This week, we welcomed some rather special visitors to Nursery!

Tom and Alex from https://www.tomstalkingreptiles.co.uk/ came to tell us all about animals that hatch from eggs and, incredibly, they brought some of these animals with them for us to meet!

Here we are doing some super listening as we waited to meet the animals.  We listened very carefully to the instructions so we knew how to hold the animals carefully and safely.

First, we met Pogo the Stick Insect, who likes to walk up everyone’s arms!

Then we met Wally the Hissing Cockroach, who doesn’t actually hiss anymore as he’s so used to humans.

Next, we met Harry the Tortoise…🐢

We then met Rosie the Tarantula! Mrs Morris was very brave and stayed very still when meeting her.  Only the grown-ups were allowed to hold Rosie – can you remember why?

Tom and Alex then brought out two large black cloth bags…can you remember what was inside the bags?

That’s right! Two snakes…🐍🐍- one was brown and black, while the other was orange and yellow.

I believe one of the snakes was called Jackson and the other was a corn snake – but as you can see, I was a little distracted at this point in the session and forgot to write all the details down! 😁

We then met Tamara the Bearded Dragon who was originally given away as a raffle prize.  Luckily she was rescued by Tom and Alex and is now living happily ever after.

Finally, we met Nahla, the Leopard Gecko – isn’t she beautiful?

We had such a super morning meeting these incredible reptiles and we were so proud of how well the children listened to the instructions and treated the animals with care and respect.  Tom and Alex were so knowledgeable and really helped us all to get a better understanding of these remarkable creatures!

We took lots of photos during the session which you will be able to see on Seesaw over the Easter holidays so do remember to log on…

And finally, we would like to say a huge thank you to our wonderful PTA who funded this visit.

It has been wonderful to hear lots of lovely feedback about how much the children have been enjoying our ‘Out of the Egg’ topic.  Thank you for taking the time to let us know that your child has been talking about it with you at home – we really appreciate hearing about these moments!

Thankfully, the wind died down this week and we were able to hang out the rest of our bird feeders.  You may have spotted them on the trees just to the right of the path as you walk in through the garden gate at pick-up.

Close by, we have set up a camouflaged bird-hide so the children can sit quietly and somewhat hidden while they wait for our feathered friends to visit.  We even made binoculars and used bird spotting checklists to help us identify different birds.

Despite our enthusiasm as bird-spotters, the birds felt a little too shy to pay us a visit whilst we were actually out in the garden.  However, they often visit when we are all inside the classroom and they can have the garden to themselves!  This week, we have been lucky enough to spot a magpie and a crow.  I wonder which birds we might spot next week?

Later in the week, we turned our topic focus towards those creatures of a more creepy-crawly nature by reading two super spider stories.  The first was ‘Aaaarrgghh! Spider!’ by Lydia Monks which tells the story of a spider who is desperate to become the family pet – unfortunately the family in question are terrified of spiders and completely misunderstand his behaviour!

You can revisit the story again here:

The second spider story was another fantastic Eric Carle book called ‘The Very Busy Spider’ which follows a spider as she spins her web.

Inspired by these spidery tales, we made our very own spider webs by carefully threading different coloured wool through holes we had punched into paper plates.  I was so impressed by how independent the children were when it came to completing such a tricky fine motor challenge!

Our final story of the week was a delightful follow-up to the story of Peely-Wally that we read last week.  At the end of that story, Peely-Wally’s egg hatches and she welcomes her new baby into the world.  Quite by luck, I came across a story about the new baby and we discovered that her name is Polly-Wally!

By the end of the week, our classroom was bursting with all manner of creatures that hatch from eggs; from mini-beasts to birds, from snakes to dinosaurs!  I wonder what hatching creatures we might meet next week…?  Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

You may be aware that this week was Science Week at St. Matthew’s and, throughout the school, several exciting events took place organised by Mr Peck (our Year 5 teacher and Science Coordinator).

Here in the FSU (Foundation Stage Unit), we wanted to think of a project that would link with our current ‘Out of the Egg’ topic and eventually decided to set ourselves the challenge of building a bug hotel!

Once planning permission was granted (i.e. we chose a suitably flat, sheltered area in the nursery garden!) we began to gather together our building materials.  Many thanks to Mrs Morgan & Mr Peck who kindly sourced several pallets for us and to Mr Norris who donated lots of bricks.

Work on the bug hotel began yesterday during our mix-up session (when the Nursery & Reception children play together) and quick work was made on completion of the first floor ‘leaf’ rooms and the second floor ‘twig’ suites.

Next week, we will be starting work on the third & fourth floors.  Who knows, we may even be able to add a penthouse suite!  We hope it will eventually look something like this…

If you happen to have any of the following at home, we would be most grateful for donations:

• Old garden pots (ceramic) – broken is fine.
• Old roof tiles or ceramic guttering/pipes – again broken pieces are fine.
• Broken pieces of kitchen or bathroom tiles
• Corrugated cardboard
• Pine cones
• Bark & small logs
• Straw & bamboo sticks
• Long cardboard tubes (kitchen roll or longer)

Many thanks!

There was great excitement in Nursery this week as our dinosaur eggs finally started to hatch!  At the start of the week, we noticed some of the shell had started to fall away from one of the eggs.  We quickly grabbed some torches and took a peek inside…slowly but surely, the baby dinosaur began to emerge from the egg!

The children used their super observational skills to work out which sort of dinosaur had started to hatch.  We looked carefully at 4 pictures of different dinosaurs; a Diplodocus with a long “giraffe” neck, an Ankylosaurus with a spiky back and a club tail, a Velociraptor with “little hands like T-Rex” and a Stegosaurus with large spikes all along its back.

Almost straightaway we could see that this baby had a long neck and no spikes, so we knew it must be a Diplodocus!  Later that morning, a second egg began to hatch.  This time, the children were quick to notice the baby had big spikes all along its back, so they decided it must be a Stegosaurus!  Welcome to the world baby dinosaurs and well done Nursery – what super imaginations you have! 😉

We have been using our fingers to work out how many eggs have not yet hatched.  We had 4 eggs in our nest to start with and 2 eggs have now hatched.  Can you remember the answer?

During story-time this week, we read the delightful story of a bird called ‘Peely Wally’ (thank you to one of our lovely mums for the recommendation!) whose freshly laid egg rolls away on an adventure.  Thankfully, all’s well that ends well and, at the end of the story, the baby bird hatches out of the egg.

The children were very quick to notice that the baby bird’s feathers were the same as the colours and spots on the outside of its egg, which led to an interesting conversation about what Peely Wally’s own egg might have looked like;

• “red, with a little bit of orange”
• “I think red and blue and green”
• “maybe red and black and white”

The following day, we read the non-fiction book ‘An Egg is Quiet” which is full of beautiful illustrations of different eggs; from enormous ostrich eggs to tiny hummingbird eggs.  We even found out that a particular type of dogfish (shark) begins its life in a leathery egg-case!

You can see the book and its wonderful illustrations in this youtube clip – you might like to turn the sound off and read through it yourself:

Inspired by these books and the incredible assortment of eggs in the natural world, we then had a go at painting our own eggs.  We thought carefully about the different colours and patterns we could use and what sort of creature might be inside the egg.

Several weeks ago, we noticed a little robin would often come and sit outside the nursery door during our snack-time – it was most likely waiting for the crumbs that we shake off our picnic blankets once snack-time is finished!  We haven’t seen the little bird this week and we wondered why this might be…we decided the robin had most likely gone off to find food elsewhere.  We decided to make some bird feeders to try and encourage it to come back and visit.

• First, we stood back and watched carefully as the lard was melted in a saucepan.
• Next, we mixed the melted lard with some bird seed.
• Then, we scoop the mixture into a yoghurt pot and added ribbon so we would be able to hang up our bird feeders.
• Finally, we put the yoghurt pots in the fridge to re-harden the lard.

Once the lard had hardened again, we took our bird feeders out into the garden and hung them up in the trees.  It really wasn’t the best week to hang the feeders up, as it has been so windy!  But we’re hoping the wind will settle down next week and, if we’re lucky, we might just spot a feathered friend or two enjoying a tasty snack!

It is always interesting to find out where the children’s interests will take us next and this week was no exception!  Continuing with our ‘Out of the Egg’ topic, the children were thrilled to discover a dinosaur land, complete with glacial river and erupting volcano right in the middle of the classroom!

They then decided they wanted to find out what a real, erupting volcano would look like.  Many of them already know that we can find things like this out by using the internet.  So we turned on the computer and had a look on youtube…

The children were absolutely amazed by the video clips of volcanoes erupting and they were fascinated by the lava streams, particularly those moving through forests.

Here’s one of the clips we watched if you’d like to revisit it:

They were so inspired by the video clips that many decided to draw their own pictures of the volcanoes and, of course, we couldn’t resist showing the children the classic baking soda and vinegar science experiment! You’ll be able to see the full clip of the experiment on Seesaw during the Easter holidays – do look out for it – it’s quite lovely to see the children’s reactions!

In the meantime if you’d like to try it at home, it is really very easy.

You’ll need:

• a small container, such as a yoghurt pot or small glass/cup
• a couple of teaspoons of baking soda/bicarbonate of soda
• a good squirt of washing up liquid
• some red or orange food colouring
• vinegar

Put all the ingredients into the container, except the vinegar.

When you’re ready, pour the vinegar in and the ‘lava’ will begin to erupt!  (Be sure to have your container on a plate or tray of some sort in case the lava spills over).  If you’re feeling really creative you could even make your own volcano to put the container in…there are lots of clips online that show this in more detail.  Be sure to let us know how you get on!

An erupting volcano was not the only thing we made at Nursery this week!  As it was Shrove Tuesday, we took the opportunity to make (and eat) some yummy pancakes.

Here we are measuring and mixing up our three ingredients – I wonder if you can remember what those three things were?

Don’t they look delicious!  Mrs Morris did an amazing job of cooking the pancakes in record time, but there wasn’t enough batter to make enough pancakes for everyone to have one each.  So, instead, we cut the pancakes up and everyone had a few small pieces.  Isn’t it lucky that the Nursery children are so good at sharing!  They are also incredibly thoughtful and decided that the last pancake would be offered to Mr Quinn – well done Nursery!

And if that wasn’t enough excitement, it was also World Book Day this week! We were so impressed by the children’s fantastic costumes and how well they were able to talk about  their characters .  Thank you parents and carers for all your support and efforts!

One of the children came to school dressed as a dragon, inspired by the story ‘Zog’.  We decided to read the story as it links so nicely to our topic (i.e. dragons hatch out of eggs, don’t they?).

At the end of the story, the princess and the knight decide they want a career change and they both become doctors.  This twist to the tale prompted a rather interesting conversation about gender roles (e.g. Can girls be doctors? Do nurses always wear dresses? Can boys be nurses?).  We always encourage the children to question their assumptions about what boys and girls can and cannot do and wear – both now and in the future as grown-ups.

Funnily enough, I then came across this article about a graphic designer in the US who has re-imagined several Disney princesses as modern career women!  What a busy week we have had and we even managed to give a nod to International Women’s Day 😊

Each year, the charity ‘BookTrust’ distribute a free book to all 3-4 year olds in England and Wales.  This week, the lovely ‘Simon Sock’ should have made it’s way home to you.  You can find out more about the charity here.  You might also be interested in having a look at their favourite books for 0-5 year olds list.  Happy reading!

Welcome back to the second half of the Spring term in Nursery.  We hope everyone had a lovely, restful half term break.  The children were so keen to dive straight back into their playing & learning and we all enjoyed the sunshine earlier in the week!

The week before half term, we returned to our ‘Out of the Egg’ topic and read two super stories about another animal that hatches out of an egg…

First, we read the story of ‘The Bad-Tempered Ladybird’ (yet another Eric Carle book) which tells the tale of a particularly grumpy ladybird.  Throughout the book, she picks a fight with all the other animals until eventually realising the importance of friendship.  Next, we read the classic Julia Donaldson story ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ which many of the children are already familiar with.  In this book, the ladybird saves the day when two robbers attempt to steal the “fine prize cow”.

We then made some ladybirds of our own which you may well have already ‘spotted’ in the classroom!  The children were given pre-cut shapes (two circles and a heart – which linked nicely to Valentine’s Day!) and then carefully followed the instructions to stick their ladybirds together.  Finally, they were asked to decide how many spots they wanted to stick on their ladybird.  We encouraged the children to make sure they said only one number name for each spot as they counted them onto their ladybirds. Well done Nursery!

The children were quick to link this activity to the stories we had read:

• “Mine is the grumpy ladybird!”
• “Mine is grumpy!”
• “I’ve made the kind-tempered ladybird”
• “Mine is the friendly ladybird”

When we returned after the half-term break, the children discovered this wonderful ‘invitation to play’ that had been set up for them by Mrs M & Mrs W.  I was so impressed by how well they remembered the story and even discovered several of them retelling it through their own maps and their own storytelling words, including lots of positional vocabulary (i.e. under, around, over!).

This week, the children were thrilled to discover that our ‘Out of the Egg’ focus for the next couple of weeks will be dinosaurs!  We have been reading some of the books from the ‘Harry and the Dinosaurs’ series as well as the rather lovely story of ‘A Dinosaur Called Tiny’ which I would highly recommend.

Here’s a youtube clip of the story – you might like to turn the sound off and read it yourself…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYyv_F8vuEU

Inspired by Tiny, who hatches out of an egg at the beginning of the story, we decided to make our very own dinosaur eggs!  We worked together to tear up strips of newspaper, covered them in watery-glue and then placed them very carefully over some balloons.

Once the sticky glue had dried, we were able to paint the eggs.  We used yellow, blue and red paint to give the children yet another opportunity to explore colour mixing.

When you are next in the classroom, do take a moment to see if you can find our dinosaur nest.  Of course, they are not real eggs, so please don’t worry! We are just using our imaginations!! 😉

I wonder how long they will take to hatch….?