those children and their families who really need it. We took part in a variety of 'yellow' themed activities . . . If you would like to make a donation, you can do so via the Just Giving-Big Yellow Friday link which you will find on this week's school edition of 'The Bell'. Thank you so much for your support. We have been finding out about St David's Day and have been for a walk to look at some of the beautiful daffodils growing in our school grounds . . . Afterwards, the children were able to select from either paint, collage, pastels or a combination of the different media to create their own interpretation, looking closely at some of the daffodils that we had taken back to the Nursery. Now we have lots of wonderful art work hanging in our Gallery!
Do you have a favourite variety of daffodil? We found lots of different types growing in our school grounds. As part of our new Darwin focus 'Growthability' for this half-term, we have been talking about how special everyone is in their own way and that we can all be proud of ourselves and our friends. After passing the 'Happy' face around the circle reflecting on their growth and development, the children shared their thoughts about what makes them feel proud of themselves and their own achievements. Having drawn their self-portraits and scribed their ideas, some of the children then selected from a range of magnetic shapes to create a 'happy' face! Which of your own achievements are you proud of? What about your friends? If you created a 'happy' face, which shapes would you choose to use? As part of our Chinese and Lunar New Year celebrations we have been creating good luck messages! We persevered with chopsticks to enjoy some tasty Chinese food . . . And we created our own Chinese Dragon to parade around school and wish everyone a 'Happy New Year'! We have been finding out about the celebration of Chinese and Lunar New Year which will be taking place on February 10th this year and will be the year of the Dragon. After sharing the story of the Chinese Zodiac we held our own animal races! We have also been finding different ways to share five gold coins between two lucky red envelopes! Now we are all looking forward to next week when we are going to be doing some more celebrating - and watching out for dragons! This week we have been sharing the story of 'The Gruffalo's Child', finding out what happened when she tiptoed out into the snow in search of the Big Bad Mouse! The children were then very excited when the Gruffalo's Child came to visit us!
She was thirsty after her adventures in the wood looking at the variety of animal tracks in the snow and locating their different homes, but she didn't have a drink, only some ice cubes. We wondered if there was anything we could do to help, and Tylden suggested "Melt them!" He went on to explain "Because it's ice, it has water inside. Water would come (when they melted)". Tylden told us that the Gruffalo's Child could then "Drink it"! We spent some time exploring the ice cubes and observing what happened as they started to melt in our warm hands! This week we have also been singing the number rhyme 'Five Little Snowmen' and counting down as each one in turn melted in the sun, leaving behind their scarves, buttons and funny little hats . . . This week we have been thinking about some of the different signs of winter and we went for a walk in the school grounds to see if we could find any! We added some nice warm outdoor clothes to our display!
As well as welcoming in a new year and embarking on the start of a new term, we have been delighted to welcome in some new children to join our Little Conkers family! Here are some of them having fun out on the playground . . . We hope that they will be very happy during their time with us! On behalf of everyone at Little Conkers Nursery we would like to wish you all a very 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year' We look forward to seeing you again in 2024! This week the children have been comparing a variety of different sized stars and trees before putting each set in order from the biggest to the smallest. Throughout the activity they continued to develop their understanding and use of size related vocabulary, including big, small, little, tiny, medium, smaller and bigger. They then created a repeating sequence of star, tree, star, tree etc! There was also an opportunity for the children to develop their fine motor skills as
they used the tweezers to select from a range of items to decorate the tree! This week the children have been very busy as they have taken to the stage for our Early Years Nativity - 'A Miracle in Town'. We were so proud of each and every one of our wonderful children and hope that everybody in the audience enjoyed the performance! This week there has been a lot of excitement as some families have been putting up their trees and decorations at home. We have been sharing the children's understanding of Christmas, and some of the traditions that they have, here are just a couple of their responses . . . Lola - "It snows and you put your Christmas tree up and you put the decorations up." Lola then went on to say "Christmas pudding! And Santa gets to visit our house." When asked why he visits, Lola replied "Because he gives us lots of presents!" Harry C - "Me and my daddy went to town to see the Christmas lights. One was broken. I already put put my decorations up. I gonna go asleep and I wake up and see all the presents and I will see Santa!" For one of our activities we had a Now Press Play immersive story telling session where the children listen through headphones, responding to the instructions of the narrator to take on the roles of the different characters and act out the main events. On this occasion, we acted out the Christmas story and afterwards the children shared some of their favourite parts and we compared them to our Nativity performance which we are looking forward to next week . . . Delilah told us "A baby was born in Bethlehem" Freya added "The baby was called Jesus" Jack recalled "Jesus was born in the stable" We also talked about the gifts that baby Jesus received - if you could have gone to visit him in the stable, what special gift would you have taken? We have been busy practising the songs and actions in preparation for our Nativity which we will be performing in a couple of weeks time. One of the lines from our first song is 'It was a special night, the stars were shining bright'. With this in mind, we shared one of the books written by our focus author for this term, 'Night Monkey, Day Monkey' by Julia Donaldson. This lovely book not only has an insight into some of the differences between night and day, but shows how by learning about each other's opposite worlds, the two monkeys also learn to be the best of friends. Part way through the story, Day Monkey spotted something . . . "Hey!" said Day Monkey. "There's a banana! How does it manage to fly?" Night Monkey laughed and said, "Don't be daft, that banana's the moon in the sky." Olivers said that this was his favourite part and when talking about the Day Monkey he also recalled that "He was scared of bats." Jesse enjoyed joining in with the repetitive text of 'Don't be daft' which the two monkeys said to each other whenever one or other was confused by something they had seen or heard. Throughout the book we drew attention to the rhyming words and afterwards Jack said "The parrots and the carrots - they rhyme!" We also considered if there were any parts of the story that the children didn't like, and Harry C told us "Monkey likes eating the nanas, I didn't like that bit cause I don't like bananas! I didn't like the nana in the night." Do you prefer the day time or the night time? Or perhaps there are aspects of both that you enjoy, we would love to hear your thoughts! We wanted to show our support for Anti-Bullying Week (13th - 17th November) so on Monday we joined the nation in wearing odd socks to Nursery! Odd Socks Day is all about embracing and celebrating people's differences, and accepting one another for who we are. It has also been World Nursery Rhyme Week, with a focus on a different rhyme each day. On Monday we had a range of activities based around 'Jack and Jill', which was followed on Tuesday with 'Hickory Dickory Dock'. As well as working together to sequence the numerals around the clock face and thinking of a rhyme to go with each number as the little grey mouse landed on it, we also compared the length of tails of the different white mice and talked about which one was 'long', 'short', 'longer', 'shorter', 'longest' and 'shortest'. On Wednesday our activities were inspired by 'Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' which was then followed on Thursday by lots of fun based around different versions of 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'. After creating alternative verses for 'The Wheels on the Bus' on Friday, our follow-up activities included designing different routes for the bus to follow, constructing our own bus and taking turns to be the driver or a passenger, and exploring different tyre tracks by driving a variety of vehicles through some paint! Friday was also Children in Need and this year rather than dressing up, the children were encouraged to 'Get Spotted' for being kind. Along with the staff, Puppet John was ready with his coloured spot stickers to award for acts of kindness! It certainly has been a very busy week! Harry C On Friday we talked about why many people wear a poppy at this time of year and watched an animation based on the experience of the animal inhabitants of a WW1 battlefield. We also completed a short quiz together based on information related to Remembrance Sunday before the children then created their own poppy picture. Harry J At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them The children were very excited when they had a surprise visitor in the Nursery - it was the little brown mouse from the story of the Gruffalo! Everyone was eager to help when they heard that he wanted to go for a walk in the school grounds but was worried that he wouldn't find his way back to us. Working together initially we created some repeating trails using a selection of our autumn treasures, the children then had a turn at designing their own individual one for him to follow. Alongside the two different trails that you can see in the photographs, the children also came up with some other alternatives. These included repeating the pattern of a big leaf followed by a small leaf, as well as repeating a conker followed by a big leaf.
One of the trails consisted of a small leaf followed by a conker and then a big leaf - the little brown mouse was eager to try all of them! Which autumn treasures would you use to create your own repeating trail?
You could create some pictures using the autumn treasures that you find too.
We have also been sorting our collection of leaves according to their size and have acted out a number rhyme about 'Five Autumn Leaves' - it has been a very busy week! This week we have been reading the traditional tale of 'The Little Red Hen' and have been talking about helping each other and sharing the workload. It was fun re-sequencing the story and choosing our favourite characters, the Dog and the Little Red Hen were the most popular! We decided to bake some bread just like the Little Red Hen had done, so after washing our hands and putting on our aprons we combined the ingredients then kneaded our dough and shaped our rolls After leaving them in a warm place to rise, we put the rolls in the oven to bake They smelled delicious as they were baking - and then they were ready to eat! Perhaps you could have a go at baking some bread too! |
AuthorWelcome to the Nursery Class at Greenfields Archives
November 2023
Categories |