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!

This week, our focus story was the classic ‘Handa’s Surprise’ by Eileen Browne which tells the tale of a girl called Handa who wants to surprise her friend, Akeyo, with 7 delicious fruits.  She puts her fruit into a basket and sets off to Akeyo’s village, carrying the basket on her head. Can you remember why she carried the basket on her head?

Along the way, seven cheeky animals take the different fruits from Handa’s basket without her realising!  You can rewatch the story in this video below.  Can you remember what happens at the end?  Why was Handa surprised to discover tangerines in her basket?

The story of Handa’s Surprise is set in a country called Kenya which is on the continent of Africa and, would you believe it, it’s the next stop on Granny’s world tour!

image from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/28991991326989290/

Even though, it felt like we were already in Kenya at the start of the week, as the temperatures in Nursery rose into the high 20s, we jumped back onto our magic carpet, buckled up and headed south, waving goodbye to the snowy Matterhorn and the grazing Swiss cows.

We entered ‘Masai Mara National Reserve’ into our Google Earth GPS and landed on a very different landscape to the one we had left behind!  It was very flat, without any mountains and it looked very hot with only a little bit of shade under a tree here and there.

We used the little orange man to land safely and he guided us onto a very long, straight road.  We set our compass to travel westwards and went along the road for a little while until, all of a sudden, we spotted something in the distance!  As we got closer, we could make out some animals grazing by the side of the road.  They had four legs, tails and black & white stripes!  Can you remember what they were?  That’s right – we came across a herd of zebras!

We quickly got to work, making our very own binoculars, so we could be sure to spot many of the other animals that are known to live in Kenya, such as lions, leopards, cheetahs and elephants!

While we were in Kenya, Miss Cronin also managed to find (most of) the fruits from Handa’s basket.  Unfortunately, it was too tricky to track down any guavas, so we had to make do with a bottle of guava juice.  Can you remember the names of the other six fruits?

We had a go at feeling, smelling and chopping up the different fruits.  Then we blended all the pieces together to make a delicious smelling mixture.  As it was so hot, we decided to make our mixture into ice lollies!  We carefully poured the green liquid into ice lolly containers, added the sticks and popped them into the freezer.

Please note, as the chopping and preparation of the ice lollies was quite time consuming, only about half of the class had a go at this activity.  As we knew the weather was going to change on Thursday, we made the decision to make enough ice lollies for everyone and those children who have not yet had a go chopping the fruit will do so next week.

By the time the ice lollies had frozen (mid-week), it was perfect weather for them and the general consensus was they were yummy!

We also found some time to make some painted footprints…

…which we turned into special bookmarks for Father’s Day – you should find yours in your book bag.

If you celebrate Father’s Day, we hope you are having a lovely day together. See you tomorrow everyone!

Welcome back to the final half term of the school year!  We hope everyone had a lovely half term and managed to enjoy getting out and about a bit more than we have been able to over the last few months.

The children all returned with great big smiles and were keen to dive straight back into their play.  Our class Governor visited us on Friday morning and one of her comments was that the children all seemed very happy!  The children made her feel very welcome and proudly showed her around the classroom and garden.

We started off the week reading the delightful story of “The Cow that went Oink” by Bernard Most which had all of us laughing out loud! We all agreed that it was very lucky that the cow and the pig met each other.  We also knew that it is not kind and friendly to laugh at people when they make mistakes.

You can revisit the story here:

This story gave us a bit of a clue as to where we might be going next on our magic carpet.  The country that Granny visited after China is famous for the cows that graze high up in its beautiful mountains wearing large bells around their necks.  We wondered why they wear these bells and decided it is most likely so the farmers can hear their cows and keep track of them if they wander off.

We watched this video and were amazed by the sound of bells all ringing at once:

Have you worked out which country we flew to next?  Another clue would be that this country is also famous for its chocolate!

That’s right, it’s Switzerland!

We unrolled our magic carpet, held on tight and waved goodbye to the Great Wall of China.  We flew up, up and away westwards, back to Europe and came down to land on a very high mountain peak!  We could see lots of snow and ice too and we thought this must mean we were very high up.  We didn’t think the cows could live on this part of the mountain as there would be no grass for them to eat.

We learnt that the mountain we had landed on is called the Matterhorn and it is one of the highest mountains in Switzerland and in Europe.  We thought the name sound a bit like unicorn!  And we also thought the peak itself looked a bit like the shape of a unicorn horn!

image from wikipedia

The Matterhorn shape is also described as ‘pyramidal’, so we spent some time this week learning more about this 3D shape.  Specifically, we took a closer look at a square pyramid; that means it has a square on the bottom and triangles on the sides.

image from wikipedia

Can you spot any pyramids or Matterhorn mountains amongst our constructions?

We were also fascinated to learn that some people have climbed the Matterhorn, even though it is covered in slippery ice.  Dani Arnold is a Swiss mountaineer who set a new world record when he climbed the north face of the Matterhorn in 2015 in only 1 hour and 46 minutes!  Here is a photo of Dani:

image from wikipedia

And you can watch him climbing the Matterhorn in the video below.  We were very interested to see the sort of equipment he needed to keep himself safe; a helmet, special shoes and ice axes to help him hold on!

Some of the children also thought it would be lots of fun to sledge all the way back down and we wondered if that is what Dani did after he reached the summit!

Although we are yet to try ice-climbing, we do love to climb too!  Here we are climbing to some of the highest places in Nursery:

And here we are practising our balancing, just like Dani would have had to do at the top of the mountain:

Switzerland is also famous for its incredible train journeys.  Some of the trains even have glass roofs and restaurants so the passengers can see the views even more clearly while they eat their fancy food!  Do you recognise the mountain about halfway through the video (1.20)?

Finally, we read a story by John Burningham called Oi! Get Off Our Train.  This story is actually a very serious story about endangered animals and the impact humans are having on them.  It reminded us of the elephants we met in the elephant sanctuary in Thailand.

You can revisit it in this video below if you would like to:

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend in the sunshine and see you on Monday.

I wonder where we will be heading off to next?

As you may remember, at the end of last week, we flew to China on our magic carpet and came down to land on what looked like some sort of lookout or wall.  The children used their looking eyes and came up with some fantastic suggestions as to where we might have landed…

Luckily, we were able to find out the answer by asking an expert; one of the children in our class has an uncle who used to live in China and he very kindly made a video for us.  He taught us how to say hello in Chinese and how to count to 5. And…he told us we had landed on the Great Wall of China!

You can take a closer look at the Great Wall of China in this National Geographic video:

Of course, the wall inspired much of our building and balancing:

This week was also book week at St. Matthew’s so we took a break from our world travels and immersed ourselves in the whole-school theme of ‘Back to Nature’.  Our focus book was ‘The Lost Words’ by Robert Macfarlane.  As the author explains;

“The book began as a response to the removal of everyday nature words – among them “acorn”, “bluebell”, “kingfisher” and “wren” – from a widely used children’s dictionary, because those words were not being used enough by children to merit inclusion. But The Lost Words then grew to become a much broader protest at the loss of the natural world around us, as well as a celebration of the creatures and plants with which we share our lives, in all their wonderful, characterful glory.” Robert Macfarlane (author).

You can revisit some of the poems (spells) here:

In nursery, we talked about the words we are already familiar with and we were so impressed that the children already knew many of them, including acorn, bluebell, bramble, conker, dandelion and fern!  Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the children already know so many nature words given that most days in nursery are spent getting ‘back to nature!’

We decided to create our own book of nature words and quickly got to work exploring the garden to find creatures and plants we could collect or photograph.  Here are some of our beautiful findings…

After the half term, we will finish putting our book together and be sure to share it with you!

Have a wonderful half term everyone and see you back at school on Monday 7th June.

Last week, we landed in Frida Kahlo’s beautiful, colourful garden in Mexico City.  This inspired us, this week, to take our painting outside too.  Unfortunately, the weather in Raynes Park wasn’t quite as sunny and bright as it was in Mexico but, of course, we didn’t mind at all.  In fact, we love it when it starts to rain because muddy puddles have got to be one of our favourite things!

As you may remember, we particularly love to colour mix in the puddles, using sprinkles of powder paint.  However, there was so much rain this week, that the puddles were very muddy indeed and this made it difficult to see the colour changes.

So, instead, we decided to do our colour mixing in the water tray.  We always use the three primary colours (red, blue and yellow) when mixing, so the children can clearly see how to create the secondary colours (orange, green and purple).

image from Wikipedia

We also tried lots of colour mixing with paint and brushes at our outside paint station…

And we even had a go at painting with giant paintbrushes (brushes attached to broom handles!)…

Later, we used an assortment of different sized brushes to create our very own mural in the garden…

Isn’t it beautiful? Unfortunately, it didn’t last long as the wind became so strong in the afternoon, that it blew away!  Luckily, we were able to take a few photos to share with you!

All of this wonderful painting led us to our next story – The Magic Paintbrush by Julia Donaldson and Joel Stewart:

Image from www.amazon.co.uk

This is a charming story about a girl called Shen who receives a magic paintbrush.  The paintbrush can bring the items she paints to life!  You can revisit the story here:

The story of the magic paintbrush is set in China – which is the next stop on Granny’s worldwide adventure!  We were quite reluctant to leave Mexico (and actually asked to extend our stay so we could re-read our Frida story twice more!) but, eventually, we climbed back onto the magic carpet and waved goodbye to Frida and her monkey.

We flew up, up and away westwards once more, over the Pacific Ocean to China.  As we came into land, we could see lots of trees, mountains and what looked like a very long line across the landscape:

We used the orange man to help us land safely and this is what we saw:

We wondered where on earth we could be?

“It’s a bridge with water under”

“It’s a lookout”

“It’s a house”

“It’s a prison” (such a good suggestion – linked to the story we had just read, perhaps?)

“It’s a wall of China!”

What super ideas and guesses Nursery – we were so impressed!

Don’t forget to check back next week, to find out where we have landed…

On Monday morning, the children were amazed and delighted to find rice in the water tray!  Thailand, the country we were visiting, has lots of rice farmers and some of the rice that we eat in our homes here in the UK may have come all the way from Thailand!

The children spent much of the morning, pouring, scooping and sifting the rice in the water to get it nice and soggy!  The next day, we removed the water and used pipettes to add drops of food colouring to the rice – creating the effect of rainbow rice!

“I love rainbow rice!”

Isn’t it beautiful?

Just as we were packing our bags and getting ready to set off on the next part of our adventure, we spotted a herd of elephants, who had become caught in traps!

Luckily, the children found them just in time and carefully freed them using specialised equipment (tweezers!).  We made sure they were all safe in the elephant sanctuary before we climbed back onto our magic carpet.

The next stop on Granny’s journey was Mexico and, to inspire our visit, we decided to learn about a very famous Mexican artist called Frida Kahlo.  We read this delightful book by Isabel Sanchez Vegara which told us about Frida’s life and you can revisit it at home in the video below.

Book cover image from www.amazon.co.uk

When Frida was growing up, she had an accident and hurt her leg so badly that she had to stay in bed for a long time.  She couldn’t watch TV or play games on her ipad.  Can you remember why she couldn’t do these things?  That’s right, because “ipads (and TVs) were only made after the olden days finished” and Frida lived in the olden days.

To help pass the time, Frida started drawing and painting instead and that is how she became a famous artist!  She would look at herself in a mirror and then paint a picture of herself.  We learnt that paintings like these are called self-portraits.

Here’s a photo of Frida and a self-portrait that she painted:

Images from: https://photos.com/featured/frida-kahlo-holding-her-pet-monkey-bettmann.html  and https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-frida-kahlos-self-portraits-helped-embrace-flaws

Inspired by Frida’s self-portrait, we decided to paint our own.  First, we took a selfie on the ipad and then looked very carefully at it to help us paint our own self-portraits!  We have just started working on these and will carry on next week.  We are very impressed with the results so far!

We decided to visit Frida’s house in Mexico which is still there today even though Frida is no longer alive.  The house where she lived is now a museum dedicated to her.  So, we entered ‘Blue House, Mexico City’ into our satnav (Google Earth) and waved goodbye to the elephants in Thailand as we headed eastwards once more, up over the gigantic Pacific Ocean to North America.

As we came down to land, we saw lots and lots of houses and trees.  A lot of people live in Mexico City – even more than in London!  We even spotted some swimming pools in some of the gardens!

We decided to take a closer look and, using the little, orange man to guide us, we landed right in the courtyard of Frida’s house.  The walls were painted a beautiful, bright blue and there were trees everywhere!  There were even some words written on the wall in Spanish, telling us that Frida and her husband Diego had lived in the house in the olden days!

We thought the trees in Frida’s courtyard where probably there for her pet spider monkey to swing through!  Did you spot her spider monkey in her photo and self-portrait? Spider monkeys can only be found in Mexico and other countries in South America.  They have a really long tail that they use to help them swing through the trees.

We also read the story of Monkey Puzzle by Julia Donaldson which is all about a little monkey trying to find his mum in the jungle.

Book cover image from www.amazon.co.uk

You can listen to the story again in the video below:

After visiting Frida’s house, we noticed lots of house making within the children’s own play both outside and inside, with the wooden blocks and, of course, in our lovely home corner.

Finally, we took a moment this week to remember what we had learnt about Ramadan and Eid-al-Fitr when we visited Istanbul.  Some of the children in our class celebrated Eid this week and they showed us the lovely clothes they wear to celebrate.  They also taught us how to say ‘Eid Mubarak’ and one of our lovely mums even read us a Curious George story about Ramadan.  Thank you so much!

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday!

This week, our travelling adventures continued as we jumped back onto our magic carpet and headed even further east.  We waved goodbye to Istanbul, buckled up our seatbelts and flew up, up and away over Iran and India to northern Thailand.

Miss Chandler has visited Thailand before and she told us all about her trip to visit the elephants who live in a sanctuary there.  We learnt that a sanctuary is a place where elephants can live safely protected from hunters.  She showed us some photos from her trip and told us that she fed the elephants bananas (which they ate whole including the skins) and one of them sprayed her with water from its trunk!

We decided to take a closer look at an elephant sanctuary so we entered ‘elephant nature park thailand’ into our magic carpet navigation system (aka Google Earth) and landed here:

We could see lots of trees, a river and some little huts.  When we came into land, we could see that the little huts were actually big umbrellas and lots of elephants were standing under them to shelter from the sun.  Another elephant was keeping cool in the river!

We then watched a video from the Nature Park to see some close ups of the elephants that live there:

And we read a delightful story by Susan Hellard about a Baby Elephant who gets into all sorts of trouble because she is not very good at listening…

You can revisit the story here:

Fortunately, our listening skills are much better that Ephra’s!  It must be because we play lots of games in Nursery to practise our listening and attention skills.  These skills help us to become confident communicators and form the foundation for the reading and writing skills we will learn in Reception next year.  This week, we focused especially on our body percussion skills: we played pass the clap (where you have to pass a clap all the way around a circle, listening very carefully so you know when it is your turn) and the mirror game (where you sit opposite your partner and listen carefully to the three sounds they make, e.g. clap, clap, stamp – then copy them).  Why not have a go at playing one of these games at home?

We also read the story of Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae.  This is one of our absolute favourites at the moment because many of us are sea creature experts!  You can read this book again at home here:

Thailand is also famous for it’s beautiful beaches and sea-creatures.  Did you know that the world’s largest shark can be found in the waters around Thailand!  It is called a Whale Shark.  Why not see if you can spot it in this video…

I expect you have all been wondering whether or not the carpet we discovered in the magic room last week was actually magic after all?  Well…of course it was!  Thankfully, everyone remembered to bring their imaginations to Nursery this week, so we were able to set off on our magical flying carpet adventure!

First, we read the story of My Granny Went to Market by Stella Blackstone and Christopher Corr.   You can revisit the story in the video below.  The text is clearly visible so you might like to turn the sound off and read the story yourself.  Please note, the story finishes at 2.57 and there is some advertising after this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P61tyqTntpI

At the start of the story, Granny buys a magic carpet from a man in a market in Istanbul.  So, we decided to head off to Istanbul to see if we find out where she bought the carpet.

We used Google Earth to fly from Nursery to the market in Istanbul.  The children were amazed by the visual sensation of flying over the globe and it was delightful to see their reactions!

If you would like to try this again at home, open up Google Earth and enter St. Matthews CE Primary School, Cottenham Park Road, London in the search bar.

You will ‘fly’ into school where you should be able to spot the Nursery garden (we think the circle is the table in the mud kitchen) and the red roof of the classroom!

We knew we needed to go to a market in Istanbul and a quick Google search soon informed us that The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world.  So, we entered ‘Beyazıt, Grand Bazaar, Kalpakçılar Caddesi, Fatih/İstanbul, Turkey’ into the search bar – if you just start writing ‘grand bazaar’, it should appear in the drop down! Then, we fastened our seatbelts, buckled up our helmets and held on tight as we flew up, up and away on our magic carpet all the way to Istanbul!

When we came down to land, we were amazed to discover that the roof of the Grand Bazaar was also red – just like the Nursery roof!  But this time, it looked like “pop, pop” (aka bubble wrap).

Next, we lifted up the little man symbol and dropped him onto the roof of the market.  This took us straight inside and we were able to have a look around! We spotted lots of magic carpets and carpet sellers along with lots of other beautiful things to buy!

We also had a look at another famous building in Istanbul: The Blue Mosque.  We found out that a Mosque is where Muslim people go to pray.  And we also found out that many of the people who live in Istanbul are Muslim and their religion is called Islam.

https://www.departures.com/travel/istanbul-blue-mosque-trip

We learnt about a special time called Ramadan when Muslim grown-ups fast during daylight hours (they don’t eat or drink) and they do good deeds such as giving money to charity.  This year, Ramadan started on 13th April and will finish on 12th May with a celebration called Eid al-Fitr.  We also looked at two very special small carpets – which looked very much like the magic carpets we had seen in the Grand Bazaar!  However, these are not flying carpets – they are actually prayer mats.  And they are traditionally used by many Muslims to make sure the place where they are praying is clean.

While using our good looking eyes, we spotted something in the middle of the dark blue carpet.  Can you remember what is was?  That’s right – a compass!  A compass helps us to find our way, by showing us which way is North, South, East and West.  This is very important for Muslims who want to point the top of their prayer mat towards a special place called Mecca.  It might also be handy for us to have a compass on our next magic carpet ride!

Our play in the classroom this week was very much inspired by the buildings we had seen in Istanbul…we built towers, cities with spires, bridges and, of course, homes for dinosaurs!

We also used the technique of wax resist printing to create our very own mini magic carpets, inspired by those we saw in the Grand Bazaar.  We used a stencil to draw shapes with a white crayon onto a piece of white card.  At first, the shapes appeared to be invisible and it wasn’t until we rolled the ink onto the card, that the magical shapes were revealed!

Please note, not all of the children have created a magic carpet yet as we had a very busy week!  We will continue with this lovely activity next week and everyone will get a chance to make one.  We were especially busy because we started our mix-up sessions and we are very proud of the Nursery children for being so brave, confident and welcoming towards to the Reception children.  Well done Nursery!

Have a lovely long weekend and see you all on Tuesday!