In 3YO Nursery this week we have continued our learning about Spring through listening to and learning about the Easter story and how Christians celebrate Easter. We have thought about how new life is represented through this story, and where we might see new life at this time of year. The children were eager to remind us of the baby piglets and lambs we saw at the farm! We learnt that the chocolate eggs given at Easter also symbolises new life and linked this to baking our very own, very delicious chocolate nest buns.

We began by thinking about what we would need to make our buns and Milo suggested making a list. The children were all very eager to have a go at writing down a list of ingredients that we might need….

After creating our lists, we washed our hands before gathering together the ingredients. The children’s early reading skills were developed as we followed some pictorial instructions for how to make the buns. As we baked, we learnt more new vocabulary such a break, melt, stir and scoop. The children can’t wait to bring home their special treat later this week!

Do you have plans for any special Easter baking or cooking? Can your child listen and follow some simple instructions for how to make something yummy? Please do share photographs of your creations.

Engaging with our community and creating fun and inviting opportunities for families to be part of our Nursery is essential to our practice in Nursery. Thank you very much to all of our families who joined us for our Easter Stay and Play this week.

Today we decided that we needed to use up some old bananas, so we decided to bake a banana cake for snack! We collected an egg from our chickens then gathered the ingredients we needed to make our cake. As we baked, we learnt and practiced new vocabulary such as mash, stir and pour. The children developed fine motor skills as they learnt to use the different implements to mash and mix. What a delicious afternoon treat for everyone!

We have been blessed with some beautiful sunny weather this week in 3YO Nurery and we really have made the most of it. In small groups we have explored our wonderful school grounds hunting for signs of Spring and taking a moment to appreciate the beauty of the world around us using all of our 5 senses. It was wonderful to see the children’s curiosity as they asked questions about what they were noticing and to watch the delight in their faces as they spotted, shoots, flowers, buds and birds.

Our learning Spring learning continued inside this week as we made some stunning observational paintings of daffodils. We looked closely at the different parts of the plant as we and learnt the names for the stem, flower, petals and trumpet as we created our beautiful representations. Can you spot any flowers on your walk to school next week and teach your children the names for them?

This week we enjoyed a wonderful visit to the farm. We started off our day by boarding the coach which was very exciting. The children enjoyed looking out of the windows to talk about what they could see during on the journey. Once at the farm, we had the opportunity to meet lots of different farm animals and even saw some brand new baby animals, such as calves, lambs and piglet. Could you help your children to use the names of the baby animals at home by talking to them about the visit? We used our noticing skills as we talked about the features of the animals and did lots of questioning, particularly to the farmers who were cleaning and feeding the animals.

Following our visit to the farm we enjoyed lots of different activities to encourage us to talk about what we saw, including painting farm animals, role playing with baby animal puppets and singing Old McDonald. Take a look at our fabulous pig paintings.
Could you sing Old McDonald at home this week, maybe whilst on a car journey or before bed? Maybe the children could describe their favourite animal to you or even have a go at drawing their favourite animal.

Thank you once again to all of the parents and staff who were able to during support this wonderful trip.

This week in Nursery we have been learning about 2D shapes, matching them to familiar shapes around us, naming them and using our looking eyes to notice features of different shapes. We played a fun game pulling shapes slowly from a magic bag and used our listening skills to predict the name of the shape and match them to objects from around Nursery.

In our outdoor area the children were eager to continue this learning and we went shape hunting. We found lots of different shapes in unexpected places. This led us to go on a shape walk around school. Could you go for a shape walk whilst out and about on day in the holiday? Can the children spot and name any circles, squares, triangles or rectangles in the world around them?

The children’s interests particularly in circles led us to do some shape printing in the style of Kandinsky’s Concentric Circles artwork. We then adapted this to create concentric squares also.

As part of our NELI story for this week, Don’t Wake Up the Tiger, we have been exploring floating. In the story, the animals have to float over the tiger to reach the other side without waking him up. This ignited our curiosity as we became intrigued about objects which float and sink. The children developed planning skills as they suggested filling up a large container with water and found objects to investigate whether they float or sink. We had a wonderful time exploring and questioning which objects float and which ones sink, with many of us explaining to our friends what has happened using the correct vocabulary.

Could you explore this further at home? Maybe you could add toys to the bathtub one evening and explore which ones float and which ones sink. Can your child use the correct word to describe this? We would love to hear about what you discover.

Following these explorations we decided to consider which objects would float through the air. The children loved trying to pop the bubbles as they watched them float across the room and were all eager to be the first to catch the balloon as it floated across their heads.

This week we have been thinking about taking care of the birds in our local area as part of the Big Garden Bird Watch. As we carefully threaded Cheerios onto pipe cleaner for the birds, we developed attention and fine motor skills as well as learning different bird names and parts of their body such as the beak, wings and feathers.

Thank you to all of the families who joined us for our reading cafe today. At ACE we place huge value on reading and sharing books together. It was wonderful to experience this with our families and also share hints and tips on supporting early reading skills at Nursery.

This week, we have been reading the story Goldilocks and The Three Bears. We have used this texts to help us to explore the language of size. We began by matching the bears to their different bowls, chairs and beds before placing them in order from largest to smallest. We also had lots of messy fun in our mud kitchen making porridge and matching the bowls to the correct sized bears before acting out the story with our friends.