This week, we especially enjoyed the story of Shark in the Park by Nick Sharratt.  This classic book tells the tale of Timothy Pope’s adventures in the park with his telescope.  You can revisit the story here:

Mrs Morris then set up this super park in the classroom!  What a busy park it is! Can you spot a dinosaur and a pirate?  Where is the brontosaurus? Can you spot the shark in this park? Can you find some other animals that live in the ocean?  You will need to use your looking eyes very carefully…perhaps you could try using some words like ‘next to’, ‘under’, ‘above’, ‘behind’ and ‘in front of’ when you talk about what you can see…

This shark was much easier to find!  He was swimming in our water tray, would you believe, along with lots of other fascinating sea creatures.

There are actually about 400 different types of sharks in our oceans!  If you would like to find out more about them – this video is a good one to watch.  Please remember to watch these videos with your child – especially if you have autoplay enabled.

We also read Nick Sharratt’s sequel to Shark in the Park – a story called Shark in the Dark.  You can read it together at home using this clip – remember, you might prefer to turn the sound off and read it yourself.

If you are heading out to the park this weekend, why not take along your very own telescope and see what you can spot?  Hopefully, you won’t see any sharks!

Did you know we have a class pet in Nursery?

That’s right, Stanley is our pet sloth.  Most of the time, he sleeps in his nest high up on the windowsill. He wakes up everyday to join us at snack time.

This week, the very kind and friendly children in Nursery came up with the idea to collect some acorns for Stanley to eat.  We weren’t sure if he would like them so we left 5 of them in his bowl overnight and came back to check the next day.  We carefully recounted the acorns in the bowl and discovered that there were now 4…

“Stanley ate one!”

Apparently sloths are very slow animals, so we decided it must take Stanley one day to eat one acorn.  The children then predicted that the next day, we would find 3 acorns (then 2, then 1, then 0) in the bowl and, guess what…they were right!

Of course, sloths don’t actually eat acorns.   Real sloths eat leaves, fruit and sometimes insects.

You can watch a real sloth eating leaves here:

Stanley is not a real sloth – he’s a puppet, of course!  And when we talk to Stanley, we have to do lots of pretending and use our imaginations.  Luckily, the children in Nursery are very good at doing this!

We know to use our imaginations when making moon-sand pies, when making playdough cupcakes and when cooking up a storm in the mud kitchen! We have a ‘no picking, no licking’ rule that keeps us safe when we are playing outside and, inside, we remember to never put things in our mouths and only do pretend eating – unless of course it is snack time and we are with our teachers!

Our favourite story this week has to have been ‘If The Dinosaurs Came Back’ by Bernard Most.  Why not revisit the story at home, using the clip below.  You might like to turn the sound off and read it together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2DE51xKqj8

Can you imagine what it would be like if the dinosaurs came back?!  Would you like to have a pet dinosaur? Where would it sleep and what would it eat?  I wonder if it would like to go to the park with you?

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend – see you on Monday!

I hope everyone who was at Nursery on Friday received their copy of Octopants by Suzy Senior.  If not, please do let me know next week.

The book is for you to keep, read and enjoy together!

Every 3-4 year old in England and Wales receives a free book from the BookTrust (the UK’s largest children’s reading charity) each year.

You can find out more here along with suggestions for more lovely stories to read together.

‘Rain, rain, go away’ is something we rarely say in Nursery!  In fact, we love to play in the rain!

Can you remember what you need to do before heading out in the rain?

• boots on
• raincoat on
• zip up
• hood up

That’s it!  Now you’re ready to play in the rain!

I wonder how many of those things you can you do all by yourself?

Why not have a go at learning the flip trick for putting on your coat?  Have a look at this short youtube video and then have a go yourself…

Would you believe it, but we actually made rainbow rain in the garden this week! We set up the guttering to catch the raindrops as they fell from the covered roof, then we added sprinklings of different coloured powder paint.

The children helped to make the rainbow rain by carefully pouring extra water from the water tray into the guttering using jugs, buckets and cups.  We all watched in amazement as the paint colours mixed together and the rainbow rain rushed down the guttering making beautiful puddles on the ground!

We only had red, yellow and blue paint.  Can you remember how we made the orange puddles?  And how about the purple puddles?  What happened when we sprinkled the blue and yellow paint into the rain?

If you would like to find out more about mixing colours, why not have a look at this youtube video.  Maybe you could have a go at mixing some colours at home?

Even the dinosaurs came out to explore our rainbow rain!

Of course, we had a plenty of dry days in the garden too this week and sometimes it was still mild enough that we didn’t even need to put our coats on!

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!