You will probably not be surprised to hear that digging for worms is one of our all-time favourite things to do in Nursery!  We are lucky enough to have our very own digging area which we cover over each evening to keep the foxes away.

We have been learning how to dig slowly so the soil doesn’t flick up into our friends faces and how to hold the worms carefully on the flat of our hands so we don’t hurt them.

This week, we decided to find out more about these wiggly creatures.  We read the story ‘Yucky Worms’ by Vivian French and Jessica Ahlberg.  At the beginning of the story, the little boy thinks worms are yucky and disgusting but, thanks to a visit to his Gran’s garden, he soon learns that they are actually fascinating, fun and very helpful gardeners.

We were amazed to discover that worms have a head and a tail.  They also have 5 pairs of hearts! No wonder they are so kind and friendly!

You can revisit the book in this video below.  It is quite a long story with lots of detail, so we just read the interesting bits and you might like to do the same!

We wondered what it might be like to wiggle like a worm under the soil and had a go at crawling through our own tunnels in the garden.  We took turns and gave each other lots of encouragement saying ‘you can do it’!  Well done Nursery!

And of course, after such a wiggly, wormy week, we just had to read the classic Julia Donaldson story ‘Superworm’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKN76BhTbkg

Who knows, we may find our own Superworm in the digging area next week!  But, in the meantime, here are a couple of the other creatures we discovered this week…a centipede and a stag beetle!  Wow!

Last weekend, several of the children told us they had heard fireworks during the night and wondered why? It’s almost the end of November, so they couldn’t have been for Bonfire Night.  They must have been for a different celebration and it seems most likely they were for the Hindu Festival of Lights known as Diwali!

The children were interested to know more, so we watched a BBC video to find out about Diwali and how it is celebrated.  In the video, a girl called Deeya told us all about the special clothes, food, decorations and fireworks she uses to celebrate with her family.  You can rewatch the video here.

We especially loved watching the fireworks and they inspired some fantastic firework pictures!  We also had a go at dressing up in beautiful fabrics, just like Deeya!

We also had our own celebrations this week, as two of our children had birthdays! A very happy birthday to you both!  We made lots of cards, cups of tea and cakes; both inside and out in the garden!

The children also decided they wanted to take a trip to beach to celebrate!  So, they quickly jumped onto the number 57 bus.  No, we didn’t actually leave the garden!  We just used our amazing imaginations and made our very own bus complete with wheels, steering wheel and, as the week went on, a red roof and the numbers 5 and 7.  Mrs Morris also made Oyster cards for the children so they could tap in when the got on the bus!

And when the bus broke down, Miss Cronin rang a mechanic who delivered a box of tools including spanners and spare wheels.  The children quickly set to work, changing the tyres and repairing the bus.  They also remembered to fill up the tank with petrol!  Well done Nursery!

It was no time at all before the bus was back on the road!  I wonder where you will go this weekend (in your imagination!)….?

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

It was so lovely to see all the children back in Nursery this week after our extra long half term!  The children jumped straight back into their play and, thanks to some very mild weather, we spent a lot of time outside…

Over the break, we suggested some home learning activities on Seesaw and we hope you found these useful.  One of the activities was to create your own dinosaur at home and we were so impressed by the results!  All week we have been admiring the pictures and models that have been sent in and adding them to our Steggy display.  It is no problem at all if you didn’t have a chance to create a dinosaur at home as we also gave all the children, including those who had already done one at home, the chance to paint one in Nursery.

I promised the children I would post a photo of Steggy and our all amazing artwork this weekend, so please do take a moment to have a look at it with your child…(and please note, if you cannot see your child’s artwork, it just means we haven’t put it up yet – we still have a few to add!)…we hope it makes you smile!

As always, we read some super stories during story-time this week.  We read the old classic ‘Peace at Last’ by Jill Murphy which you can revisit here:

And we also enjoyed ‘While we can’t hug’ by Eoin McLaughlin.  The children really understood this story and came up with lots of different ways to let someone know they are loved – well done Nursery!

On Wednesday, we joined the whole school and country in being silent for two minutes to remember all the brave people who have died in wars.  We watched this touching CBeebies video to help us with our quiet thinking on Remembrance Day and talked about why people wear poppies on this special day:

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday!

Do you like listening to a good story?

Why not check out our story-time blog where you can choose one of your favourites to listen to…

The updated link for our story-time blog is https://blog.seesaw.me/nurserystorytime

The password is unchanged and you can find it on Seesaw.

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!