Sparklers - What have we been up to?
Elmer
In Nursery, we began our new topic ‘Colours of the Rainbow’. We read ‘Elmer’ and ‘Elmer and the Rainbow’, looking at the different colours on Elmer’s body. The children have enjoyed singing ‘The Rainbow Song’ together. We have drawn and decorated our own Elmer pictures, created amazing rainbow name art, explored our rainbow Elmer tuff tray and made a class collage rainbow. We’ve had lots of fun outside too!
Halloween
We had so much fun in Nursery! The children loved dressing up in their scary costumes! Some children took part in the pumpkin competition and brought in their amazing carved pumpkins. We also made paper plate pumpkins and monsters to take home. After school, children were invited to the Halloween disco with the rest of school. The Nursery children had lots of fun- dancing and singing with their friends.
Our Bodies and Being Healthy
In Nursery, we have been learning about our bodies and being healthy. We had fun reading our information books about body parts, making body biscuits, completing body jigsaws and drawing around ourselves. The children enjoyed labelling their body too! We have also been talking about being healthy and eating healthy foods. We read ‘Germs Are Not For Sharing’, made a healthy fruit salad and drew a healthy plate to take home. The children loved our doctors tuff tray and cleaning our pretend teeth! In Maths, we have been singing ‘Five Currant Buns’ and focusing on counting to five. The children enjoyed making play dough currant buns and counting five currant buns onto five plates.
Harvest
In Nursery, we talked about Harvest. We enjoyed listening to some Harvest songs, talking about Harvest with Mrs Higginson and printing pictures with fruit and vegetables.
Family
In Nursery, we have been talking about family. We’ve read ‘The Family Book’ by Todd Parr and ‘Our Class is a Family’. The children have drawn their family, had fun exploring our family tuff tray, printed their hands and made house biscuits together. The children made Mini-Me figures and couldn’t wait to play with them! We also talked about how we are all part of God’s family too. We made special name hearts to hang on our RE display.
Butterflies
One of our lovely parishioners came to tell us that many beautiful butterflies were in the grounds behind the church. We decided to put on our coats and set off to have a look. The children were amazed to see lots of fluttering butterflies. When we were very quiet, we could get very close to them and look at their markings.
Class Library
We love listening to stories and looking at books in Nursery. This week, we opened our class library and the children were excited to choose a book to take home.
Welcome Back
We’ve had a wonderful first week back at Nursery. The children have been settling in and exploring the continuous provision. We started our new topic ‘Good To Be Me’ and created faces in our class tuff tray. We also read ‘Super Duper You’ together and and the children enjoyed looking at the pictures. All the children have settled in really well and we are all looking forward to the year ahead!
On the Farm
We’ve had lots of fun learning about farm animals and jobs farmers have to do. We enjoyed reading ‘On the Farm’ and ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ together. The children loved looking at the pictures and joining in with the words from the story. We also had a special visitor in Nursery! Mrs Hay came to talk to the children about farm animals and jobs at the farm. The children were able to to meet and stroke baby chicks as well as investigate some sheep’s wool.
Sports Day
Nursery had so much fun at sports day! The children completed a running race, a quoit race and a bat and bean bag race. They were all amazing!
Blackpool Zoo Trip- June 2023
Nusery had an amazing trip to the zoo today! We started with an educational talk and the children had the opportunity to touch and explore an elephant tooth, parrot feathers, camel fur and snake skin. The children were fascinated by all the different objects. The children also had the opportunity to touch a hissing cockroach.
We enjoyed exploring the zoo and all the different animals. The children listened to many talks during the day. They especially loved watching the sea lions perform and show off. During the giraffe talk, the children had the opportunity to hold a giraffe bone from the top part of a leg- it was bigger than some of our children! Overall, a day to remember!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
The children have really enjoyed reading ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ in Nursery. We did lots of ‘Hungry Caterpillar’ activities, including a caterpillar hunt, making paper chain caterpillars and painting symmetrical butterflies. We had lots of caterpillar themed snack times and the children enjoyed making their snacks. The children also loved taking their learning outdoors- creating a human butterfly and making a caterpillar picture using natural resources.
Sunflowers
We continued our Growing Plants topic by reading ‘The Tiny Seed’ and ‘Sam Plants a Sunflower’.
We planted sunflower seeds, made wooden stick sunflowers and painted sunflower pictures. The children enjoyed exploring our sunflower picture tuff tray- creating images of sunflowers from beans, buttons and gems. We’ve been looking at pictures of sunflowers, talking about the different parts of a plant. The children also enjoyed playing with flowers in our water tray outside and had fun collecting natural objects to create a huge sunflower picture outside.
Coronation Celebration
Today, we celebrated the Coronation of King Charles III. We invited families in to join in with a picnic and then took part in a school performance by singing “If You’re a King and You Know It’.
Jack and the Beanstalk
As part of our Growing Plants topic, Nursery read the story of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. The children really enjoyed this story - drawing and painting beanstalk pictures to go on display. We have planted beans, recreated the giant’s castle and made magic harps with sticks and wool. We have also used masks to role-play the characters from the story. The children have developed many areas of learning during this topic.
Easter
The children in Nursery had lots of fun this Easter. They joined in with whole school Easter activities, made Easter crafts to take home and went on an Easter egg hunt with their friends. We also talked about the importance of The Easter Story- creating handprint cross pictures.
Forest Schools
Nursery had another wonderful Forest Schools session with Mrs Woodhouse. To begin, we read the story ‘The Princess and The Wizard’ and sang circle time songs. We made a birthday cake for the princess and counted seven candles. We made a magic wand for the fairy, using the leaves to make patterns. We also made a web for the spiders in the story by weaving wool in the trees. The children developed lots of new outdoor skills and listened carefully.
Adventures Below the Clouds
To finish this half term, Nursery read ‘Sharing a Shell’ and ‘Hooray for Fish’. We’ve enjoyed joining in with lots of different activities linked to these stories. The children explored our beach small world tray, made salt dough shell fossils and painted/decorated shell and fish pictures. The children also made a paper plate fish, sticking on collage pieces independently.
Forest Schools
We had so much fun with Mrs Woodhouse during our Forest Schools session. We made a stick family- ordering the five family members by size. We collected ‘treasures’ from the woodland area to create pictures of Stick Man and his family. We made our own paint from strawberries and beetroot. The children had to crush and mash the berries, adding more or less pressure. We then used potatoes to print patterns and brushes to make marks. Finally, we used spinach to create flags, “Hooray For Stick Man.” The children had to pierce and thread the leaves onto the stick.
Adventures Above the Clouds
We’ve been having so much fun in Nursery!
The children have read ‘Zoom, Rocket, Zoom’,’How to Catch a Star’ and ‘Aliens in Underpants Save the World’. We’ve enjoyed making name rockets- placing a square on the rocket for each letter. The children have also been creating alien characters with play dough, making rockets in the construction area and baking star biscuits for snack time. The ‘Zoom, Rocket, Zoom’ tuff tray was also a big hit!
World Book Day
The children enjoyed dressing up for World Book Day. The costumes were fantastic! Do you recognise any characters?
School Family Picnic
Today, Sparklers joined Class 1 at a family picnic. It was lovely to see all the children together and enjoying their time eating and playing. It was also a fantastic opportunity to allow the parents to look at all the work we have been doing in the outside area too. Thank you to everyone who joined us today.
Communication and Language/Literacy
We have been doing lots of work based upon 'The Enormous Turnip' and 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' that is helping us develop our Communication and Language and also our Literacy skills.
Expressive Arts and Design
Throughout this term we have improved our expressive arts and design skills through different themes, including; Winter, Bonfire Night and through our Literacy topics.
Maths
In Maths we have learning about and improving our skills across a variety of strands in the Framework - these have been linked to other areas, including; PSED, PD and EAD.
Physical Development
Throughout the Autumn term we have strived to improve ALL of our PD competencies and have done it through the other 6 areas of learning as well as through dedicated PD sessions.
Personal, Social and Emotional Development
During the first term of the 2022/2023 year we have done lots of work with the children to try to hone their PSED. This has been done through all areas of the EYFS framework and also through specific PSED sessions.
Understanding The World
The UTW area of the Early Years framework encompasses all of the other 6 areas and through these we have extended the children's skills and knowledge so that they have a greater understanding of their world and the wider world.
