A little reminder from Miss Leutchford (our Year 1 teacher and English Coordinator)
“Next Thursday (5th March 2020) we will be celebrating World Book Day. The children are invited to come to school dressed as a character from their favourite book. If the children choose to come into school dressed as a character, we are asking them to provide a £1.00 donation to go towards the charity Book Aid. We look forward to seeing all of the different story characters”.
Please remember, dressing up is always optional as we understand that it is not for everyone. Coming to Nursery in your usual, everyday clothes is also absolutely fine!
It probably didn’t escape your notice that it was pancake day this week. So, of course, we simply had to make pancakes and eat them too! Unfortunately, the Ipad ran out of power just after we’d taken this photo, so you’ll have to take our word for it that they were delicious!
Can you remember the four ingredients we used to make the pancakes? That’s right; flour, milk, eggs and oil. We stirred the mixture up in a bowl and then the grown-ups carefully poured a little bit of the mixture into a frying pan – “to make them flat”. Can you remember why the grown-ups did the cooking and not the children?
When it came to eating them, we squeezed a little lemon juice over them and then sprinkled a little sugar on top. Finally, we rolled them up. Yummy!
The children were particularly intrigued by the lemons and several of them wanted to have a go at tasting a lemon slice. We all agreed lemons are very sour indeed! Can you think of any other foods that have a sour taste? What sort of a face do you make when you eat something sour?
Our key text this week had to be Mr. Wolf’s Pancakes which you can revisit here:
Can you remember how Mr Wolf’s neighbours knew the pancakes were ready? That’s right, they could smell a delicious smell all around the neighbourhood! Do you have a favourite smell?
In Nursery this week, the water tray smelt wonderful, thanks to these slices of fresh lemons and oranges. Of course, these ones were not for eating! We know that we only eat things in Nursery at snack time after we have washed our hands.
This week we have been talking to the children about why it is important to wash our hands before we eat something. We explained that we need to make sure our hands are nice and clean so that any germs on them don’t end up in our tummies as this can make us feel poorly. We also explained that germs are very sticky and they like to hide all over our hands, not just on our finger tips!
This is why we need to pull up our sleeves, use soap and make sure we wash the fronts and backs of our hands, in between our fingers and our thumbs too!
We enjoyed watching this NHS video which demonstrates how to get “happy, clean hands!”:
Those of you with older children at St. Matthew’s will probably know that it was Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week last week. Miss Manhire (who is our Year 6 teacher and KS2 phase leader) organised lots of events throughout the school to mark the week and to encourage a school-wide conversation about mental health. The theme for this year’s week was ‘Find Your Brave’ and you can find out more about it here:
One of the Characteristics of Effective Learning that we always encourage the children in Nursery to demonstrate is ‘playing and exploring’ which includes the idea of ‘having a go’. We want the children to feel safe and settled and brave enough to ‘have a go’ at activities and experiences that they may not usually try or come across.
This week, we wanted to give the children lots of sensory experiences. There is evidence to suggest that these sort of experiences are really important for brain development in the Early Years of life (you can read more about this here if you like…). These experiences can also have a soothing, calming effect which promotes self-regulation of our emotions. They can be very messy though, so don’t forget to put on your apron if you are trying any at home!
We have also been busy making our own calming, sensory bottles which look like a glitter-storm or whirlwind! The children have loved making these and we would be most grateful for any more donations of small (500ml) plastic bottles next week so we can ensure each child has a bottle to bring home. Thank you if you have already sent bottles in!
At story time, we read two of my favourites…
First, we read ‘A Color of His Own’ by Leo Lionni which tells the delightful tale of a chameleon discovering the importance of friendship for self-esteem. You can re-visit the story below and do remember to turn the sound off if you would like to read it aloud yourself.
Next, we read ‘The Colour Thief’ by Gabriel Alborozo which tells the thought-provoking story of an alien called Zot who decides to steal all the colours from planet Earth. The Nursery children quickly decided this was not a very ‘kind and friendly’ thing to do! Luckily, Zot meets a little boy who helps him realise just how sad he will make the people on Earth if he takes all the colours. What can you remember about the story? Look at the pictures below to remind you…
We hope everyone has had a lovely weekend and managed to stay safe and warm in spite of Storm Ciara!
We have had such a super start to the Spring Term in nursery! Our older children have impressed us all by settling back into the classroom quickly and happily. They have also been doing a wonderful job of looking after the 7 new children who have joined us since the start of term. We are very proud of how thoughtful they have been in welcoming the new children and showing them what happens during our mornings at nursery.
Our new children have also been impressing us with how well they have settled into their new classroom and how brave they have been when saying goodbye to their grown-ups. We would like to wish all of our new families a very warm welcome to our Nursery and we hope you are already beginning to feel part of the St. Matthew’s community.
This term, our topic will be ‘Out & About’. We will be reading lots of stories about getting out and about in the big wide world! I will shortly be sending home our Spring Term edition of Nursery News which will provide more information about the topic and give you some ideas of activities you might like to try at home.
This week we have been reading lots of snowy stories, despite it having been a rather wet and stormy week in West Wimbledon! We read the stories of Tiger in the Snow (by Jack Butterworth), Snow (by Sam Usher) and When Will It Snow? (by Kathryn White).
You can revisit ‘When Will It Snow?’ with your child here – I would highly recommend you turn the sound off and read the story aloud yourself.
Although it doesn’t look like it’s going to be snowing anytime soon at St. Matthew’s, it does look like we will have some chilly mornings next week which will hopefully lead to some frost and maybe even some ice in the garden…
Talking of ice, some of the children came back after the Christmas break talking about the Frozen 2 film. Their excitement inspired us to create this snowy castle landscape to support their imaginative play…
As well as this sparkly tuff tray, filled with glitter and coloured sand to encourage the development of their mark-making skills…
Despite the lack of real ice and snow this week, we did have plenty of rain which produced something the children absolutely love…
They were thrilled at the chance to get their wellies on and get out & about in the puddles!!
Jumping, wading, squelching…
Sweeping, sloshing, pushing…
Creating, swirling, mixing…
Who knew puddles could be such fun? Why, Nursery of course!
It’s so hard to believe that we are already here in the final week of term! It has been a really wonderful term packed full of playing, laughter and lots of smiles!
We are so proud of each and everyone of the children; they have all grown a little bit more everyday; not just physically, but also in terms of their self-confidence and independence.
We hope everyone has a wonderfully restful and peaceful Christmas and we look forward to welcoming the children back to Nursery in January. There will be 7 new children joining us when we return.
PLEASE NOTE:
The Nursery Christmas Party will take place during the normal morning Nursery session this week on Wednesday 18th December. If your child would like to wear a Christmas jumper that day or a special party dress, please feel free to send them into school wearing this. If they would prefer to come to Nursery in their normal clothes that is also absolutely fine! If you do choose to send them in in something special, please remember it will be a normal, messy morning in Nursery!
The Christmas Party is a chance for us to celebrate with our Reception friends. We will spend about an hour in the big hall where we will play party games and do some dancing! We will also be having some party food and drinks and we would be most grateful for any contributions you may be able to make towards this (please see the list of suggested contributions in the classroom). Thank you!
The last day of term for Nursery will be this Thursday 19th December. This is also the last day for the Little Acorns. Children in Nursery break up one day earlier than the rest of the school so we can hold an Open morning for the new children starting in January.
The first day back for the children will be Wednesday 8th January. This is also the first day back for the Little Acorns. Again, we start back a little later than the rest of the school so that we can carry out home visits for the new children.
Thank you for your understanding.
As you may have noticed, the classroom is now looking decidedly festive! Here are a few photos from last week…
Here’s our Christmas Post Office & Sorting Centre – the children have been hard at work, wrapping parcels, writing Christmas cards, stamping parcels and letters, posting them and even delivering them around the classroom. It certainly feels like the busiest time of the year!
The large wooden car received yet another makeover this week…can you guess what it might be and who it might belong to…?
Our placing & arranging table was brimming with an inviting array of Christmassy colours and objects. The children love to spend a quiet moment at this table which is always a feast for the senses…can you spot the snowman with his scarf?
The polar bears were out in force roaming around their snowy landscape. At one point, they decided they wanted to roam further afield and come down from the table top onto the carpet. It was a bit too far for them to jump but, luckily, the Nursery children were on hand to come up with some ingenious construction ideas to help them get down – well done Nursery, you are always so kind and friendly!
Have a lovely weekend everyone! We are looking forward to the final four days of festive fun!
Our story time focus this week continued with a growing theme and this time we thought about ourselves. We wondered if we are growing and when we might be as big as our big brothers/sisters or even Miss Cronin? The children were fascinated to hear that grown-ups have actually stopped growing (upwards, at least!). We read a delightful book called ‘The Growing Story’ which was originally published in 1947. It has since been beautifully re-illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (who also illustrated We’re Going on a Bear Hunt). In ‘The Growing Story’ a little boy watches the plants and animals around him growing bigger as the seasons change and he wonders if he will ever grow too…
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a good quality video clip of the story for you to revisit at home, but you can read more about the story here and share some of the lovely illustrations together…
We also read the story of Titch by Pat Hutchins about a little boy trying to keep up with his big sister and even bigger brother. The children decided that Titch was probably about 2 or 3 years old, while his sister Mary was 4 or 5 and his brother Peter was 6 or 7 “or even 10!”. Such impressive mathematical reasoning Nursery – well done!
You can revisit the story in this clip below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_BNxLeKI20
The children decided that one of things they need to do to make sure they are growing is to eat lots! So, we all had a go at making toast.
First, we put the square piece of bread in the toast and pressed the button down. We stayed well back from the toaster because “it is hot” and “because it is electric”. We knew that only grown-ups should touch a real toaster and if we see one at home, we must not make toast without asking a grown-up first.
We waited patiently until the toaster popped! Then Mrs Morris carefully took the square piece of bread out of the toaster and we looked at it to see if it had turned into toast. If it had turned golden brown, we knew it was now toast!
The next step was to use a knife to spread the butter onto our toast. Miss Cronin showed us how to hold the knife carefully, using our pointy finger on top to steady it and guide it along the toast. We also held the piece of toast in place with our other hand. After the butter, it was time to spread on the strawberry jam.
The children then chose to cut their toast into two triangles, four triangles or keep it as one square. After all that hard work, it was time to eat our toast and everyone agreed it was delicious!
Finally, the children’s interest in numbers this week also led us to this nursery rhyme…can you guess what it is?
That’s right! It’s the old favourite – Ten Green Bottles! Why not have a go at singing along at home or make your very own green bottles (e.g. you could write numbers on yoghurt pots or something similar from your recycling box).
It has been yet another busy week in Nursery! Not only did we join in with the rest of the school as they marked Remembrance Day and Black History Month but, as always, we found plenty of time for learning through play. We also had Parents Evenings and I do hope everyone found their meeting helpful and informative. Thank you very much for taking the time to come along.
On Monday, the big children at school got together for a special Remembrance Day assembly. Each class had made a poppy wreath, organised by our Art Coordinator Mrs Bibby, and these were placed on the prayer table in the big hall.
Two of our Nursery children went into the assembly to present Mr Quinn with our wreath and later in the morning, at 11am, we took a pause from our play to spend two minutes thinking quietly about all the very brave people in the world. We watched a delightful CBeebies animation which helped us complete the two minutes silence. You can watch it again here.
Later in the week, we joined the rest of the school once again, by contributing to a whole-school exhibition of children’s work to mark Black History Month. Mr Stocking, who is our History & Geography Coordinator, gave each class the name of a famous black person to research and be inspired by. In Nursery, we were inspired by the famous children’s television presenter Floella Benjamin. Back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, a television programme called Play School appeared on television sets around the UK. One of the segments was a short film about the real world which was introduced through a square, round or arched window. Floella was one of the presenters of ‘Play School’ and you can read more about her here.
Taking inspiration from these shape windows, we decided to have a look through all the many different shaped windows in our Nursery (both inside and outside). The children took their own photographs on the Ipad of the images they could see as they looked through the different shapes. We hope you will agree that the resulting images are quite fantastic! Who knew that 3 and 4 years could be such amazing photographers!
The exhibition was on display during Parents Evenings this week but, don’t worry, if you didn’t get a chance to see it, we will be displaying the photographs in our classroom soon, so do look out for them at drop-off.
Back in the classroom, we are always looking for new hands-on, sensory experiences for the children that encourage the development of their fine motor skills. We thought coloured rice might provide such an experience but, instead of colouring it for them, we decided to set them the challenge of colouring it themselves! At the start of the week, the children discovered plain rice in the water tray and spent much of the morning pouring, scooping and sieving…
The following day, we removed all the water and gave the children soap pumps filled with blue or red food colouring.
After a morning of pumping and mixing, the children were fascinated to discover that the rice was turning red, blue and, in some places, purple!
The next day, we removed the rice from the water tray and spread it out on a tuff tray under the heater to encourage it to dry out. Doesn’t it look wonderfully colourful!
During our story time sessions, we followed last week’s reading of Pumpkin Soup with the stories of The Gigantic Turnip and The Enormous Potato. Both are, of course, twists on the classic ‘Enormous Turnip’ story.
Finally, we read ‘The Enormous Watermelon’ which…
…you can rediscover here…(remember to turn off the sound and read the story yourself)…look out for the pictures which give a clue as to the next character who will come and help to pull the watermelon out!
Finally, after all that talk of planting and growing, the children were thrilled to have the chance to plant their own bulbs in the garden. They all followed the instructions very carefully to make sure the bulbs were placed into the soil the right way up and then gently covered them over with soil. We can hardly wait to watch our bulbs sprout, grow and blossom.
“they will grow tomorrow”
“they will grow after Christmas”
“they will grow in Spring”
We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!
We have had lots of lovely feedback from so many of you about our Rainbow Fish display – thank you so much for taking the time to share this feedback with us and for taking a moment or two in the mornings to talk about the display with your child. It has been wonderful to see the children’s reactions when they have spotted their Mer-Child swimming alongside the Rainbow Fish!
This week, we encouraged the children to develop further ownership of the display by adding a coral reef to the ocean floor. This is a work-in-progress and we will be adding more shiny material, fabrics and coral creations next week.
To develop the children’s understanding of what this particular ocean habitat looks like, we have been watching a lovely video and song called ‘Bubbles on the Reef’ which has been taking us on a mesmerising journey under the sea. You might like to re-watch it at home:
With Father’s Day in mind, our Splish, Splash, Splosh stories this week focused on getting out and about with our families. We loved the story of Mr Gumpy’s Outing; Mr Gumpy accepts more and more passengers on his boat until the inevitable happens and they all end up in the water! The children came up with some fantastic problem-solving ideas for Mr Gumpy, including “he can get a bigger boat” and “he needs a long boat”.
You can revisit the story here and, as always, I’d recommend turning the sound off and reading the story yourself. What do you think Mr Gumpy should do next time?
We also re-read a firm favourite; ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ which follows a family on a sensory adventure as they head out together to hunt for a bear!
You can revisit it here and, this time, I would actually recommend you leave the sound on as the story is read by its author, the fantastic children’s novelist and poet Michael Rosen:
Thinking about our wonderful Daddies, we have also been busy working on a surprise for Father’s Day which each child should have brought home yesterday in a brown envelope. Without giving anything away, I can tell you the surprise we made involved painting our hands!
Have a wonderful Father’s Day everyone whether out and about or tucked up at home. The weather forecast is for yet more rain, so if you do head out on a bear hunt, don’t forget your wellies!
Welcome back to the final half term of the school year! We hope everyone had a lovely, restful half term break. We are very much looking forward to the weeks ahead and enjoying the time we have left with this fantastic group of 3 and 4 year olds!
On their return to the classroom this week, the children were all quick to notice that our lovely Hungry Caterpillar, that had been happily munching away on our entrance area display board, had been replaced by a stunning Rainbow Fish.
Although very beautiful indeed, the Rainbow Fish seemed rather lonely, up on the display board all by itself – just like in the story…
So, we decided to make some friends for the Rainbow Fish and, as the Nursery children know all about what it means to be a good friend, who better than the Nursery children themselves to go up on the board! The children quickly set to work, creating mini-mermaid versions of themselves to become the Rainbow Fish’s friends!
They used rolling pins wrapped in bubble wrap to create a scaly effect on their tails and bodies, using primary colour paints, alongside their impressive knowledge of colour mixing once again, to achieve wonderful rainbow effects. They then carefully glued on a printed photo of their face, before adding brightly coloured wool for their hair!
I’m sure you will agree, the end results are delightful! We decided to call these mini-mermaids ‘mer-children’ to avoid any gender-labelling.
We were inspired to make our mer-children after reading two fantastic mermaid books this week which link nicely with our current ‘Splish, Splash, Splosh’ topic. The first was the classic Julia Donaldson story ‘The Singing Mermaid’ and the second was ‘Mermaid’, written by CBeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell. Both are well worth a re-read if you happen to come across them.
We think you’ll agree, our Rainbow Fish looks much happier now that it is surrounded by all of the Mer-children!
If you look very closely, you will notice that each Mer-child has a tiny, shiny scale in their hand, just like the Rainbow Fish. This is because the Nursery children are all friends and know just what to do when someone feels alone;
As you have probably gathered by now, there is rarely a dull moment in our Nursery! This week was, however, a particularly exciting one thanks to some rather special, newborn visitors.
On Monday, an incubator containing 10 chick eggs was delivered to our Reception class and by Tuesday some of the eggs had begun to hatch right in front of our eyes! The little chicks did an incredible job of pecking their way out of their shells, accomplishing what is clearly an exhausting task!
The chicks were quite wet immediately after hatching, so they stayed in the incubator for a few hours to allow their feathers to dry off. Once they started to look fluffy, we carefully moved them into their brood hutch, in the Reception class book corner, with plenty of water and chick crumb. By the end of Wednesday, all 10 chicks had successfully hatched and were pecking and cheeping away together!
“We’re waiting for them to hatch”
“They are very cute!”
“The chicks are waking…I saw the chick’s beak open, it was yawning”
“They are so fluffy!”
“They are so cute those chicks!”
Please note, the incubation period for a chick egg is actually 21 days, so our eggs had been pre-incubated before their arrival at school. If you would like to find out more about the development of the chick over those 21 days, do have a look at this fascinating video:
Our fluffy visitors will be staying with us for one more week and we are very much looking forward to watching them grow!
After all the excitement, it seemed only fitting that our story-times this week would have a hen and chick focus, so we decided to read the story of Rosie’s Hen by Pat Hutchins. The children absolutely loved it and we ended up reading it and watching it several times!
Inside, the children retold the story themselves…
And outside, they went on their own, rather daring, walks…
If you would like to revisit this story at home you can do so here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qDIAeNtO1o
Next, we read the story ‘Where, Oh Where is Rosie’s Chick?’…
…and finally, we read another Pat Hutchins story which had us laughing out loud!
We hope everyone has a lovely, long weekend – see you on Tuesday.
The children then chose to cut their toast into two triangles, four triangles or keep it as one square. After all that hard work, it was time to eat our toast and everyone agreed it was delicious!
