First Weeks of Nursery

What a wonderful week we have had in nursery.  The children have now really settled into their new classroom and are becoming familiar with the expectations of the environment and the school.  We have been modelling how to use the different areas in the classroom so the children can get the best out of the activities we offer. 

We have introduced the children to the inspirational person behind our class name, Tanni Grey-Thompson.  Tanni was born in 1969 in Cardiff.  She was born with spina bifida which affects a baby’s backbone meaning it will not grow normally.  Her parents were determined to make her as independent as possible with different sports.  She was inspired to take up athletics after watching the London wheelchair marathon.  By the age of 15, she was racing for Wales in the junior championships.  Tanni went on to win 11 Paralympic gold medals. 

Using Tanni’s inspirational story, we have been creating some lovely ‘wheel’ paintings by dipping the wheels of toy vehicles into paint and ‘wheeling’ them across paper.  The children have also made their own salt dough and then crafted and painted salt dough Paralympic medals.

We have been singing lots of lovely nursery rhymes and nursery songs and a special favourite has been Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes!  We also had a special guest teacher, Mrs Higo, teach a music lesson to the nursery children. 

We have been looking very closely at our faces this week and have been creating our own faces using a variety of resources such as conkers, shells and beads.  First, we looked at our faces in a mirror and then used the materials to make our own faces.  We even added speech bubbles to describe our faces.  We continued this theme during our snack and made fruit faces on pancakes!  Take a look at our amazing creative faces below, as well as some of the fantastic activities the children have been up to. 

Feeding the bunnies.

 This week some of the nursery children were lucky enough to have a special treat and visit the school rabbits.

After picking the vegetables and fruit from the planters in the garden we thought it would be a great idea to give the rabbits the carrot tops from the carrots we have grown. We very quietly and calmly with permission two at a time with Mrs Kemmish went into the rabbits area and carefully fed them the carrot tops. We even gave the rabbits a gentle stroke and they were so lovely and soft. 

Nursery Sports Day

This morning all our nursery children participated in Sports Day up on the field. We walked onto the field following the team flags and danced along to the music. They were amazing as they took part in javelin throwing, racket ball dribbling, egg and spoon races, throwing bean bags into hoops and jumping over the hurdles. They all worked together in their team colours supporting and cheering each other on as they waited patiently for their turn. We ended our EYFS sports day with some running races and every child tried their best, they had to run nearly the whole length of the field to get to the finish line where Mrs Rooney was waiting with their sticker. All the nursery staff are so proud of every child as they were such sporty stars this morning.  

How does your garden grow?

Thanks to all of your wonderful donations of seeds and plants, the children in Early Years have been working their green fingers this term! Through careful watering and monitoring, we have been able to gather our very first harvest!

We have picked the ripe strawberries, pulled up some rather unusual looking carrots (!) and even cut some lettuce and two huge heads of broccoli. We are excited to see our tomato and bean plants beginning to flower and are wondering what might be happening to our potatoes beneath the soil.

So that we were able to all benefit from the delicious fruits (and vegetables!) of our labour, we passed some of what we had picked to the school cooks to include in our dinners this week! The children are particularly excited to taste the broccoli.

Thank you all again to all the parents and carers for providing the seeds and plants for the Early Years planters. Your donations have provided us with rich, first hand learning and has given the EYFS garden a well loved patch of nature.

 

Real fruit tea in water- nursery

 This week has been full of lots of fun and exciting different activities in nursery. We started the week on Monday by reading the story 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea' by Judith Kerr. We then did some beautiful tiger paintings with great tiger stripes. Outside in the water tray there was some real lemons and oranges to play with ,which we squeezed and poured to make lemon and orange juice. The next day real fruit tea was added to the water tray and smelt delicious and made the tea party even more exciting and real. 

Every week in nursery we learn a different phonic sound and this week our sound was 'l' for lemon, (down the long leg).

We had an amazing tuff tray to play in with many different object that begin with this sound. We had a great time while at the same time learning our sound of the week. 

Many of the children did brilliantly at saying the sound and naming the object which began with that sound. 

Butterflies in nursery

 Continuing from our topic all about animals, this week we have been reading the story 'The Hungry Caterpillar'. Related to the story we were lucky enough to have 5 chrysalis that were ready to change. One morning we came in and the butterflies had started to come out. By the end of the morning all 5 had made it out and were flying around their net. We carefully gave them some sugar water and a grape and some orange for them to drink. We continued during the week to read other stories about butterflies including information books which we all found very interesting. Then on Wednesday before the rain came we set the butterflies free. In the morning we walked up to the forest to release them and in the afternoon we went round near the trees next to the nursery building. It was amazing to see them fly away and one stayed for a long time having a drink on the grape so we could see how beautiful the butterfly really was. It was an amazing experience and the nursery children have really been enthusiastic when talking about them and thrilled to watch the butterflies fly away. 

Nursery super farm trip.

 This week we had an excellent day at nursery as a wonderful farm came to visit us at school.  We walked beautifully to the field and listened to the instructions that we can stroke and groom the animals with our kind hands. Many of the nursery children were so excited and loved having a turn at using a special brush to brush the pony or goats. Some children were even brave enough to hold the cockerel who was called Ralph! There was also a tiny foal with its mother who was drinking her milk and 2 lambs with their mother. At the end if the children chose to they were able to hold and stroke a rabbit whose fur was 'really soft'. When we had finished our turn we came back to nursery and washed our hands really well and had a lovely drink and snack. It was a great day and well done to all the nursery children who behaved brilliantly. 

There are lots of great photos to show you of our fun filled day.