We have been spending lots of time outside over the past couple of weeks; enjoying the lovely weather and being appreciative of our wonderful garden!  The children have been challenging themselves on the tricky climbing frame and thinking about how to keep themselves safe by waiting for their turn.  We even had a numbered ticket system in place!

The children have also been working together to create this beautiful art installation!  When it’s finished we might use it as the backdrop for our outdoor stage which, lately, has been giving the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury a run for its money!

Earlier in the week, we had to say some sad goodbyes to two of our Nursery children, who have moved to a new home and school in Denmark.  We were so sad to say goodbye but we also shared in their excitement as they set off on their new adventure overseas! We wish you the very best of luck!

Much of our recent learning through play has, in fact, been inspired by taking trips to foreign lands! We have been reading lots of fantastic stories about travelling by sea to distant destinations.

One of those stories was ‘Jack and the Flumflum Tree’ by Julia Donaldson which tells the tale of three friends (Jack, Stu and Rose) who set sail for the island of Blowyernose to find a cure for poor Jack’s Grandma who had been suffering from a nasty bout of the woozles!

You can listen to the author reading the story here:

http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/julia-donaldson-jack-and-the-flumflum-tree

As it’s quite difficult to make out the words in that video, you might also like to read the story yourself, using this one…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOcDPtsFL9I

Another story we read was the classic tale of “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak…

You can re-read that story here – do remember to turn the sound off and read it yourself as the voiceover and background sounds could be a bit scary or at least check it out for yourself first before playing it…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk3H_WkD2gI

And of course, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to read one of the most famous boating stories of all, that of Noah and his Ark.

We absolutely loved this musical adaptation of the story…

All of these stories inspired us to have a go at making our own boats using junk materials.  We thought carefully about which materials would make good boats; e.g. plastic tubs or  cardboard egg boxes?  We knew that cardboard “melts” in water so we eventually decided that plastic tubs would make better boats.  Well done Nursery!

Our scientific thinking continued later in the week as we set about exploring the floating and sinking properties of a whole range of objects.  We used words like “heavy”, “float” and “sink”.  Can you remember something that could float and something that sunk?

Why not carry out your own floating and sinking investigation at home, perhaps in the kitchen sink or in the bath at bath-time.  Sesame Street have produced a family newsletter with some lovely ideas for you to try out at home:

https://cdn.sesamestreet.org/sites/default/files/media_folders/Images/Stem_Sink_FamilyGuide.pdf

The video referred to in the newsletter (Rocco’s Boat) can be found here:

https://www.sesamestreet.org/toolkits/stem/sink-or-float

At the end of the story of Noah’s Ark, the dove returns with a leaf in it’s beak to let Noah know that it has found dry land.  Quite incredibly, some rather unusual leaves have been growing on a new tree in our classroom.  When it first arrived, it was completely bare, without any leaves at all.  But each time someone in the class did something particularly kind, a leaf suddenly began to grow on the tree!  We decided to call our new tree ‘The Kindness Tree’ and, over the course of the week, we have watched in wonder as each new leaf has started to grow! It is perhaps no surprise, given how kind and friendly we all are in Nursery, that our new tree is now bursting with new life.

If you would like to know a little more about these individual acts of kindness, take a closer look at the leaves next time you are in the classroom…

On Monday morning, the children discovered something rather strange in the classroom;  Mr Gumpy had been to visit over the weekend and had left his boat behind!  It was moored at the dock, but neither Mr Gumpy nor any of the other characters from the story were anywhere to be seen!  Without them, how could the story possibly come to life?

Fortunately, on a table nearby, the children discovered a rather exciting invitation to play; mask-making resources for all the different characters in the story.  They quickly set to work, carefully choosing a character, using the scissors independently to cut out their masks (we were so impressed!), asking for help when necessary and especially when it came to cutting out the eyes and, finally, attaching a lolly stick with masking tape.

Before long, Mr Gumpy’s boat was once again teeming with all the animals and children from the story and, just like the story, we all agreed, he needed a much bigger boat!  After much splishing and splashing, the boat began to look at little worse for wear but, luckily, Mrs Morris found a large cardboard box in the shed to replace it.  Hopefully, Mr Gumpy won’t notice the difference when he comes back to collect his boat!

Next, we carried on with our Splish, Splash, Splosh topic by reading another story about some animals who end up getting rather wet.  This time we read the story of Mrs Wishy-Washy’s Farm.

You can re-read the story here; do remember to turn the sound off and read the story aloud to your child yourself…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cizS3vyV8ks

Later in the week, I had to pop out of the classroom for a moment and, according to the children, Mrs Wishy-Washy herself arrived as soon as I left, sat on my chair and read them all a story!  She had already gone by the time I came back but, as I’m told, she was rather bossy and very cross.  I wonder if any of the children can remember why she was so cross?

You can find out more about Mrs Wishy-Washy and what made her cross here:

We had lots of fun, retelling the stories of Mrs Wishy-Washy and, of course, she made a few more appearances as the week went on 😉.  Thank you to Miss Leutchford for letting us borrow her gorgeous puppet theatre to help us with our acting.

Our final visitor of the week was a rather special one.  It was completely unrelated to our topic and entirely child-initiated and planned!  Last week, one of the children and I happened to be talking about tortoises as pets and I mentioned that Mrs Shaffer (our Nursery helper every Friday) has a pet tortoise.  This child came up with the rather wonderful idea to ask Mrs Shaffer if she might be able to bring her tortoise in to meet us.

After remembering to ask Mrs Shaffer herself, entirely unprompted by me, the visit was agreed and this Friday, we were indeed visited by 52-year-old Herbert, the tortoise!  The children were so keen to meet him that they took it upon themselves to sit down around the edge of the carpet, without any instructions at all from us!!

Mrs Shaffer had brought juicy nectarines and strawberries for the children to feed Herbert, as these are his favourite foods but, he was so much at home in Nursery, that he ignored his food and spent a good half hour roaming around the carpet.  Miss Manhire got quite the shock when she popped in looking for props for the Year 6 production!

When I asked the child, who had initiated and organised the visit, how the experience had been, she smiled broadly and replied ‘great’!

A huge thank you to Mrs Shaffer for bringing Herbert in to meet us and for all the amazing help she gives us each week – we don’t quite know what we would do without her on a Friday!

Did you know you can eat rainbows?  Well, that is exactly what we did in Nursery this week!  Inspired by the stories of the Rainbow Fish that we read last week and all the wonderful colour mixing that the children have been exploring, we decided to make our very own rainbow ice lollies!

First, we had a go at painting a simple 6-colour rainbow using only the three primary colours; red, yellow and blue.  Can you remember how we made the missing colours; orange, green and purple?  Hint: mix the colours on either side to make the missing colour in between…

Next, we talked about how we can keep healthy by eating lots of different coloured fruit and vegetables. We then came up with some ideas for different fruits and vegetables that would be the same colours as our rainbow.

Luckily, I had some of the children’s suggestions in my shopping bag! Here are the ingredients we decided to use to make our rainbows:

• Raspberries for red
• Peaches for orange
• Banana for yellow
• Spinach for green
• Blueberries for blue
• Black cherries for purple

And here’s what we did:

First, we put a spoonful of each ingredient into an empty, clean, yoghurt pot, being sure to follow the correct order of colours for our rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple). We then poured in a little apple juice to help hold all the ingredients together.  Next, we put a lolly stick into the middle of the rainbow mixture.

We then froze the ice lollies in the big school freezer overnight.  Finally, we sat the pots in a little warm water for a few seconds to allow the ice lolly to become unstuck, before carefully pulling the ice lollies out.

As it was a lovely, warm day, we decided to enjoy our ice lollies outside in the garden during story-time.  Don’t they look delicious!

Why not have a go at making your own ice lollies at home? Which fruits or vegetables will you use?  🌈

Have a wonderful half term everyone!

As our whole school theme this term is ‘Friendship’, it seemed quite fitting to continue our ‘Splish, Splash, Splosh’ topic this week by reading the stories of the beautiful Rainbow Fish.  In the first story, he learns how to make friends by sharing his shimmery scales and, in the second, he decides to help a friend in trouble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Ae41RvnW8

We made our own Rainbow Fish scales by decorating paper plates; using pipettes to drop blue, red and yellow food colouring onto the plates and then watching in wonder as the colours mixed together to make beautiful rainbows!  Look out for our Rainbow Fish display coming soon to our welcome area…

Taking inspiration from this rainbow fish colour mixing, we also explored how colours can change in coloured water by challenging the children to ‘go fishing’ using clothes pegs to catch their fish. They were amazed to discover that different coloured fish appeared to change colour when submerged in blue water! As one child noticed, “the (yellow) seahorse had turned green!”

Later in the week, we used this growing knowledge of colour mixing when choosing colours for a purpose.  The children have been thinking about their favourite stories and retelling them through paintings for a lovely new display which you may already have spotted on our accordion wall.

“I need purple. I know blue and red!”

“I need blue for the darkness”.

We also read one of my favourite stories about an alien called Zot who travels to Earth  from his colourless world, discovering colour and friendship along the way.  It is well worth a re-read if you happen to come across it.

Finally, we have a lovely new colour table in the classroom which the children have started to explore by creating their own pictures with objects; something we call placing and arranging…

The children are clearly becoming colour experts!  Here’s a song about mixing colours that you might like to share together at home.

You may remember, several weeks ago, building works began on our very own bug hotel (https://st-matthews-cofe-primary-school11.j2bloggy.com/Nursery/science-week-the-bug-hotel/) and, I’m delighted to say, we are thrilled with the end result!

All manner of creepy-crawlies have now been spotted in and around the hotel from centipedes to spiders, from woodlice to ladybirds…

The children have been using their magnifying glasses to take a closer look at the hotel residents and they have been using non-fiction books to identify the different insects.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed materials and helped to construct the Bug Hotel – we have no doubt it will be enjoyed by the FSU children for a long time to come!