This week at Nursery, we have focused on two very important life skills – listening and kindness. We introduced our helping hands big question for this half-term, which is, ‘How can I show that I can listen?’. We also joined the rest of school in participating in Anti-Bullying Week by joining in with Odd Sock Monday and thinking about how we can be kind to one another.

Odd Sock Monday!

On Monday, we came to Nursery wearing our fantastically colourful odd socks! We had lots of fun spotting the different socks on our friends and spent time thinking about how the odd socks are a bit like ourselves; unique, individual and interesting! We also developed our sense of community by reflecting on how we had all joined in with this special day that represents kindness and friendship.

Remembrance Day

We worked together to create a beautiful poppy wreath as an act of kindness to mark Remembrance Day. We used Autumn fruits and vegetables to print our own poppies, before gluing them onto our wreath. We took our wreath up to the school hall and joined in with a beautiful moment of reflection as we looked at all of the poppies made by our classes in school. When it was our turn to share our reflections, we talked about choosing kindness and being kind to our friends. We were incredibly proud of the children, who showed great empathy and kindness as we marked this day together.

Introducing our 3 Year Old Nursery Lending Library!

This week at Nursery, we were introduced to our lending library. We were all given our own book bag and had the opportunity to look through the books and choose one that sparked our interest. We took our books home to our families to share together. Our Nursery children love listening to stories at school and we are looking forward to hearing about how the library books are shared at home too! We can return our library books and swap them for a new one on Mondays and Thursdays.

Listening Walk

As an introduction to our helping hands big question, we went on a listening walk in small groups around our school grounds. Listening carefully to tune into and identify environmental sounds supports our literacy development and is an important aspect of our phonics learning. “My shoes are making a scratching sound”, said Zayan. “I can hear the children in my sister’s class”, said Amelie. “The door banged”, said Molly. Some of our families also had a go at doing a listening walk at home, thank you to everyone who joined in!

Planting Kindness

This week, we also collaborated with our Reception friends to add some kindness bulbs into our outdoor area! We each added a ‘sprinkle of kindness’ to our bulbs and listened to one another as we spoke about what kindness means to us. Some of our responses included, “We are kind to our friends”, “Kindness is an hug” and “Kindness makes us happy”. We talked about how we will watch our kindness grow as the bulbs later bloom into beautiful flowers.

On Friday, we filled our planter with soil, used tools to dig and planted our kindness bulbs. We waited patiently and took turns as we worked together to plant them. We can’t wait to see our kindness bulbs bloom into beautiful flowers and we hope that they will remind us of when we sprinkled our kindness onto them.

Thank-you, Zaha, for bringing in your favourite book to share – what a kind thing to do! We all enjoyed listening to the ‘Invisible Story’ together, which linked well to our exploration of kindness this week. We love to learn about the stories that children enjoy reading at home and enjoy sharing them as a group at Nursery -please continue to do so!

This week at Nursery, we have had lots of fun learning about Bonfire Night and starting off our exploration of light and dark through different firework-themed learning experiences. Some of us shared our home experiences of Bonfire Night with our Nursery friends and teachers. We all expressed our own creativity by using different media and materials to create our own artwork.

Printing Fireworks

We were invited to have a go at using pipe cleaners and paint to print fireworks onto black paper. We experimented with using different colours within our art and some of us explored how we could press our pipe cleaners into more than one colour to create new effects. As we printed, we shared our own experiences of seeing fireworks around us as we engaged in conversation together.

Firework Finger Gym!

We really enjoyed trying out this week’s firework-themed finger gym! Many of us returned to repeat the activity on a number of occasions. We used paintbrushes to sweep the sand to find the hidden fireworks underneath. We then explored how we could manipulate our paintbrushes to make different lines, shapes and patterns in the sand.

Large-scale Chalk Fireworks

We continued to practice making marks, lines and shapes to represent fireworks whilst exploring our outdoor provision. We had lots of fun using different coloured chalks to create a firework sky on the large blackboard. Creating our fireworks required us to use gross-motor movements with our arms and we continued to use talk to share our own experiences of Bonfire Night.

Keeping Safe on Bonfire Night

This week at Nursery, we also learned about how to keep safe on Bonfire Night, with the help of Fireman Sam. We were introduced to his Bonfire Night safety tips and learned about how we can enjoy bonfires and firework displays safely. Some of us then shared these helpful tips with our families at home too. We enjoyed playing alongside and co-operatively with our friends with our new small-world Fire Station to further develop our understanding of how we keep safe on Bonfire Night.

Sharing our Home Experiences

Some of us shared our home experiences of Bonfire Night on Tapestry. We all loved looking at the photographs together and the children showed pride when talking about their own experiences. These photos prompted many of us to join in with what we had seen on Bonfire Night as we compared our own experiences. Thank you to our families who shared some fantastic photographs from the night!

What a fantastic first week we have had in our exploration of light and dark. We have enjoyed trying out lots of different Bonfire Night themed activities, which were made much more exciting by sharing our own experiences of seeing fireworks around us.

This week at Nursery, we have had lots of fun celebrating Diwali together with our friends and families! Throughout the week, we had a go at a variety of different Diwali-themed activities and on Tuesday afternoon we celebrated together as we welcomed some of our special people to our Diwali stay and play.

Exploring colour and pattern

We noticed, copied and created bright patterns throughout our week at Nursery. We enjoyed looking at rangoli and mendhi patterns before having a go at making our own! We experimented with using a variety of different media and materials to create our patterns, which included chalk, crayons, sequins and coloured rice.

Party clothes!

We enjoyed wearing bright and beautiful outfits this week at Nursery. For our Diwali stay and play, we dressed for the celebrations!

Celebrating with family and friends

We had a fantastic time at our Diwali stay and play! We enjoyed creating our own patterns, sharing Diwali stories, experimenting with coloured rice and using brightly coloured crayons to create our own artwork. Thank you to our families who were able to join us for the celebration!

Sculpting clay diya lamps

We particularly enjoyed using our hands to sculpt pinch pots and make them into diya lamps for Diwali. We then carefully selected different shiny sequins to decorate our pots. We finished them off with a tealight candle and took them home to light at night time.

What a fantastic week of celebrations we have had at Nursery! We are looking forward to seeing everyone again when we return after the half-term week.

This week we had lots of fun learning about traffic lights in Nursery! We started by sitting together and sharing what we already know about traffic lights. We looked at a photograph as a starting point, which prompted our discussion. Here is what we already knew about traffic lights:

• Zayan: “Red means stop. The black pole holds up the lights”.
• Eva: “Green is go”.
• Yosef: “Amber”.
• Selimo: “They tell us to ‘stop’ and ‘go'”.
• Ryan: “Children need to cross the road at the line with a traffic light”.
• Milan: “Traffic lights for buses”.
• Ryan: “They are for cars”.
• Luca: “It won’t be safe without traffic lights”.

We learnt that the very important person who invented the traffic light was called Garrett Morgan. We discovered that he lived a long time ago in a place called the USA. We now know that the traffic lights that he invented have three lights on them, and we linked this to our own knowledge of the traffic lights that we have seen around us in the local area. Many of us are very interested in transport and so learning about his important invention really sparked our interest!

Traffic Light Printing

Twinkle Twinkle Traffic Light

Throughout the week, we learnt the song ‘Twinkle twinkle traffic light’ and continued to practise it. On Wednesday, we had a special performance of our song and filmed it for our families. You could share the video together at home and practise singing it together. During our performance, we proudly displayed our traffic lights and pointed to the colours as we sang.

This week at Nursery, we learnt why Garrett Morgan is a special person in history and learnt more about traffic lights. We enjoyed singing and painting together this week as part of our learning about this important invention. Look around when you are outside and see if you notice any traffic lights on your travels!

We started our week by sharing exciting stories about going on Autumn treasure hunts over the weekend! We looked together at photographs of us searching for Autumn treasures with our families, talking about where we were and what we found. “I didn’t walk to find things, I used my bike!”, said Luca excitedly.

We brought our bags back to Nursery, filled with wonderful Autumn treasures to share! During our key worker group times, we took turns to share what we had found. We listened to one another politely, excited to see what our friends had found. We waited for our turn to share, talking about where we went, with who and showing our friends what we had found. We remembered the names of some Autumn treasures and joined in with group conversations where we used our senses to describe the objects. “This smells minty!”, said Zayan confidently.

We used our Autumn treasures within different activities in provision. We enjoyed making conker patterns using the conkers that we had collected. We started by copying different patterns and then started to make our own patterns and shapes! We used pine cones to develop our fine-motor skills by wrapping string around them for our finger gym activity.

We continued the theme of reusing things within our play by using cardboard boxes as a mark-making material. We used colourful marker pens to add marks, lines and shapes onto the cardboard as a different drawing surface. We explored how layering colours could change the colours on the cardboard. We shared the large mark-making surface and showed care and consideration, making sure that we didn’t draw over someone else’s work. This developed as a keen interest throughout the week, so we kept going!

We further developed this interest in mark-making on surfaces other than paper by introducing pumpkins on the painting table! We really enjoyed using paintbrushes to add paint to the pumpkins, layering colours as the week progressed. We showed fantastic levels of concentration as we painted and this was another firm favourite of the week!

We have had a busy and fun-filled week at Nursery exploring all of the wonderful things that Autumn gives us!

This week at Nursery, we have been noticing signs of Autumn around us and looking closely at beautiful Autumn treasures! We spent lots of time enjoying fresh air and sunshine as we explored Autumn in the natural world around us and got creative as we used Autumn materials within our artwork.

We started our week by looking at some pumpkins in the art area. We asked ourselves questions like, ‘Which shapes might we draw?’ and ‘Which colours might we need?’. We selected crayons and made marks on our paper. We learnt how to observe closely and keep looking as we draw to form accurate shapes. We added more colours to create detail within our artwork. Our masterpieces are now displayed in our gallery! Some of us also created large-scale pumpkins with chalk outside, where we practised making large circular movements with our arms.

We enjoyed exploring woodland within our school grounds by going on Autumn walks with our key workers this week. We went on an Autumn treasure hunt, which we found incredibly exciting, as we found lots of wonderful Autumn treasures on the ground. We noticed that the leaves were lots of different colours and looked closely at the different shapes we could see. We filled our bags with what we had found and brought them back to Nursery to explore.

We then used our leaves to do some leaf printing. We selected different paint colours to incorporate the variety of colours we had seen within the woodland and used paintbrushes to swirl them together within the printing trays. We then carefully placed our leaves in the paint and then put them onto our paper. We used a roller to press the leaves down and then took them off to reveal our leaf prints on the paper!

We have all taken an Autumn bag home to fill with Autumn treasures that we find when out and about. We will then bring our bags back to Nursery next week and share the wonderful things that we have found! We will use our Autumn treasures within different Autumn-themed activities. We can’t wait to see what you have collected!

This week at Nursery, we continued to think about ourselves as we get to know one another, by focusing on the people in our lives who are special to us. Throughout the week, we joined in with lots of different learning experiences that helped us to share who is important to each of us. We have also continued to settle into our Nursery routines and explore everything on offer to us at Nursery.

Family Photos

Thank you for sharing your beautiful family photographs with us on Tapestry. It was wonderful to see the children beam with pride as we looked at them as a group. The photographs inspired the children to talk about their home experiences and name the people who mean the most to them.

Once we had shared our family photographs, we put them on display in our home corner. This encouraged us to talk about our special people and represent our home experiences within our play. Some of us were inspired to talk about the foods we eat at home as we enjoyed cooking in the home corner.

Making Friends

We have enjoyed playing together and thinking about who our friends are this week. We were all spotted having a wonderful time together exploring different ways to play! We spent time talking about friends and friendships, which helped us to think about who we enjoy playing with at Nursery, leading to lots of talk about who our friends are when exploring provision.

Showing Kindness

Our big question for this half-term is, ‘How can I show kindness to my friends?’. We celebrated where we showed kindness to one another by talking about it together. We were spotted showing kindness this week!

Creating Art Together

We were eager to join in with some collaborative mark-making on large paper this week! We all showed careful concentration as we experimented with creating different marks on our paper. We used lots of lovely language as we talked about our drawings. We represented things that are important to us within our drawings, which included ourselves, sunshines, spiders, cats and the Hulk!

We have had such a busy week at Nursery this week and we have all really enjoyed getting to know each other better by learning about the people who are special to us!

This week in Nursery, we continued to get to know one another and thought about what each of us unique as we settle into our routines. We started to think about ourselves as a group to develop our sense of community. We are becoming more confident at joining in with our key worker group routines, which include welcome activities, snack times and tidy up times.

This week, we worked collaboratively to create our one body as we explored our school vision together – We are one body of many parts and together we love, learn and flourish. We started by drawing around one of our friends to create our body, who had to keep very still as the pencil traced around him!

We then cut out our body shape and put it onto our painting table. We thought about the colours we wanted to use and worked together to choose and pour each paint colour.

Then it was time to paint! We were all very eager to have a go and patiently waited for our turn. We all experimented with the paint and paintbrushes to add a variety of colourful marks onto the paper. We explored dabbing the brush and using different arm movements to create lines, swirls, circles and zig-zags with paint. Some of us explored what happened when we mixed different colours together and were very excited when new colours appeared! We also swirled different paint colours together on the paper to create new effects. We showed wonderful levels of engagement and concentration as we worked out what we could achieve with our paints and paintbrushes!

We talked about how we had all joined in to create our one body, looking at our painting and seeing it as the many parts. We developed our understanding of how we can work together to create beautiful things! When our painting was finished, we looked at it again and thought about how it represented each one of us as a part of our Nursery community. We are really proud of our finished masterpiece!

You could have a go a similar activity at home to help your child understand that they are part of a family community too. This could be a picture containing a drawing from everyone or making up a story where each family member tells part of it. We have also asked for family photographs to be shared on Tapestry, so that we can continue to get to know one another and share the special people in our lives. We will display these in our home corner to inspire the children to represent their own experiences in play.

Welcome back to our returning 3 Year Old Nursery children and a huge welcome to our new children and their families! We have had a very busy start to the term as we have got to know one another, settled into our Nursery routines and had lots of fun exploring everything on offer to us. What have we been doing during our first two weeks together?

Getting to know one another and working together!

We have been getting to the adults at Nursery; Mrs Clay, Mrs Connelly, Miss Bramham, Miss Spence and Mrs Bakhtari. As we settled in, we were introduced to our key worker groups by sitting together in colour groups for snack time. We have enjoyed working together and forming friendships whilst exploring our indoor and outdoor provision. We also enjoyed sitting as a group at lunchtimes as we eat together.

Doing lots of activities to support our physical development!

Many of us have enjoyed spending time in our outdoor area, where we have had a go at different activities to support our physical development. Here we are practising our climbing, balancing and large-scale mark-making skills as we had lots of fun outside! Being outdoors provides us with many exciting opportunities to develop our motor skills.

We were all spotted developing our physical skills whilst discovering our indoor provision this week! We are beginning to think about ourselves and what makes each of us unique, as we settle into our Nursery group and ACE community. This week, we were invited to create our own pen self-portraits. We used mirrors to look closely at ourselves and then used pens to carefully create lines and shapes to represent our features. We are very proud of our finished works of art!

At lunchtime, we have been developing our fine-motor skills by practising eating with a knife, fork and spoon. We were very impressed with the perseverance shown by the children as they used their cutlery independently!

Developing and exploring our own interests!

We have enjoyed using loose parts and open-ended resources to create interesting arrangements. We showed high levels of concentration as we thoughtfully selected and carefully placed each item within our arrangements. We will continue to develop this interest at Nursery by exploring new resources and using talk to share our own ideas as we play.

Many of us have enjoyed developing our sense of shape, space and measure when busy in provision. Water play, both indoors and out, is proving a firm favourite within our Nursery group and we have enjoyed filling, pouring and transporting water with a variety of different resources. We explored space on both on both a small-world and whole body scale!

We were all very interested in the rainy weather this week! We enjoyed standing under the canopy to watch the torrential rain and water pathways on the ground, whilst listening to the sound of the rain dripping onto the canopy and ground. We jumped up and down in excitement as we watched the wondrous weather!

What a fantastic first two weeks we have had in 3 Year Old Nursery! Welcome and welcome back!