Welcome back to the Summer Term in Nursery! We hope everyone had a very restful break and was able to enjoy seeing some more family and friends once again.  The children have all come back to school with lots of enthusiasm & smiles. It is really lovely to see them all so confident & settled and we are looking forward to a term full of sunshine (hopefully!) and lots of exciting learning through play.

This term, our learning through play will be inspired by the topic ‘Ticket to Ride’.  We will also be continuing to focus on developing our Phase 1 phonics skills and getting ready for the transition to Reception.  You can find out more in the termly overview here: ticket_to_ride

Of course, we will continue to keep a close eye on the children’s particular interests and encourage them to follow these in their play too.  This week, we noticed lots of picnics, cooking and tea making!

And many of the children continue to be fascinated by volcanoes and lava!  Here are some of them working together to create their very own lava field:

Our focus story this week was ‘Bradley and the Magic Carpet’ by Julian Hilton and Jacqueline East.  You can listen to the story again in the video below and even meet the author at the end!

At the very end of last term, when I was looking for something in the magic room, I came across a large bag that I had never seen before, hidden away at the back of one of the cupboards.  I pulled it out and it was covered in dust – it must have been there, undiscovered, for a very long time!  Inside, was a rolled up carpet.  This week, I showed the children and we unrolled it very carefully and very slowly.  You won’t believe it but it was actually an old, bold carpet with tassels on each end and a picture of “Baby Jesus land” on the front!  As you can probably imagine, there really was only one conclusion we could draw: we decided it must be a magic carpet, just like the one in the story!

Next week, we will be finding out if it really is a magic carpet, so don’t forget to bring your imagination with you to Nursery on Monday!

Finally, many of our invitations to play this week encouraged the children to explore the names and properties of 2D shapes.  Knowing the names of the 2D shapes (for example, circle, triangle, square and rectangle) and being able to talk about what they look like (for example, how many sides they have) will really impress your Reception teachers!

We used lots of different 2D shapes to make pictures of our own houses and we talked about the numbers on our front doors.  Can you remember the shapes you used to make your house and can you remember the number on your front door?

Finally, here’s a tricky challenge for you to try at home.  You will need your good looking eyes for this one!  Have a look at the photo below.  Can you spot the shape that is the odd one out in each column?  And can you explain the difference between a square and a rectangle? Good luck and see you on Monday!

Here we are at the end of the Spring Term! We are very thankful that we have been able to spend these last few weeks together in school and we are looking forward to lots more learning through play, and hopefully good weather, during the Summer Term.

This week we learnt about the Easter Story and I was so impressed by the children’s fantastic knowledge and their ability to express their ideas about Jesus:

“Jesus died because he loves us”

“Jesus knew all along that he was going to die”

“Jesus died and then he was alive and then he died”

When we learnt about the Story of the Nativity at the end of the Autumn term, we watched a lovely CBeebies clip of an artist drawing the story in sand.  Here he is again, this time drawing the Easter Story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vjfpXBJRCc

As part of our learning about the Easter story, we completed our Lenten Project which, this year, involved walking a virtual Pilgrams’ Way.  We took on the challenge of walking the 90 mile route from Southwark to Canterbury on our lovely school field.  Thankfully, we were able to combine all of our steps together and we had some help from the Reception children!

While walking, we encouraged the children to think about some of the things they are thankful for and we used their ideas to create some special and individual Prayers for Easter…

“Dear Lord, thank you for my mummy and my daddy, Amen”

“Dear Lord, thank you dinosaurs, Amen”

“Dear Lord, thank you for my brothers, Amen”

You will find your child’s Prayer for Easter on the back of their printed Easter egg which we sent home yesterday.  Please do take a moment over the holidays to share it together.

We also found out about some of the different things people do to get ready to celebrate Easter:

The Little Acorns made some of these delicious cornflake-chocolate nests and, as we are all so kind and friendly in Nursery, they made enough for everyone!  Thank you Little Acorns!

We also printed our own beautiful Easter eggs using shaving foam and drops of food colouring to create a marbling effect…

Aren’t they gorgeous! Do have a look in your child’s book bag, if you haven’t already, as we sent these home yesterday.  On the back, you will find your child’s Prayer for Easter…

We ended the week with an exciting Easter egg hunt in the garden!  The children were set the challenge of finding 100 missing Easter eggs and, guess what…they did it!

Finally, we were so very impressed by the amazing Easter creations that many of you sent in!  They were put on display and admired by Mr Quinn, Mrs Warner and Mr Norris (our site manager).  Well done everyone!

We hope you all have a wonderful Easter.  Thank you again for all your amazing support and we will look forward to seeing you when school reopens on Monday 19th April.

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!

We just love to dance, dance, dance in Nursery!

Here are the links to some of our favourites dance-alongs…

This one has got to be our current favourite: it’s ‘Fight Song’ (by Music Express Magazine) and you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGNLYGrZbzQ

This one is Wake Up, Shake Up with Sportacus (from Lazy Town): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD7zbsGjFo4

This one is called Awesome Rainbows (by Koo Koo Kanga Roo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbPGvZDNoY0

And this one is called ‘Big Fish, Little Fish’ and it’s sung by Bob the Builder. Your grown-ups may already know it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD1ENnVnMXM

Here’s another one from Koo Koo Kanga Roo – it’s called Dinosaur Stomp!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imhi98dHa5w

And we also love dancing along to the Gummy Bear song!  This version is from Just Dance Kids 2:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q7-tzCCh3w

Finally, why not have a go at dancing along to ‘Let It Go!’ with Anna and Elsa – we haven’t tried this in the classroom yet, but it looks like a good one!

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

If you have anymore dance-alongs that are a hit at home, please do share them by commenting on this post!

You might be wondering if your child is holding their pencil correctly and whether there are things you can do to help him or her develop the correct pencil grip.

First of all, it’s important to realise that pencil grip is like many of the skills your child will develop during their first years of life – it’s something that develops over time and at your individual child’s own pace!

This guide (A Guide to Pencil Grip Development) contains a really useful overview of pencil grip development and describes the different grips you might see between the ages of 1 years and 7 years.

And this video outlines the same information:

https://youtu.be/DYXB2B0IfDM

Depending on your child’s stage of pencil grip development, there are lots of fun, play-based activities you can encourage him/her to have a go at to build up the strength in their muscles.  Click here for some of these ideas.

Once your child is beginning to develop a tripod pencil grip, you can encourage him or her to ‘pick and flick’ to support a comfortable grip for writing.  This video explains how to pick up and hold a pencil using the ‘pick and flick’ technique.

This technique is also sometimes called ‘nip, flip, grip’ and these printable posters demonstrate it in three steps:

How-To-Grip-A-Pencil-Posters

Finally, you might find this explanation of a Good Pencil Grip useful – if your child is holding their pencil like this by the time they go into Reception, their Reception teachers will be very impressed!

We all love listening to a good story, don’t we?

Why not have a look at this website where you will find lots of videos of children’s books read by famous people that your grown-ups may recognise!

I’ve already spotted some of our favourites such as The Rainbow Fish and The Kiss That Missed.

You might also like to have a look at this playlist from Oxford Owl:

If you enjoy listening to audiobooks, why not check out Audible which is free why schools are closed.

And why not visit The Children’s Poetry Archive where you can listen to lots of wonderful poems and rhymes!

The RSPB website also contains some lovely audiobooks – read by some very famous voices including Alison Steadman and Zoe Ball:

https://www.rspb.org.uk/fun-and-learning/for-kids/kids-stories/bedtime-stories-audiobooks/

We could not be prouder of the children this week!  Despite missing out on the excitement of a live audience, they took their roles very seriously and sang beautifully on the stage in the big hall for our Baby Jesus show!  We can’t wait for you to see the end result and, while you are waiting for the video, here is a quick peek behind the scenes…

On Wednesday, the festivities continued with Christmas jumper day and even Stanley the Sloth wore a jumper thanks to Mrs Morris’ quick thinking!

In other news, our new Numberblocks display is now up on the wall.  As you probably know, we absolutely love Numberblocks in Nursery – we often watch this fantastic CBeebies show when we are getting ready for hometime and they often feature in our play.  Can you spot your Numberblock?  If you would like to watch Numberblocks at home or try some of the interactive activities, go to https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/numberblocks

And finally, with Christmas fast approaching, the class post office has been a hive of activity with last minute parcels and letters being stamped and stickered and sent off around the world! Let’s hope we haven’t missed the last posting dates 😉

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

We have been very busy practising our songs for our Christmas show next week and, despite the disappointment we all feel in not being able to have a live audience this year, the excitement is building nonetheless!

We have been spending lots of time talking about the Christmas story and retelling it in our own words; learning about Mary & Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem and the birth of baby Jesus in the stable.

The classroom is also beginning to look decidedly festive! We decorated our Christmas tree, practised wrapping presents and wrote each other lots of Christmas cards.

We also made these beautiful stained glass stars to decorate the Nursery windows!

And finally, we found time to make our own wormery!  The children helped to layer the worm house with soil and sand, collected leaves for the worms to eat and carefully dug up some worms from the garden.