This week, we have some very exciting news – our tiny seeds have already started to grow!

As you can imagine, it was quite difficult to contain our excitement as we noticed tiny green shoots peeping out of the soil at the beginning of the week.  By Friday, they were a good 2 – 3 cms tall.  We can’t wait to see how tall they are going to get and lots of lovely predictions  have been made!

We have been watering them carefully and making sure they are in a nice sunny spot in the classroom.

Tiny sunflower seeds are not the only thing we have planted recently.  On Tuesday, we joined Mr Quinn and the Reception children on the field to plant a cherry blossom tree.  We did this to mark the one year anniversary of the lockdown and to remember all the people whose lives have been affected by the pandemic.  We said a prayer together and, those of us who stayed for lunch, joined the rest of the country in a two-minute silence (well done Little Acorns).

Back in the classroom, we couldn’t very well have planted sunflower seeds without finding out more about one of the world’s most famous paintings and the man who painted it: Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh.  We read the story of ‘Camille and The Sunflowers’ by Laurence Anholt which you can revisit below.  As always, I would recommend you turn the sound off and read the story yourself.

We talked about art galleries as a place where you can go to see famous paintings. Unfortunately, we can’t visit these places at the moment, but many of the children remember having been to museums and we agreed that art galleries are very similar.

We also agreed that, while Vincent Van Gogh is a famous artist, we are all artists too – just not famous ones…yet!

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers can be found in the National Gallery in London.  You can have a very close look at it on the website (https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/vincent-van-gogh-sunflowers) and zoom in to see the very thick brush strokes he used.

Van Gogh created over 2000 pieces of artwork in his lifetime!  You can see some more of them in this soothing video below.  Can you spot his Sunflowers painting?

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday!

It has been so lovely to see everyone back in Nursery this week!  There have been lots of smiles and laughter and we have all been so impressed by how smoothly everyone has settled back in – well done Nursery – you are superstars!

The children have been keen to get straight back into their play both indoors and outside and we will continue to give them plenty of time to do so – encouraging them to make their own choices, following their own interests and engaging in collaborative play.

There have been lots of requests for favourite toys and activities; including babies in prams, bubbles in the water tray and, of course, digging for worms!

Here’s a little glimpse of our busy week:

We also found time to put together a little surprise for Mother’s Day which we hope has made it home safely to you!  Happy Mother’s Day for tomorrow, we hope you have a lovely day!