This week in Nursery, the children have…

• continued to develop awareness of sounds made with instruments, focusing on the difference between sounds (- communication, language & literacy).
• compared objects by size; for example, they have sorted objects (such as balls) according to whether they are big or small (– mathematics).
• continued to focus on developing the foundation skills for fine motor control, with lots of fun activities (-fine motor physical development).
• developed their skill in rolling a ball towards a target and trapping it when receiving it (– gross motor physical development).
• considered the importance of using gentle hands and being kind to others (- personal, social and emotion development).
• learnt about the colour ‘blue’ – once again, they enjoyed watching the CBeebies ColourBlocks programme, this week about the colour blue; they made ‘blue’ collages and explored blue things in the environment.  We also talked about how the word ‘blue’ can be used to describe the feeling of sadness i.e. feeling blue (- expressive arts and design).
• explored the season of autumn, beginning with a walk in the Discovery Garden and around the early years building.  We will do this again and again over the coming weeks to observe how the leaves on the trees are changing.  Next week, we are also planning to do some cooking – specifically apple crumble – continuing the autumnal theme (- understanding of the world).

Happy weekend to you all!

From the Nursery Team ?

This week we have been exploring the delightful signs of autumn through our story of the week ‘Leaf Man’ by Lois Ehlert. The story has some wonderful images of fallen leaves that land in the shape of a man. He is then blown away in the wind as ‘a Leaf Man’s got to go where the wind blows!’ He is then taken past many other fallen leaves that represent other living things such as ducks on a river, an orchard and much more. The children really enjoyed looking at the pictures and describing what they could see. We learnt the Makaton signs for ‘man’, ‘lady’ and ‘duck’ to help us when retelling the story of Leaf Man.

• During our letters and sounds sessions this week we have been learning the phonemes for the letters (ck, e, u, r). We have been working hard and now know sixteen in total!
• For maths we have been looking at pattern this week. The children have been able to continue a repeating pattern in a variety of different ways and have really showed their mastery of this concept. We have used actions, sounds, playdough, number blocks, counting objects, and musical instruments all to show patterns and create our own.
• ‘Our rights’ has been a topic as part of our ‘personal, social and emotional development’ this week. We talked about our rights at home and school and all the important things we need to keep us happy, healthy and safe. These included being able to play, be warm, have access to water and food. The children had some brilliant ideas in our discussions and were able to articulate their thoughts and feelings.
• For expressive art and design we have been working on our mark making skills once again, this week we introduced chalks into our bank of resources we have already been using such as felt tips, pencils and wax crayons. The children have used them to make some great pictures on sugar paper, chalk boards and even the playground!

For your information

Your child will be bringing home a library book each Friday. Please talk to them about the importance of taking care of their book and return it to your class teacher each week by Thursday. We can then change it for a new book each Friday when we visit the library.

Please have a look at the attached home learning to find some fun activities you can complete at home. This week our story will be ‘Baby Goes to Market’ by Atinuke.

Have a fantastic weekend ?

Our focus story for the week has been ‘Hoot Owl Master of Disguise’ by Sean Taylor. Hoot Owl is no ordinary owl – oh no – he’s a master of disguise! And he will use his expert camouflage powers to trick his unsuspecting prey! But, somehow, Hoot Owl’s prey keeps escaping…Will he ever succeed in catching himself some dinner? Can your child remember what Hoot Owl ate for his dinner? We learnt the Makaton signs for ‘eat’ and ‘hungry’. Perhaps your children could show you these signs?

• We have continued with our letters and sounds programme– we have been learning the phonemes for the letters (g,o,c,k). We have also started learning how to write some of these graphemes too!
• During maths we have been comparing sets of objects. We began the week using 5 frames to compare which set of objects have more, fewer or the same amount. We have also compared objects by size hunting for big/small and tall/short objects within our environment.
• As part of our carpet times we have been thinking and talking about using kind hands. We listened to a story called ‘Hands are not for hitting.’ We talked about what we can do with our hands and what we must not do and why.
• For our expressive arts and design we have been exploring different forms of mark making, in particular this week we have been using felt tip pens to make a variety of colourful patterns such as zig zags, circles, squiggles and straight lines.

Please have a look at the home learning that has been attached to find some fun activities to do at home. It links to our story next week which will be ‘Leaf Man’ by Lois Ehlert. 

Have a lovely weekend! ?