Tag Archives: Media & Materials

World Book Day & The World Around Us

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The week before last, we celebrated World Book Day across the school and, in Nursery, we were visited by all sorts of story book characters including The Three Little Pigs!  The children absolutely loved playing in the pigs’ houses, so much so that they requested we keep them set up this week too!  A huge thank you to all our parents and carers for your amazing efforts in sending the children to Nursery in their costumes.

Of course we had to read the story of the Three Little Pigs several times but we also particularly enjoyed this alternative version by Eugene Trivizas and Helen Oxenbury:

The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas and Helen Oxenbury

You can revisit it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZpYMLp1LdQ

These stories, along with some lovely sunny mornings, inspired yet more building works…

The children are always fascinated by the world around them, whether digging for worms…

…or spotting the first signs of Spring in the school garden…have you noticed the beautiful tree covered with pink flowers at the school office entrance?

It inspired us to have a go at creating our own blossom tree pictures which are now decorating the classroom.  Do take a moment to admire them when you are next at drop off.

To help us look more closely at the features of the world around us, we have been learning about the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser.  He liked to create paintings of the things he saw around him but he hated using straight lines!  Instead, he used lots of different shapes in his paintings.  This is what he looked like…

Image result for hundertwasserhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedensreich_Hundertwasser

And here’s one of his paintings…which shapes can you spot in his painting?

Image result for hundertwasserartexplorers.co.uk

We quickly spotted that Hundertwasser had used lots of circles when painting trees in his picture and we thought they looked a lot like lollipops!  Although he was a famous artist, we all agreed that each and everyone of us is an artist too!  So, we had a go at creating some of our own circle pictures:

Do look out for our Hundertwasser Art Gallery coming soon to a Nursery near you!

In the meantime, you can have a look at more of Hundertwasser’s paintings here…

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you tomorrow!

Festive Fun!

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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!

Bravery & Inspiration

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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.

The Enormous Potato

Finally, we read ‘The Enormous Watermelon’ which…

Image result for the enormous watermelon"

…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!

Welcome (back) to Nursery!

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Welcome to a new year in Nursery!  We have had a busy couple of weeks; welcoming back our older children and settling in 11 new children.  There are now 17 children in our class.  Our older children have been doing a fantastic job of helping the new children to find their way around our Nursery and we have been so impressed by how brave the new children have been at drop-off.  Well done everyone – and grown-ups too – we know saying goodbye in the mornings isn’t always easy for you either!

Over the summer, we were very lucky to have had some improvements made to our wonderful garden.  We have had a new, rather bouncy surface added in a large area running down from the tree, around the treehouse and almost all the way to the fence.  We hope this will make the area safer when we want to set ourselves physical challenges, as well as making it a little less muddy!  But never fear, we absolutely love mud and would never get rid of it all in our garden, as we feel this is a very important, real-world, sensory experience for the children.  Not only do we have our mud kitchen, which continues to be a firm favourite amongst our budding chefs, but we now have the foundations of a proper digging area too!  A huge thank you must go to the Flood family for donating several car tyres and to the Ryalls for organising the gifting and delivery of our new logs – thank you so very much for thinking of us!  Do look out for even more improvements to the garden over the coming term…

Another addition to the garden has been our fantastic stage!  We have already enjoyed several superb performances including repeated renditions of ‘Let It Go’!!

And we have been blessed with some lovely warm weather which has allowed the children to enjoy lots of explorative water play outside…

Back inside the classroom, the children have been getting to know the different areas of the Nursery.  Our creative area has been particularly popular this week with many children choosing to design and create with the junk modelling materials.  This area is set up to promote independence and imagination!  We encourage the children to think about the different materials they might need for their designs and to ask us if they need something else that might help their design come together.  Often, the children show fantastic perseverance and problem-solving skills in this area.  Understandably, even the best laid plans don’t always come together straightaway, especially when you’re trying to create a rocket-ship complete with sleeping compartments!

Do look out for the Autumn term edition of ‘Nursery News’ which should have made it home to you yesterday; this is our termly newsletter which aims to keep you informed about upcoming events and provides you with some ideas for ways in which to support your child’s learning at home.

The first key date for your diary is this coming Friday (27th September) when the Macmillan Coffee Morning (more info here) will take place in the school hall after drop-off at 9am.  Do come along and enjoy a slice of cake while meeting other St. Matthew’s families and raising money for Macmillan (any donation, no matter how small, is welcomed).

Finally, please remember to add your contact details to the sheet that our wonderful class rep (Mrs Robinson) has put up on the Nursery garden door – she will then be able to connect you all to keep you informed about events and give you a chance to get to know one another as part of the wider St. Matthew’s community.

 

Coral Reefs & Welly-Boot Outings

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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”.

Image result for mr gumpy's outing

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!

Image result for we're going on a bear hunt

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!

Image result for child painted 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!

We are Mer-Children

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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.

As you may remember, the children created the scales for the fish before half term using food colouring dropped from pipettes (https://st-matthews-cofe-primary-school11.j2bloggy.com/Nursery/discovering-colour/).

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.

Image result for The Singing mermaidImage result for mermaid cerrie burnell

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;

“we use kind words”

“we use gentle hands”

“we take turns”

“we can share”

“we hold everybody hand”

Well said Nursery!