There was great excitement in Nursery this week as we eagerly awaited the arrival of the farm animals!  We counted down the days until it was finally Thursday morning…

The wonderful farmers from Mill Cottage farm, Sarah and Holly, arrived with an amazing assortment of animals: there were donkeys, pigs, goats, sheep, rabbits, guinea pigs, ducks, ducklings, chicks and an impressive male and female turkey!  We were allowed to go into the pen with the pigs, goats and sheep where we stroked them and brushed them.  We could also touch the rabbits and guinea pigs and we were able to feel the feathers on the different birds.  My favourite has got to have been the little black pigs who were just four months old. They were very sleepy and loved to have their bellies rubbed!

Which animal was your favourite and why?

A wonderful morning was had by all and I was so impressed by the children’s thoughtful questions and bravery around the animals!  Thank you so much to everyone who contributed so we were able to offer the children this experience and, of course, to Sarah & Holly from Mill Cottage Farm (http://www.mcfe.org.uk/).

You won’t be surprised to hear that the excitement didn’t end there; with the children taking part in their first ever Sports Day on Friday.  We joined the Reception children on the field and participated in four different activities in mixed teams before completing running races.  I am so proud of all the children for having a go at everything and remembering to cheer everyone on.  Well done Nursery!

As promised, I took lots of photos on the day – but these are sitting on the Ipad at school – my apologies!  I will post these to Seesaw on Monday – so do have a look then.  Here are a couple of photos Mrs Bibby has posted on the Reception blog which give you an idea of some of the activities we completed:

Finally, we completed our worldwide travel adventure this week – with a final trip on the magic carpet.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to visit both Japan and Peru (the final two stops on Granny’s tour).  As we only had time for one more trip, we settled on Peru – mostly because in our conversations about farm animals, many of the children told us they had seen llamas and alpacas during their own, previous visits to farms.

Our apologies to the wonderful country of Japan, which we really did not intend to miss out!  If you are interested in finding out more about Japan – here are some lovely picture books set in the Land of the Rising Sun: https://diversebookfinder.org/setting/japan/page/4/

Peru is famous for its llamas who were very important during the Incan Empire.  They helped farmers transport their goods through the Andes Mountains and the farmers used their dung to fertilise the land.

Image from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machu_Picchu#/media/File:Llama_on_Machu_Picchu.jpg

You can read more about llamas and their cousins (alpacas) here:

https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/peru/articles/17-things-you-need-to-know-about-llamas-in-peru/

We landed in an ancient place, high up in the Andes mountains, called Machu Picchu.  People used to live here hundreds of years ago but all that remains now are ruins and llamas!

If you would like to see a real alpaca, why not take a trip to Deen City Farm to visit Kimby:

https://www.deencityfarm.co.uk/alpaca/#:~:text=We%20currently%20have%20one%20alpaca,she%20was%20born%20in%202004.

Have a lovely weekend everyone, stay cool and see you on Monday for the final two days of term!

The end of term really seems to have crept up on us this year!  Isn’t it hard to believe we only have one full week of term left? Nursery and Little Acorns will finish on Tuesday 20th July.

Miss Lizzi, Miss Chandler and I wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone for taking such extra care over the last few weeks; keeping children with symptoms at home and taking tests just to be on the safe side.  We wanted you to know how much we have appreciated this and we don’t always get the chance to tell you!

As we edge towards the end of term, please keep wearing masks at the gate, maintaining a social distance and keeping an eye out for symptoms.  Thank you so much!

We have almost come to the end of Granny’s worldwide adventure, with just a few more stops on the globe to complete.  This week, we headed to the southern hemisphere once again.  We set our SatNav for the Great Barrier Reef, just off Australia’s eastern coast.

As we came into land, we realised there was no land beneath us and it looked like we were going to land in the water!  We weren’t sure if our magic carpet is waterproof but, just in case, we quickly pressed the submarine-convert button and the carpet magically transformed into a submarine!

We know it can be very dark, deep down in the ocean but luckily we remembered to pack our torches so we could keep an eye out for sharks swimming above us!

We filled the ocean above us with, not only sharks, but all sorts of amazing sea creatures…dolphins, angel fish, jellyfish and whales!

And, of course, we had to read ‘Commotion in the Ocean’ by Giles Andreae to learn more about the fascinating creatures who live in our oceans.  You can revisit it here:

We also took a ride on the back of a turtle!

And we re-read another of our firm favourites – the story of The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister which you can revisit here:

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

It has been a very busy couple of weeks in Nursery and there is lots of lovely news to share with you!

As you may remember, we had just recently flown on our magic carpet to Africa and landed in the middle of the Masai Mara in Kenya.

Since there was so much to see and do, we decided to extend our stay.  We have been busy visiting the animals at the watering hole…

And getting rather ‘muddy’ ourselves!

This mixture is called ‘oobleck’ and you make it by mixing cornflour and water together.  We added a little bit of chocolate powder to make it look like mud!  If you don’t already know, “Oobleck is a non-Newtonian fluid, a term for fluids that change viscosity (how easily they flow) under stress. When you run your fingers slowly through cornstarch and water, it acts like a liquid, but apply rapid force, and it solidifies, bends and even tears” (https://www.livescience.com/oobleck-mysteries-solved.html) – so it makes for a fascinating sensory experience!

We also went on safari….

And we revisited the story of Handa’s Surprise…

You may remember that some of the children made ice-lollies, using the fruit from Handa’s Surprise, and all of the children enjoyed cooling down with these on one of the very hot days a few weeks ago.

Those children who had not yet had a go at smelling, chopping and mixing Handa’s fruits – were now able to take their turn…

As the weather had cooled down considerably, we decided to make fruit smoothies this time instead of ice lollies and, of course, we made plenty so there was enough for everyone to have a taste!

Afterwards we had a vote to see which was the most popular – the Handa’s Surprise ice lollies, the Handa’s Surprise fruit smoothies or neither (the sad face)!  As you can see, there was a clear winner with 16 votes for the ice lollies!

The Tuesday before last (22nd June) was Windrush Day.  We took a moment or two to think about the people who came to the UK on the boat called the Windrush.  We found out that these people were not made to feel welcome when they arrived because of the colour of their skin.  We talked about how it important it is to welcome people who come to visit or are new to our school or country, no matter what they look like. And we watched this video about Windrush Day:

We marked the day across the school and, in Nursery, we made some beautiful kites because kite making and kite flying are very popular, traditional activities in the Caribbean.

On Friday 23rd June, we were so surprised and excited to have a special visitor in Nursery – Mrs Morris! And, of course, we gave her a great, big welcome! She read us a story, played with us and told us all about living by the seaside.  Thank you for coming to visit Mrs Morris – we hope you come to visit again soon.

Back in Africa, we learnt about the Masai tribe who live in Kenya and northern Tanzania.  We read a story called Masai and I, by Virginia Kroll.

You can revisit the story here.  It is quite wordy, so you might want to do some paraphrasing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgKoPOq4DBk

We also watched this video about Maasai life, through the eyes of a child.  We felt very sorry for the little girl as she found it difficult to sleep at night because of the smoke from the fire.  We were glad to know that she was going to get a new house, without smoke.

And we have been making some of our own Maasai houses:

This week, we received a very special invitation to go and watch some of the Year 6 production!  We sat in the audience and listened to the amazing singing and dancing.  We were absolutely transfixed.  Well done Year 6 – you definitely get a 5 star review from us!

Back in the classroom, we thought we had better start packing up and get on our way (otherwise we will run out of time to complete Granny’s journey before the end of term!).

But, just before we left, one of our wonderful parents, who comes from South Africa (which is another country on the continent of Africa), made us a super video – teaching us how to count to 10 in Afrikaans and how to say thank you and goodbye!  We loved it – thank you so much!

To get us thinking about the next place we were going to visit, we read a story called Pink is for Boys by Robb Pearlman.

You can revisit it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b5BsM77lsM

This story really got us thinking about whether there really are boy colours and girl colours.  Although there were a few of us who took some convincing, we pretty much concluded that all colours are for everyone!

This story also helped us to start thinking about whether there are some things that only boys can do and some things that only girls can do.  In particular, we wondered if girls can be race car drivers? Or is that something only boys can do?

Image from https://www.shethepeople.tv/news/jade-edwards-first-female-racer-british-touring-car-championship-since-2007/

What about being a ballerina? Is that something only girls can do? Or can boys do this too?

We then watched a video of Sergei Polunin who is a male ballerina.  We were all amazed and asked if we could watch it again!

Sergei comes from a country called Russia and, you guessed it, that’s the next country on Granny’s list!

So, we climbed back onto the magic carpet and headed north.  We remembered to put our coats on as we thought it might be cold in Russia.  We entered ‘Bolshoi Theatre Moscow’ into our Google Earth SatNav and flew up, up and away coming down to land here:

We could see lots of buildings, a few trees and lots of cars.  We could not see any mountains or animals!

We used the little orange man to help us land safely and we could hardly believe where we landed! We were actually inside the Bolshoi Theatre which is home to the world-famous Russian ballet. Isn’t it incredible?

Have a lovely weekend everyone!