This week, many of us were very lucky to go on our Nursery trip to Tropical World. The children were very excited to board the coach to travel to Canal Gardens. On our journey we noticed sheep, trees, lots of cars and even Mrs Bakhtari’s house! Once we arrived, we spent some time exploring the plants, sculptures, pond and maze area before heading inside to discover lots of exciting creatures. Some of our favourite animals were the marmosets, the crocodile and the meerkats. We talked about their habitats and what they like to eat and need to survive.

Following our wonderful trip, we decided to get outdoors to do some mini east hunting of our own. We spotted some woodlice, spiders and greenfly. The children repeated some of the names of the insects and could even describe them. ‘It’s a greenfly, my Daddy knows it…. It’s green.’(Hugo)

We continued our learning about minibeasts this week by reading the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We then used cotton wool buds and paint to create a pattern on our butterfly cut out before printing it to make a symmetrical pattern. ‘It’s the same!’ Noticed Harper , commenting on the symmetry.

We have had a very busy week in Nursery this week, the sunny weather prompting us to get outside and in the sunshine. The children were fascinated by the beanstalks brought in by Mrs Garden this week and were eager to help plant them into our gardening bed. We began by reading the story Jasper’s beanstalk and looking at some beans, we then compared the beans to the new beanstalks before planting them outdoors. The children were very aware that we needed to look after them by watering them, making sure they had lots of sunlight and not letting anyone pull them out of the soil!

Our learning about growth continued this week as we read out text map How to Plant a Seed. The children read the pictures and identified their meaning before having a go at following the instructions to plant their very own sunflower seed. We can’t wait to watch them grow.

Many of the children have told us about their gardens this week and the seeds they have to plant. Please send in photographs of your gardening at home.

This week we have been reading the story The Boy and The Bear. In the story the bear is too heavy to play on the see saw with his new friend, this led to conversations about the word heavy and what this means. We explained to the children that if something has a heavy weight, it means that it will feel hard to pick up. During our carpet session we explored and compared items which are heavy and light. Delilah explained that her cousins is strong because she can pick her up and she is very heavy!

We continued this learning in our outdoor area as we went to hunt for objects which feel heavy. We found lots of heavy objects and discovered that some objects were so heavy that we need to work with a friend to lift them up. We then placed them in order from heavier to lightest.

Can you hunt for heavy objects around your house this weekend? Maybe you could find some light objects also and compare them using the words heavier and lighter, heaviest and lightest.

Yesterday we celebrated Earth Day by talking about our wonderful world and doing some cloud gazing. We relaxed in the outdoor sunshine and the children used their imaginations to spot different shapes in the clouds. ‘I see a crocodile!’ Shouted Solenne, whilst others spotted fish, aeroplanes and even dinosaurs.

We continued this learning whilst playing outside by thinking about how we can look after our wonderful planet. We all decided that picking up rubbish was a great was to start and also a brilliant way to have an extra tidy of our outdoor area! Well done everyone! I wonder if you could help do some litter picking in your local area one weekend.

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.