Growing Bigger & Tasty Toast

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…

Image result for the growing story helen oxenbury

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…

Image result for the growing story helen oxenbury

Image result for the growing story helen oxenbury

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!

Image result for titch

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.

Image result for how to hold a knife when buttering

https://assets.seesaw.me/us-2/c/f/9/d/c/0/cf9dc0c5-5ddb-4537-bcbf-c6848ae9cfa3.jpg:::1574467200:::604800:::vG6KtpiWI7eUQduOjkLDnoArppV8N7K0vESrYxo1lPuwXd7DwEA_nOhOgiDqumaVzB4hJeQHpPj-8mpUskQ50A.jpg 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).

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Welcome Back with a Big Splash!

Welcome back to a new term in Nursery! We hope everyone had a wonderful break. Isn’t it hard to believe we are already here at the start of the Summer Term?

It was really lovely to welcome the children back; they all returned with such confidence and chatted away about their holidays & Easter egg eating experiences before setting off to explore all their favourites places in the classroom and garden.

Inside, they were delighted to discover that Mrs Williams had been working hard on some home renovations over the holidays, adding an office extension & dressing room to our home corner!

And outside, many of the children raced straight back into our mud kitchen to mix up a delicious assortment of salads, soups & smoothies!

Probably the most exciting news this week, however, has been the introduction of a set of Numberblocks!  As you may know, the children are crazy about this fantastic CBeebies series and we often watch it at the end of the session, when we are waiting for our grown-ups to collect us.  We have lots of unfix cubes in the classroom, which the children have been using to make the different Numberblocks, but they often complain that they don’t have the right colours to make them accurately.

Image result for numberblocks

So, over the holidays, I did a bit of online shopping and was able to find a set of Numberblocks in the right colours, complete with Numberblock faces!  I couldn’t wait to show the children what I had found and, of course, they were thrilled to meet the Numberblocks 1 to 10.  They knew how to order the Numberblocks correctly and some of them even had a go at writing the numbers!  What fantastic number work Nursery!

If you would like to have a go at ordering the Numberblocks at home, why not try this game.

Finally, our topic this term will be Splish, Splash, Splosh! We will be reading all sorts of water-themed stories & thinking about water as a precious resource.

I will shortly be sending home the next issue of Nursery News with lots of ideas for how you can support your child’s learning at home during the course of this topic – so do look out for it.

This week, we started our water-themed topic with a great, big splash of a story! ‘The Pig in the Pond’ tells the tale of a very hot and bothered pig who sits next to a pond but doesn’t, at first, go in the water quite simply because “pigs don’t swim”.  Now, you may remember, back in February, when we were learning about Chinese New Year, the children discovered that, in actual fact, pigs can swim! Rather impressively, they had all remembered this and were quite incredulous when I dared to read this part of the story – quickly correcting me – ‘but pigs can swim’!  Well done Nursery – what super memories you have.

Image result for pig in the pond

You can revisit the story here (as always, I would suggest turning the sound off and reading the story yourself – but be sure to add in something along the lines of ‘but of course, we already know pigs can swim’ 🐷):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsB6t8E_Lao