Summer 1

This term has been full of fun and excitement.

We started by looking at the story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. We became very good at retelling the story and learnt a song to help us. We used props to retell the story and used our big booming voices to pretend to be the giant. We looked at how beans grow and even planted our own bean! We hoped they would grow all the way to the sky, but unfortunately they didn’t quite get that big.

Our next week was spent learning all about ‘Pirates’. We made telescopes, hats and eye patches and had a pirate dress-up day. This was so much fun! We looked at maps and how they help us to find the hidden treasure and we made our own.

We then moved on to learning about the different animals that live on our planet. We started by looking at creatures that live under the sea. We read the story ‘Commotion in the Ocean’ and learnt lots of exciting facts about the different sea creatures. Did you know that a jellyfish has no brain or eyes and they have tentacles not legs. Also, the blue whale is the biggest creature to live on earth! We enjoyed being creative, making paper plate jellyfish and learning how to draw fish. We then read the story ‘Somebody Swallowed Stanley’. We spoke about how important it is to keep our beaches and oceans clean as this is very dangerous for the animals.

After this we spent two weeks looking at ‘Minibeasts’. To start this theme we went on a wonderful minibeast hunt to Ainslie Wood forest. We used our magnifying glasses to look for the different insects, checking under logs and leaves. We found so many different insects; worms, snails, slugs, woodlouse, spiders and we even saw a butterfly! Although it was very muddy, we had a wonderful time.

We then looked at the classic story of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. We learnt about the life-cycle and the changes that happen, our WOW word was ‘metamorphism’. We then got our own caterpillars and have really enjoyed watching how they changed from a tiny caterpillar, to a big caterpillar and then how they made their chrysalis. We are still waiting for them to turn into a butterfly and we are wondering what colour they will be.

Over the second week we read lots of different books; ‘Ahh Spider’, ‘The Very Busy Spider’, ‘The Very Lazy Ladybird’ and ‘The Very Greedy Bee’. We learnt lots of facts about the different minibeasts and made some wonderful crafts. We have definitely become experts in this area.

We finished this half term off by looking at the ‘Farm’. We learnt about the different animals that live on the farm and the names of their babies. We found out that we get so many different things from the farm; eggs, wheat, dairy, fruit and vegetables. We finished this week off with a visit from Ark Mobile Farms. They brought a donkey, goats, sheep, chicks, ducklings, rabbits and a dog. We got the opportunity to go into the pen and stroke them. We had so much fun and it was so lovely to get up close to these wonderful animals.

We are all excited to see what wonderful learning we will do next half term.

Spring 2

This term we have been learning lots of fun facts about the world around us.

We started the term by looking at ‘Space’. We had our very own space station where we were able to shoot off to the different planets in the solar system. We watched videos of rockets taking off and watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon for the very first time.

We learnt facts about the different planets. Did you know that Jupiter is the biggest planet and the rings around Saturn are made from rocks, dust and ice? We also learnt that there is no gravity in space. This makes things float and the astronauts move slowly. We listened to the song ‘Space Odyssey’ and made some large marks on some big paper.

We read the story ‘Whatever Next’ and pretended to zoom off to the moon in our cardboard box and had a picnic just like the bear! We decided what we would take to the moon with us and drew pictures. We also read ‘Aliens Love Underpants’ and designed our own pants.

We then moved on to learning all about ‘Dinosaurs’. Now this was definitely a favourite of ours. Each of our key groups learnt about a different dinosaur and then shared their facts with their friends. They did an amazing job! We learnt that the teeth of a T-Rex were as big as a banana, the plates on the back of a Stegosaurs changed to red when they were in danger and the Diplodocus was one of the slowest dinosaurs.

We read the story ‘How to Grow a Dinosaur’. We discussed whether we would like it if we had dinosaurs in our back garden. Most of us decided that this would probably be a bit scary and decided against the idea as we didn’t want to get eaten by a T-Rex or a Velociraptor! To finish the two weeks we made a graph to decide which dinosaur was our favourite. Our favourite was the T-Rex.

For the last two weeks of the term we looked at ‘People Who Help Us’. We found out that there are so many people that help us with different things. We learnt about the Police, Firefighters, Doctors, Nurses, Opticians, Dentist and the Lolly-pop person to just name a few! We loved our hospital role-play area where we helped the patients feel better, giving them medicine and injections. We dressed as Firefighters in the garden and helped to put out fires with our hoses. We learnt how to cross the road safely using the Green Cross Code; “Stop, Look and Listen”. We now know where the safest places are to cross and that we must always hold an adults hand.

We have had so much fun this half term and can’t wait for the adventures that we will have next half term!

Spring 1

This half term has been very exciting! Our theme has been ‘Story Chest’ and we have looked at some of our favourite books.

We started our journey looking at ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. We painted our favourite characters and learnt all about speech bubbles. We tasted porridge and made a chart to see if we liked it or not. We thought it was ‘just right’!

Our next story was ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’. We learnt all about bridges and used different materials to make them both inside and outside. We had to make sure that they were really strong. We made our own troll masks and hid under the bridges saying, “Who’s that trip trapping over my bridge?”

We then moved onto ‘The Gingerbread Man’. This story was a lot of fun. We especially liked decorating our own Gingerbread person. We made sure we did it quickly just in case they ran away!

After that we did ‘The Three Little Pigs’, this was definitely our favourite one! We loved being the wolf and trying to blow objects down. We did an experiment to find out which materials were the strongest. We found out that sticks, straw, feathers and paper are light and we could blow these down.

We finished by reading ‘The Little Red Hen’. In this story all of her friends would not help her. We spoke about how we can help our friends and how this makes us feel happy. We learnt about the life-cycle of a chicken and how we get flour and we made bread.

With each story we have been able to retell the story using props and puppets that we have made. We helped to make story maps and have been amazing at remembering the different characters and joining in with the repeated refrains. The teachers have been very proud of us!

We have also started our phonics, learning a sound each week. We have thought about what begins with sound and have even been writing them! We became birdwatchers for the RSPB great garden birdwatching month. We used our binoculars to look for birds and ticked them off of our lists.

We have loved learning new skills and have talked about giving everything a go. Instead of saying “I can’t” we now say, “I can try”.

We are excited and eager to learn lots of new things next half term!

Autumn 2

What a super exciting half term we have had!

We started the term off by looking at the story 'Room on the Broom’. We enjoyed making wands, designing our own witch’s hat and mixing potions outside in the garden. We became very good at retelling the story, our favourite part was definitely when the witch made a new broom for all of her new friends. “Igetty, zigetty, zagetty ZOOM!”

We then spent the next week learning all about colours. This was such a fun week. We learnt that there are three prime colours; red, yellow and blue. Did you know that if you mix these colours together they make new ones? It was like magic! We read the story ‘Mixed, a Colourful Story’. We mixed paint in bags, with our hands and made beautiful rainbows.

After this we moved on to two of the children’s favourite stories, ‘The Gruffalo’ and ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.’ We made caves, painted pictures of the Gruffalo and used junk modelling to make different characters. We did large mark making to retell the story of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’, making different marks to represent the water, forest, mud, and snowstorm.

We spent the last weeks of this term looking at Christmas, reading ‘The Christmas Story’, ‘The Jolly Christmas Postman’, ‘The Snowman’ to name just a few. We did lots of creative activities; making cards, calendars and many decorations.

We also learnt about Diwali and made Diva lamps from clay and decorated them with paint and glitter. We learnt how to be safe with Fireworks and made firework pictures using marbles and paint. We spoke about Armistice Day and spoke about the Soldiers. We made poppies and learnt why we wear them.

At the beginning of December the children did a wonderful performance of ‘Baarmy Bethlehem’ to parents and the whole school. They learnt lots of songs and sang their hearts out, we were all very proud of them!

We can’t wait to come back in January and continue all the fun learning!

Autumn 1

Wow, what an amazing start to the years we have had!

We have welcomed lots of new children into the Nursery and have been excited to make lots of new friends. The children have settled well and are happy to come in ready to explore and learn lots of exciting things.

Throughout this half term we have been learning lots of different Nursery Rhymes, of our favourites is Humpty Dumpty. Linked to this we learnt the word ‘delicate’; this means something can break easily and have been using this word during our play.

We started this term by looking at the story “Socks’ by Nick Sharratt. We made lots of patterns and thought about what we could turn our sock into; a socktopus or even a hipposockamus!

We then spent time looking at our families, who was important to us and who lived in our house. We used the stories ‘Owl Babies’ and ‘So Much’ to support us with this. We really enjoyed these stories and loved to retell them. We also learnt about owls. Did you know that owls come out at night time when we are asleep? This means that they are ‘nocturnal’.

We then moved onto ‘The Colour Monster’ story. We spoke about our feelings and emotions and what makes us feel happy, sad, angry, frightened, calm and loved.

We finished our half-term by reading ‘Little Rabbit Foo Foo’. We had lots of fun reading this story, we learnt a song and actions to help us retell the story. This story helped us to think about our Nursery rules like walking feet inside, using kind hands and sharing is caring.

We cannot wait for more exciting learning next half term!