We Wish you a Merry Christmas...

I can’t believe that we are already one third of the way through the school year. Time certainly does fly when you are enjoying your self!

It has been an extremely long term and the children (and nursery ladies) are all exhausted, everyone has been growing their brains. You should be so proud of your child, they have learnt so much, they have made new friends and grown in confidence and independence.

During Advent, we have journeyed to the stable together. It has been such a wonderful experience for the children to have the opportunity to pause and give thanks for the love, hope and joy found in Jesus – our Saviour and our friend.

On behalf of the nursery team can I say a huge thank your your kind words and gifts this Christmas, they have been greatly appreciated. Working alongside your children and seeing them grow and develop daily is a privilege; we are grateful for your trust in us and for sharing your precious children.

Making a birthday Cake for Baby Jesus

It was sooo delcious!!!

Christmas Party

What a fabulous party!

It just remains for me to say I hope you all have a Happy and Holy Christmas and we will see everyone in 2024!

Stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

This week...

As we limp towards the end of term our learning and Christmas fun just keeps on going. This week, please don’t thin we have gone mad! Your childs key person blog reflects learning that happened in nursery week commencing 8th December as last week we dedicated to our Christmas Nativity; you will have noticed that there has been no frosty weather this week.

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone, 

What a wonderful and busy week we have had.

Firstly, we are super proud of all the nursery children with how wonderful they were in our nativity. We hope you enjoyed watching it as much as we did putting it together and learning all the songs. Thank you for your support. 

The children have been quite excited that Jack Frost has been to the nursery garden, they have been playing detectives in the garden, finding frost on the ground. They liked to touch and walk on it to feel how different it felt under their feet. They also discovered ice, which the children enjoyed looking through and watching it melt in their hands. We then left some cups of water outside overnight to see what would happen and we discovered that the liquid had turned into solid ice and then saw as it warms and melts, it turns back into liquid. We wanted to do it again, but the next day wasn't as cold for the liquid to freeze. The children make great detectives. 

As December has arrived, and therefore the start of advent, we attended assembly with the rest of the school and we lit our first candle HOPE on our Advent wreath.

Nursery also has it own Advent celebrations and every day one of the children will open a pocket to see what exciting knitted object is hiding in there!

We also have been busy putting up the Christmas tree in nursery and the children helped to decorate by putting baubles on the tree. We have had lots of fun. Here is a link for you to decorate your own tree. Click here

TROUBLE IN NURSERY! Don't worry you're not in trouble, we have a little elf that has come to join in with our learning, but he keeps getting up to mischief and his name is ‘Trouble’ the elf. He has been hanging his washing up in nursery, he's been jumping on Barbara’s back and she didn't even know! He's also climbed up into a tiny hole in the ceiling. He is so cheeky. I hope you haven't got any cheeky elves at home?

Have a wonderful weekend everyone and see you all on Monday.

Emma 

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog. This week we have very much been feeling the festive spirit as we began our Advent celebrations. We were excited to join the rest of the school for Advent assembly, where we sang one of our favourite songs, Away in a Manger.

This week in Advent is all about Hope. We hope that you all enjoy our Nativity performances. We were so excited to perform them for the school and our friends and family. We have been practising so hard, and I’m sure you will agree that we were all fantastic! We are looking forward to watching the rest of the school perform their Nativities. We have heard them practice and can’t wait to see them. We are also looking forward to our Christmas party. We’ve heard that chocolate cake might be involved.

As it is the beginning of Advent, we had a very important job to do as we decorated the Christmas Tree. We all think it looks so magical.

This week we have also made snow and enjoyed reading our Christmas stories in our very own snow cave. We have also enjoyed taking home the Travelling Nativity to our homes and sharing the story of the birth of Christ with our families. The photos have all been truly wonderful, we hope you have enjoyed taking part in this special celebration. Please don’t worry if you haven’t had a turn yet, we still have a few more homes to visit yet before the end of term.

We have continued to explore the letter sounds we have been learning. These are m,a,s,d,t,i,n,p,g and o. We have also been practising writing these in the sand and as we write our names in our Christmas cards we discovered that some of these sounds are in our names. Any practice that your child can get at home writing their name will be so beneficial for them.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and we will see you next week.

 Michelle

Read, Write Inc

Due to a popular request from the children we have started to learn some new sounds this week. The nursery ladies were going to wait until the New Year but the children insisted !!

The sounds are c, k, u, b, f. Click on the links to watch Geraldine the Giraffe

c - click here

k - click here

u - click here

b - click here

f - click here

The children are spotting sounds everywhere, even in the beginning, middle and end of their names. Enjoy sound spotting!

Travelling Nativity

Maths Mastery

Number 5

Five arrives to get the band together - and gets the party started with a big high five!

We have:

• Met five

• Learnt that 5 is one more than four

• Counted to five

• Lined up1 to 5 in order

• Practiced writing 5

Click here to meet 5

Click here to practice writing 0-5

Christmas Activities for the holidays

Next week we will be sending home all the Christmas surprises the children have been making for you, keep a look out!

I will also be sending home our Christmas Taskmaster Activity ( if you have time!). It is packed full of things to do and to find our about. We hope you enjoy it. Send us some photos if you mange any of the challenges.

Lastly, a few reminders!

Nursery will close for the Christmas holidays on Thursday 21st December at 2 pm.

Christmas Party

Wednesday 20th of December will be KS1 and Foundation Christmas party. All the children are invited to join in the fun but if it is not you childs usual session can you please bring them at 9.15 am and collect them at 11.45 am.

Please do not bring any snack this morning as we will be having a birthday cake to celebrate Baby Jesus’ birthday! The children have requested a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and Smarties on the top!! Mmmmmm sounds yummy!

Party clothes and dancing shoes please!

School Admissions September 2024

We still have some families that have not yet applied for a school for September 2024, or, returned their supplementary forms etc to school.

It is very important that you apply for school online before January 15th 2024 (www.lancashire.gov.uk/schools or call 01524 581148). You will need to bring to the school office your supplementary form signed by your Parish priest, along with a copy of your childs baptism certificate a.s.a.p. Please don’t leave it too late, time is running out!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, have a rest next week is VERY busy!

Stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

This week...a Christmas Special

Well what can I say, such a special week. I am sure that you will agree the Foundation Nativity was a triumph! I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

The children have all worked so very hard learning lines and remembering songs and their actions (it was tricky for the nursery ladies too!). For such young children to have the confidence to perform to a packed audience is truly amazing.

This week we are dedicating the blog to a celebration of the birth of Christ. During December it is easy to get lost in festivities and lose the true meaning of Christmas, Enjoy looking at the photos and maybe take five minutes to pause and give thanks for the love, hope and joy found in Jesus.

Next week your child’s key person will be emailing any additional Nativity photos that we may have...keep a look out!

Travelling Nativity

The children have really enjoyed taking the Travelling Nativity home. Don’t panic everyone will get a turn. It is so lovely that we are able to take this journey together.

Christmas Bake Off

A big thank you to everyone for your fabulous cakes and biscuits! Prue and Paul would be proud. We enjoyed tasting them all!

Christmas Party

Wednesday 20th of December will be KS1 and Foundation Christmas party. All the children are invited to join in the fun but if it is not you childs usual session can you please bring them at 9.15 am and collect them at 11.45 am.

Please do not bring any snack this morning as we will be having a birthday cake to celebrate Baby Jesus’ birthday! The children have requested a chocolate cake with chocolate icing abd Smarties on the top!! Mmmmmm sounds yummy!

Party clothes and dancing shoes please!

School Admissions September 2024

We still have some families that have not yet applied for a school for September 2024, or, returned their supplementary forms etc to school.

It is very important that you apply for school online before January 15th 2024 (www.lancashire.gov.uk/schools or call 01524 581148). You will need to bring to the school office your supplementary form signed by your Parish priest, along with a copy of your childs baptism certificate a.s.a.p. Please don’t leave it too late, time is running out!

Click on the button to access the Supplementary form

After such a hectic week it just remains for me to say…have a good rest this weekend and we will see everyone on Monday.

God Bless

Barbara

This week....

A hectic week at nursery. We have been talking about Advent and what is means; the first season of the Church year, leading up to Christmas and including the four preceding Sundays. We have therefore been making room for our Christmas tree, organising our Worship area, preparing festive activities and everything Christmassy. We even have Christmas sparkly sand and on Monday we are going to make snow!!! We are all very excited!

All our families have said how much everyone at home has enjoyed taking home the Travelling Nativity. If you haven’t had your turn yet don’t worry we havent forgotten you! Here are this week photos

Fred Talk

This week some of our children had a go at ‘Fred Talk’ using only the sounds that we have learnt. We had such fun and made lots of words, such as p-a-t, s-a-t, m-a-t. Here’s a short video to explain Fred Talk. Click here

The children found out that the more sounds we learn (more after Christmas, we mustn’t run before we can walk!) the more words we can Fred Talk!

Maths Mastery

We continue to explore the ‘fourness’ of four. 4 is a small number and counting to 4 provides lots of practice in developing skills of counting such as one-one correspondence and saying numbers in the right order.

Four appears in lots of contexts, such as four legs on a table. We encourage the children to become ‘4 detectives’ Four has the special property of being a square number and the children’s attention has been drawn to this through the arrangement of 4 blocks or squares. Have a go at home at making 4!

We have also been identifying similarities between shapes:

At this stage, children show increasing intentionality in their selection of shapes, for example using cylinders to represent wheels because they can roll. Draw children’s attention to specific properties by using specific language in everyday situations, while children may use informal language. Properties may include:

• curvedness

• numbers of sides and corners (2D) or edges, faces and vertices (3D)

• equal sides

• parallel sides

• angle size, including right angles

• 2D shapes as faces of 3D shapes.

In their play the children show that they are utilising this knowledge by gathering specific items that are needed for their construction, e.g. making a bed for a teddy and gathering blocks of equal length to make the rectangle; taking time with constructing corners so the shapes fit together to make a right angle.

Here’s a great Shape Song. Click here

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog. We have had another fabulous week of fantastic brain growing. Our focus this week has been learning about shapes. We have learnt the names of lots of different shapes as well as looking at similarities and differences. We are able to say whether a shape has three or more sides and how many corners the shape has too. We went on a shape hunt around nursery, finding lots of shapes in different places. We also had a go at drawing the different shapes on the interactive board, as well as cutting them out to make a collage. Why don’t you try to find as many different shapes on a shape hunt at home or when you are out and about.

We also used the shapes to explore different prepositions and had to describe whether the shapes were under, on, behind, in front of or next to the chair. This is something you could also do at home. Set your child a challenge so they have to find an object only by the clues you give them, e.g “ It’s behind or in front of etc”.

Here is a fun game to reinforce the shapes we have learnt this week. Click here

We have also had lots of activities this week to develop the muscles in our hands. This is all good practice before we start Reception. These hand strengthening activities also help us to have strong hands to put our shoes and socks on and to do up our zips. WE are practising our zips every day and more and more of us are now able to do this independently.

Here are some more ideas to try at home. Click here

Finally, we have started our Christmas crafts and we are as busy as elves. All top secret now though!

We are really looking forward to welcoming you all next week for our Nativity performances. We have been practising really hard!

Have a lovely weekend everyone and we will see you next week.

Michelle

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone,

We have had a fantastic week of fun and learning.  

Firstly, I just want to say that we have really enjoyed seeing the children's pictures of the Travelling Nativity. The children have loved telling us about their experiences with it and we can't wait to see more photos as it continues to travel around.

We have been getting very creative with making Christmas cards this week and have been looking at how different Christmas trees are in shape, size and colour. We made a mood board filled with different Christmas trees to help inspire the children with their ideas. The children have come up with some wonderful creations, not only with paint, but on the computer also. We can't wait for you to see what your child has created. 

As we have been looking at the different shapes of trees, we have linked it to our more general leaning about shapes. We are looking at what they are called, working out how many sides the shapes have and how they are all so different, we also had an ago at drawing shapes on the screen. We played a shape game on the screen and here is the link. The children found it to be really fun. Click here

To continue practising our fine motor skills, we played a game where the children had to stretch hair bands over a large tube. The activity also helps the children to learn a way of putting on their socks, socks can be tricky. It will also help to strengthen their hand muscles, and great for problem solving and resilience.

We had a special visit from year 3 in nursery. They joined in with our activity, dough disco. Year 3 LOVED it, and the nursery children enjoyed being with the older children, as they showed them how to do dough disco. Thank you year 3 for visiting us.

We are all very excited for next weeks Nativity performance. The children have been playing, drawing, and reading stories all about the Nativity. When reading Nativity stories they have been relating the animals and characters back to their friends who will be playing those parts in the play.

Have a big rest this weekend as we are going to be working really hard again next week. I hope you all have a nice weekend and see you all next week. 

Emma

Your final reminder for the Nativity

This year the Foundation Stage Nativity is as follows.

Dress rehearsal for the whole school 5th December. If you would like your child to be on the DVD you MUST attend this performance.

Parents performances will be on the 6th and 7th December. These are a ticket only events, with an allocation of 4 tickets per family over the two performances. Letters to purchase your tickets have gone out this week…check your child’s bag.

All children should be in nursery no later than 8.45 am on each performance day. If it is not your child’s usual session could you please collect them promptly at the end of the play (at the nursery gate).

If your child requires a costume for their part in the play you will have received an email from the office this week, otherwise you can assume that there is an outfit available here.

We will need all additional costumes in as soon as possible please. If you are struggling to find any item just drop me an email.

If I can just mention two small things; after many decades of Nativity experience I find that sometimes three performances are a big ask for nursery children. It may be an idea to attend the dress rehearsal and one other performance (if possible, I understand that it will not be possible for all our children). Also another top tip, it is wise to sit where you can see your child but they cannot see you, as this often unsettle them and then they will not take part.

Sharing in the Nativity

Next week, we will see the first of our nativity performances taking place. Across the school, each class team and key stage have been working hard to bring the most amazing story to life through song, prayer and performance. For our children, this will be a special moment in time. We know that for parents and families too, there is no greater joy than seeing your child perform the Christmas story; it will bring back memories of your own time in school. For us, the nativity is central to our prayer and liturgy. When the children tell the story, we are praying to God for the gift of his son. The children who will initially be taking to the stage are our smallest children; for which this can be very daunting.

When you arrive in school for the nativity, can I ask that you just bring yourselves ready to be present in the story. There will be enough seats for all tickets that have been sold, to avoid the need for any standing. Often we can get tempted to stand to watch, or stand to wave so that our children know we are there. This isn’t needed; they know you are there and they need you to be as still as you can so that they can perform like they have been practising. It is always nice to sit somewhere where you can see your child, but they cannot see you. You can both then enjoy the liturgy as intended. I would be really grateful if you can pass this message to whoever is coming to watch the performances. If you know of someone coming who will need additional support or seating, please do let us know and we would be happy to help in any way.

N.Gregan

Lastly, as we start Advent I would just like to share this mostly lovely story which I feel tells the how Christmas is about being kind, thoughtful and caring to everyone we meet. It is a heartwarming Christmas story, I hope you enjoy it as much as we have at nursery. Click here for ‘Room for a Little One’.

Have a lovely weekend and I will see you all on Monday.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

A fabulous week! We have had a ‘Super Sorting’ table where we organised small objects by colour and then categorised them further according to fruits, dinosaurs, transport, and animals. It was really tricky, but we did it!!

We have also been practising writing our ‘sounds’ using magic writing sticks and coloured sand. We are getting very good. Thank you for your support at home.

We have had lovely feed back from the children who have already had a turn of taking the travelling Nativity home. The photos are wonderful, the true meaning of Christmas. Take a look at some of the photos

This week we have had problems with our camera’s so all the key person pictures are all together! Sorry!

Emma’s Blog 

We have had a fabulous week of fun and lots of learning.

If you hear your child singing songs about baby Jesus, an Angel or a star, yes you've guessed it, we have been very busy learning our Nativity songs. The children are really enjoying singing them!

Everyone has been working so hard this week. We have been mark making the lsounds hat we have been learning in the sand using sticks or our fingers, saying the sounds as we arite them. It is nice to see how the children are using their duck fingers to mark make. Saying the rhymes really helps us to form their sounds.

We also met some new sounds and letters this week; p, i, o, g and n. We have been practicing forming the sounds on the Touch Screen, fabulous work!

We have continued our learning thread; listening. We have played a listening animal game which will help the children with their concentration and listening skills.

Here is the link to play the game. Click here

We have also been Cooper Crabs in our PE class. We had to follow instructions about how to use our bean bags and ribbons. There were some really tricky moves, the children worked so hard (including Barbara and I).

On Monday the children had lots of fun in Mr. Nay's PE lesson. Not only were we practicing our hopping, jumping and running skills, we were working against the really strong winds! Whilst doing this, the wind blew Mr Nay's cones all over the playground. The children were so kind and enjoyed picking them up for him. I think he was pleased too.

Lastly we have met Number 4 this week. We worked out that we could use 2 fingers on each hand, put them together and make 4. The children have been learning to write the number 4 on a long length of paper on the floor. When doing this we were saying our rhyme, 'down and right, off once more, cross the line and that's a 4.'

Look out on Purple Mash as I have set the children some work to practice their numbers and sounds at home. I can't wait to see the work they have done.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you all on Monday.

Emma 

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's blog.

This week we have continued to practise our writing skills by writing on lots of different surfaces. We used sticks in the coloured sand, we used the pen on the Touch Screen, we used felt pens on the white board and we used pencils on really long lengths of paper on the floor. We made sure we used our 'duck fingers' as we practised writing the sounds we have been learning. We have learnt some new letter sounds this week- i, o, p, g and n. We did have fun this week as we experimented with sounds as we imagined what our names would be if they began with a 'd'. It gave us the giggles!

We have also met Numberblock number 4 this week as we begin to understand that 4 can be made in a couple of different ways.

Practice for Nativity is going really well. Don't forget to return the form with your request for tickets so you can see our fantastic songs we have been learning.

It was lovely to see so many of you at Curriculum Evening as we explained a little about why nursery is so crucial in becoming a confident learner. Independence is so important.

 Here is a little quiz for you: How well does your child score?

My child can…….

• Get dressed by themselves. Think about fastenings on clothing, for example dungarees are tricky.

• Put on shoes and socks. Again choose shoes which are easier to put on. 

• Wipe and blow their nose and throw the tissue away afterwards.

• Peel and eat whole fruits (not water melons!).

• Use a knife and fork to eat.

• Recognise their own name when written down.

• Put on and take off their coat, and hang it up.

• Do up their zip- again a bit tricky but keep going.

• Tidy up after playing.

• Go to the toilet independently and wash hands afterwards.

Score

7+ Fantastic!!!!

4-6 Well on their way to being more independent

0-3 More practice will help your child become more independent

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week.

Michelle 

Meet Number 4!

Four is the new block on the block and he can’t wait to share how much he loves to be square. Click here to watch.

We are:

• learning that 4 is one more than 3

• counting to 4

• the structure of 4 as a square number

• recognising if 4 items without counting (subitising)

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you next weekend

Michelle 

Sounds (n,i,p,i,g,o)

It’s Geraldine Giraffe time!

n - Click here

o - Click here

p - Click here

i - Click here

g - Click here

Use your sound at to have a go at writing the sounds. Be a Tommy Turtle and ‘have a go’!

Christmas Nativity Reminder

This year the Foundation Stage Nativity is as follows.

Dress rehearsal for the whole school 5th December. If you would like your child to be on the DVD you MUST attend this performance.

Parents performances will be on the 6th and 7th December. These are a ticket only events, with an allocation of 4 tickets per family over the two performances. Letters to purchase your tickets have gone out this week…check your child’s bag.

All children should be in nursery no later than 8.45 am on each performance day. If it is not your childs usual session could you please collect them promptly at the end of the play (at the nursery gate).

If your child requires a costume for their part in the play you will have received an email from the office this week, otherwise you can assume that there is an outfit available here.

We will need all additional costumes in as soon as possible please. If you are struggling to find any item just drop me an email.

If I can just mention two small things; after many decades of Nativity experience I find that sometimes three performances are a big ask for nursery children. It may be an idea to attend the dress rehearsal and one other performance (if possible, I understand that it will not be possible for all our children). Also another top tip, it is wise to sit where you can see your child but they cannot see you, as this often unsettle them and then they will not take part.

Don’t forget to return your ticket request form and money a.s.a.p.

PJ Day

Thank you for joining in PJ Day in support of Brian House are our local children’s hospice. Your donations are gratefully received.

Smile everyone and shout ‘silly sausages’!

Lastly, a big thank you everyone who managed to make it to Curriculum Evening on Thursday. It is always to lovely to see our families get involved.

Have the most wonderful weekend. I believe it’s the Christmas lights switch on in Lytham on Saturday! I will keep a look out for you!

Keep safe and God Bless

Barbara

Curriculum Evening and PJ Day

Curriculum Evening

This Thursday, 16th November, is our annual CURRICULUM EVENING. School will be open from 5.30pm-7.00pm for you to take part in lots of tasks and challenges, showcasing what your child will learn as they journey through school. This year the focus is on the wider curriculum. What opportunities will your children have beyond the core subjects learn? Each subject leader will be setting up lots of activities for you to try alongside your child. Some of our Year 6 leaders will also be on hand to answer any questions that you might have.

We hope that you will be able to join us - we are looking forward to showing you how we learn.

PJ Day for Brian House

This Friday, 17th November, is our annual pj day in school. Brian House are our local children’s hospice, and having visited them with pupils before, I know just how much they need our support. For £1, the children can come into Nursery in suitable pjs and dressing gowns for the day - bringing a teddy if they wish. Trainers must be worn, not slippers, as the children will be heading out in the garden to play at times.

Barbara

This week....

A very reflective week at nursery. We have been remembering all the servicemen and women who keep our country safe, and also those who lost their lives or were injured in conflicts over the years. We all watched a short video to help us understand. Click here to watch. Everyone thought that if we were more like Jesus there would be no more fighting. They are quite right.

You will be so impressed at all the different ways we have made remembering poppies. Take a look at our displays.

As we normally do we visited the chapel and were amazed to see hundreds of poppies cascading down from the chapel roof to the garden. We all thought it looked wonderful and made us think hard about the significance of Remembrance Day.

Thank you to everyone who sent in donations towards the Poppy Appeal.

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog. We have had a very busy week learning about Remembrance Day. We watched a short video that helped us to understand that poppies help us to remember those affected by war. We then got very creative and made poppies in lots of different ways, printing using potatoes, collage using flower petals and using ICT on the interactive white board.

We also explored mixing colours with shaving foam and paint, experimenting with different colours as we remembered the fireworks we saw on Bonfire night.

A really important skill that we all need to learn is how to listen. Playing listening games is a really good way of developing the skills needed to learn to read and write. This week we played a game where we had to listen and follow the sequence. It got harder and harder but we concentrated like Cooper Crab and had a go like Tommy Turtle. Here is the game if you would like to have a go at home. Click here

We have continued this week to learn our letter sounds. We have learnt to recognise a, s, m, t and d. We are working really hard to write these letters too. Please look on Purple Mash for some phonic activities to do at home. Everyone should have received their log in details in a brown envelope a few weeks ago. Please do let us know if you need a reminder.

Please do read Emma’s blog too, as we both take lots of photos and do activities with all the children, not just our key group.

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week

Michelle

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone. We have had a wonderful week of learning and with the weather being not so great we still continue to have lots of fun.

As Remembrance Day is this Sunday, the children have been learning about why we wear poppy's. We have watched a beautiful animated film about how some small animals experienced the effects of the fighting during World War One on the battle field. We then made our own poppy's using rose petals. We went to visit the Chapel and the children were very excited to see the school children's poppy's cascading from the top of the Chapel down to the ground. When we were in Chapel, we said a prayer about Remembrance Day and sang some hymns. 

We continue our thread, learning about colour. We had some fun mixing different coloured paints with shaving foam on the table. At first, the children used one finger to make a new colour and by the end of the activity they were mixing with both hands, making different marks all over the table. We made a beautiful peach colour using all the colours we had started with. Some of the children practised their mark making by writing the sounds we have learnt or numbers, some made firework marks. The children (and grown ups) had so much fun getting messy. 

We have also been strengthening our hands by squeezing and squashing clay and by screwing and unscrewing nuts and bolts. This will help the children's fine motor muscles develop and help their pencil grip and in turn their mark making skills. The children especially enjoyed playing with the clay and making some funny people and animals. 

Please see the below link to a fine motor dance and freeze game. Enjoy building your muscles in your hands! Click here.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and let's all keep our fingers crossed for a little sunshine. 

Phonics

Watch Geraldine the giraffe find out about m,a,s,d,t!

m - click here

a - click here

s - click here

d - click here

t - click here

We have also been identifying these sounds using the Alphablocks song. Click here to see if you can spot them at home! Click here.

Don’t forget to use your sound mat to help you practise writing these sounds at home…good luck!

The Our Lady Christmas Bake Off!

Click on the button and get involved! It is going to be so much fun!!!!

Travelling Nativity

Our Travelling Nativity has started it journey visiting your homes. It is yours to keep for one sleep and then you must return it to nursery. Please make sure that it is complete ready for another friend to enjoy.

You will find instructions and a camera in the sack so that you can share photos of you enjoying the birth of Christ at home. We will download them each day on the return of the sack.

Nativity

This year the Foundation Stage Nativity is as follows.

Dress rehearsal for the whole school 5th December. If you would like your child to be on the DVD you MUST attend this performance.

Parents performances will be on the 6th and 7th December. These are a ticket only events, with an allocation of 4 tickets per family over the two performances. Letters to purchase your tickets have gone out this week…check your child’s bag.

All children should be in nursery no later than 8.45 am on each performance day. If it is not your childs usual session could you please collect them promptly at the end of the play (at the nursery gate).

If your child requires a costume for their part in the play you will have received an email from the office this week, otherwise you can assume that there is an outfit available here.

We will need all additional costumes in as soon as possible please. If you are struggling to find any item just drop me an email.

If I can just mention two small things; after many decades of Nativity experience I find that sometimes three performances are a big ask for nursery children. It may be an idea to attend the dress rehearsal and one other performance (if possible, I understand that it will not be possible for all our children). Also another top tip, it is wise to sit where you can see your child but they cannot see you, as this often unsettle them and then they will not take part.

Finally, have the most splendid weekend and I will see you all on Monday.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

I hope that everyone has had a lovely half term break and has managed to get some family time. Thank you to those who have sent in photos of their adventures.

What a soggy week! It’s been so wet nobody has wanted to play in the garden, we had to wait for little glimmers of sunshine and then race outside!!

We have devoted this week to firework safety and colour. The children have made the most wonderful splatter pictures using paint and also using a computer programme.

We watched a short video which told us about Guy Fawkes making a bad choice and Bonfire Night Celebrations Click here to watch.

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone. Welcome back. I hope you all had a wonderful half-term 

After our rest we have got straight back to growing our brains and this is what we have been up to. 

We have been learning about why we celebrate bonfire night and have talked about being safe when going to see a bonfire. To link in with our leaning, the children have had so much fun creating their own firework pictures by using watered down paint colours and flicking their paint brush onto paper whilst making the sounds of fireworks. There has been a lot of sparkles thrown in there too. The children have been busy making some fabulous sound's and art work.

We have also linked this in with looking at the 3 primary colours; red, yellow and blue, and talking about how the colours make new colours by mixing them together.  

You could make your own colour wheel spinner at home and watch how all the colours mix together when you spin yours. Its so much fun to make and watch.  

Here is a link to have a go at home:

This week we have started a new sound 't,d s'. As the children practice writing this sound, we say, 'slither down the snake'.

We have also moved on to learn a new number, 3. As the children learn to write 3, we say, 'make a curve just like me, then one more and you've got 3'. This really helps the children to understand how to form the numbers and letters.

As the cold weather is here, it's that time of year for coats, hats, gloves and scarfs. If you could please ensure you put their names inside their items as this will help the children to recognise their name and help to build their independence (as well as helping us of course!) this would be really helpful, thank you.

Enjoy and stay safe if you are attending any bonfires this weekend and see you all on Monday. 

Emma

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome back after our half term break. 

Our learning continues this week as we have been exploring colour. We  learnt that there are 3 primary colours as we watched this video 

We have been very artistic as we have painted our firework pictures using florescent paint. We also made firework pictures on the interactive white board, trying to fill all the space with colour. We then learnt how to stay safe around fireworks, bonfires and sparklers. Remember sparklers are not recommended for young children.

We have worked really hard this week learning to write the number 3. We used the interactive white board as well as really long lengths of paper on the floor. If you are practising at home remember it's " make a curve just like me, then another one makes a 3". We have also explored how 2 plus another 1 makes 3 and have used our fingers to show this.

In PE we have continued to practise our hopping and our jumping as we had to collect different colour cones. We also wowed Mr Nay with our ball control as we rolled them along the floor to hit the cones. He could tell we have been practising.

We have also been practising our independence skills by putting our coats on and trying to do the zip up. Any practise that you can do at home getting dressed independently will benefit your child immensely.

Finally, we have met 2 new letter sounds this week 's' ‘d’ and 't'. As well as learning the sounds we are also learning how to write them. We are remembering to use our 'duck fingers' when writing.

Have a safe bonfire weekend and we will see you next week

Michelle

Worship

On Wednesday we celebrated All Saints Day. First of all we had to find out what a Saint was. Click here to find out.

We all decided that it would be a good idea to try to be a Saint for the Day. It’s really tricky, we really wanted to be more like Jesus. We are going to try every day.

Travelling Nativity

Starting next Thursday each child will be coming home with a Travelling Nativity sack. It contains Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus along with a book about the birth of Christ. We want every child to have the opportunity to take this special sack home so your child will only be able to have it for one night. It is important to return the sack the following day to ensure nobody misses their turn. Thank you as always for being so understanding.

If you visit the school blog on the main page Mrs. Gregan will tell you more.

Read Write Inc.

If your child is learning to read at school with Read Write Inc. Phonics, they will be at one of the following stages: We are following Stage 1

Learning Set 1 Speed Sounds

These are the Set 1 Speed Sounds written with one letter:

m  a  s  d  t  i  n  p  g  o  c  k  u  b  f  e  l  h  r  j  v  y  w  z  x

These are the sounds written with two letters (your child will call these ‘special friends’):

sh  th  ch  qu  ng  nk  ck

Check if your child can read these sounds. Make sure they say sounds like ‘mmm’, not letter names like ‘em’. Watch the Sound Pronunciation Guide video to help you. Click here

If your child is learning Set 1 Speed Sounds, help them to:

• Complete the Speed Sounds practice sheets for the Speed Sounds they have learnt.

• Scroll down to the bottom of this page until you reach the Speed Sounds practice sheets Click here. This is a wonderful webpage but remember we are only learning at Stage one.

  This week we have been learning these sounds only m,s,t,a,d. If you could focus on these sounds that would be a great start. Remember ‘duck fingers’!!!

  I am sending home a Read Write Inc word mat and a Speed sound chart so that you will be able to follow our sequence of learning at nursery.

Maths Mastery

This week we met Number Three!

We have:

• found out that 3 is one more than 2

• been counting to 3

• comparing numbers 1,2,and three -’bigger’ and ‘smaller’

• ordering numbers 1 to 3

• found out that 3 is made of 2 and 1

Three arrives with a bang and a song and dance about her favourite number:1,2,3, Everybody Look at Me. Click here to watch.

We have also been writing number three. Here’s the rhyme, try and have a go at home.

3 Make a curve just like me, then one more and you’ve got three!! Good luck

Christmas Nativity

This year the Foundation Stage Nativity is as follows.

Dress rehearsal for the whole school 5th December

Parents performances will be on the 6th and 7th December. These are a ticket only events with an allocation of 4 tickets per family over the two performances.

As I receive more details I will let you know….keep watching the blog!

Remembrance Day Poppies

Sticker poppies are now on sale in nursery. Please send your donation in if you wish to help the Royal British Legion Charity.

Lastly, I am hopeful for a brighter weekend but as yet it is not looking too promising. Try and have a lovely weekend whatever the weather. If you are having fireworks at home or attending an organised event please keep safe.

God Bless

Barbara

School Photographs

On Monday 30th October, a photographer will be in school taking the annual photographs of the children. Those nursery children who are in on a Monday will be included in these during the school day.

If your child is not in nursery on a Monday, but you would still like them to have a photograph taken, please bring them into the school hall between 8.30am and 8.45am. The children will be able to have their individual photos.

This week...

It’s hard to believe that we are already approaching half term! Nursery will close for the holidays next Wednesday (18th) and reopen on Monday 30th October. This will give everyone time to recharge their batteries in readiness for a very busy run up to Christmas.

We are all so pleased with how all the children have settled into nursery life. They are making lots of new friendships and are growing their brains!

This week we have been learning about our skeletons and the major organs of the body. They children were amazed to discover that they had a skeleton hiding inside their bodies!

Throughout the week we watched a few short videos to help us understand what our skeleton and organs do.

Click here to watch What does your skeleton do?

Click here to watch Parts of the humans body

Click here to watch Major organs of the human body

Click here to watch Skeletons

We loved reading the Funny Bones stories which was great fun! Click here to listen to Funny Bones at home and here for Funny Bones: The Pet Shop

We also explored the skeletons of the human body and animals using x ray pictures. Haven’t we been busy. We will continue finding out about our bodies after the holiday. I can’t wait!

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone 

What a fantastic brain growing week we have had.

We have found out that we all have a skeleton and that we have 206 bones in our body and if we didn't have our bones, we would all be jelly (not the sweet kind of course!). We danced to a song called 'The Skeleton Song' and worked out, using a large skeleton jigsaw, how our bones all connect together to make our body parts. Barbara and the children thought it would be really fun to attach the skeleton to me to show the children where the bones would be on my body. Everybody thought it was funny. 

Here is the song we have been singing: Click here

Keeping to our leaning thread about our body, we also looked into washing our hands and why its so important to keep the germs away. We watched and sang a song about washing you hands and talked about when and how we should do it.

We then became scientists and we did a little experiment using water, pepper and soap.

I pretended to cough and sneeze in to the water and then threw in some pepper to represent germs, so the children could imagine where the germs would go. Using the soap on my fingers in the water, the pepper (germs) moved away to the edge of the water which the children were shocked to see that the soap could do this. We had such good fun! 

Here is the washing hands song. Enjoy! Click here

Continuing from last week our Harvest learning thread and working our fine motor skills, the children have been using real hammers, hammering golf tees into a pumpkin. The children and myself risk assessed the use of hammers and wore safety glasses to help protect our eyes. They had fantastic control and grip when using the hammers. We then used the other end of the hammer, called the claw, to pull out the golf tees. We had made lots of holes in our pumpkin! The children wanted to see the seeds inside and we are planning to grow our own pumpkins next year, so watch this space. 

Lastly, a big thank you for bringing in your Autumn finds. We have really enjoyed seeing what you have all been collecting.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

See you all on Monday for our last 3 days before half term.

 Emma

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone,

We have had another busy week of learning. This week we met Number Two and have been exploring how one plus another one is two. Our number writing is now coming along as we have been practising on the white board, The Number Two writing rhyme is ‘one curve down is what to do, then straight across to make a two’.

You may have noticed that your child is starting to write lots of numbers, this has certainly been a favourite activity this week. The other rhymes to help with writing are ‘round in a loop like an empty hoop’ for zero and ‘one line down like a stick makes a one, that was quick’. You may want to help your child to practice at home.

As well as meeting Number two we also met the first of our letter sounds. We have been learning to recognize and say the letter sound 'm'. Of course, we had to have a go at writing it on the interactive white board. When we explored our 'm' sound bag we found an imposter in there. We had to work out which object didn't begin with the same letter sound 'm' as all the rest. Then we all got the giggles as we explored what our names would be if they began with 'm'. Give it a try at home, good luck!

We have been learning about our skeletons and how they help us to move and protect our internal organs. We used the skeleton model to draw out own chalk pictures. Did you know we have 206 bones in our body? 

We also enjoyed our PE lessons this week, practising out throwing and dancing to Sticky Kids.

Our gardening club has kept us busy, sweeping the leaves and putting them in the compost bin. 

Our independence skills continue to develop as this week we have practiced putting our shoes and socks on. Some of us still need a little help with this so it would be very helpful if you could practice this at home too.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and we will see you next week.

Michelle

Meet Number Two

Click here to meet Number Two

Purple Mash

Remember to check if there are any activities waiting for you to do! I have pinned some topics to explore and your child’s key person will have set some learning for over the half term holiday. We hope you enjoy them.

Worship

This week we discussed similarities and differences, helping children consider what likes and dislikes they have in common. The children also participated in a story in which Mollie the Cat feels bad because she doesn’t like catching mice, but comes to a place of self-acceptance with the help of her friends. Click on the button to read the slides at home

Harvest

On Thursday the children celebrated Harvest with Reception. We said ‘thank you’ for our wonderful earth and that we can grow foods to eat. If you check the school blog on the main page I’m sure Mrs. Gregan will be posting some pictures.

A big thank you to everyone for the tins of bean that you kindly sent in. We counted them and we had a whopping 47 tins!

If you want to find our more about Harvest, click here to watch ‘Harvest down on the Farm’ and here to learn about Harvesting machines.

The Crocodile Snap.

Why not have a go at the Crocodile snap to help with pencil hold! Click here

Lastly, this will be the last blog for the half term, please do have a rest and enjoy spending time with your loved ones.

Keep safe and look after each other.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

This week we have continued our exploration of ‘Harvest’. We talked about what Harvest means and all the foods that need harvesting to make sure that we have food for the winter months.

We also found out about wheat and made some bread, with the help of Pip. It was sooooo yummy! Click on the button below to find out more.

If you click here you can go down on the farm with Cbeebies, or click here to find out about bread With Auntie Mabel.

Bread making

Michelle’s blog

We have had another busy week of learning this week. We started the week by learning about harvest. We learnt where we get wheat from and how the wheat is made into flour. We then donned our aprons, rolled up our sleeves and made out own bread. It was delicious- we ate it at snack time and we liked it so much we did it again on Wednesday. We have been dancing all week to the harvest samba "cabbages and greens, broccoli and beans" Thank you to everyone who has sent in a donation of a tin of beans for the food bank. 

Here is a video of JoJo and Gran Gran finding out about harvest festival. Click here.

Our explorations of number continued as we met another one. One and another one makes two.

We have been practising hard writing the numerals 0 and 1.  Why don't you go on a number hunt? See if you can find number 1 in your house or out and about. You can always email your photos to us here at nursery.

We have been very enthusiastic at sharing traditional stories this week, using puppets to retell the stories and using the iPad to scan a QR code to listen to our favourite stories.

Stay safe from the big bad wolf and we will see you next week.

Michelle 

Emma’s blog

We have had a very busy week.

To start, we have been continuing to look after our bodies by doing lots of exercise activities, such as building an assault course to help us move our bodies. We climbed up and down differing levels of the crates and balanced along planks of wood. We have been practicing our aim by throwing balls through a hoop. The children loved doing this so much that I put up a hoop in between the trees as a permanent resource. This now means they are not having to use me as their hoop stand!

The children have been playing running games like 'Trolly trolly can we cross your river' and 'What Time is it Mr. Wolf'. In Mr. Nay’s outdoor PE lesson we practised running, hopping, jumping and throwing a ball high into the air. We have even played a game called 'hop and stop' which we all loved.

During our indoor PE lesson in the hall we has to listen and follow instructions. We had to walk (heel first), walk on our tip toes, walk backwards (toe first) and gallop. We had to remember where our special standing spot was when we moved away from It. We have definitely been working our bodies.

We have continued to look at healthy and non healthy foods, the children enjoy discussing all the healthy snacks that we eat.

Thank you for bringing in the cans of beans that we are collecting for the Harvest Festival. We have been very excited learning ‘The Harvest Samba’ song, which was on last weeks blog. We have even been doing the conga around the room!.

Inspired by our bread making we thought we would make our own playdough. We all got stuck in (literally ‘stuck in’ all the flour and water!!). The children enjoyed getting messy by mixing the mixture with their hands. We used a whole bag of flour and it made a lot of playdough; enough for the children to all have a go at dough disco. This activity really helps to strengthen the children's fine motor muscles, which helps to develop strong pencil grip, which in turn will help with writing skills. Here is the dough disco video to try at home. Have fun! Click here

To keep to our Harvest learning thread, we printed with fruit and vegetables. The children enjoyed pressing the vegetables and fruit into the paint to see what shapes they made. They talked about how an apple made a heart shape and if you roll baby sweetcorn on the paper it made lots of dots.

We have had so much fun this week, I think we need a rest now so we can be ready for a new and exciting week at nursery next week.

Have a lovely weekend everyone

Emma 

Worship

The aim of this session is for us to look after our God-given bodies. The children had to help Freddy Teddy to make good, healthy lifestyle decisions, including about exercise, diet, sleep and personal hygiene. Click on the button to access the story.

Purple Mash

You should all have received your login details and instructions to access Purple Mash. If you haven’t received them drop me an email or catch me at the gate. Keep a look out your child’s key person will be posting activities to do at home! Enjoy!

A big thank you to everyone that has brought in tins of beans. Don’t worry if you haven’t managed it yet we still have another week.

Lastly, if you check Emma’s post I have dropped in some useful information about ‘movement’ and ‘early mark making’. Try and take a look if you have time.

I am praying for fine weather this weekend, fingers crossed.

God Bless

Barbara

This week....

Another busy week at nursery. We have embraced to changing weather and conditions by exploring Autumn. We have looked the trees and noticed their losing their leaves and also that the leaves are now different colours. We even went on a discovery Autumn scavenger hunt in the environmental garden in school. We found all sorts of interesting things.

Number

We have been practising our pencil hold by writing Number one, here’s the rhyme

1- One line down like a stick makes a 1, that was quick!

If you fancy why not have a go at writing 0! That’s a challenge!

0 - Round in a loop, like an empty hoop

Next week we will be moving on to Number 2. One discovers it’s tricky to play tennis when you are the only block in the world. She bumps into Another One - and they join forces to make Two. Why not get ahead of the game and meet ‘Another One’ Click here.

Good luck everyone!

Harvest

Our Harvest celebration will be on Thursday 12th September. We have been invited to join with Foundation and KS1 class worship. This year we are asking for donations of tinned beans as nursery’s contribution to this years chosen charity; Fylde Foodbank. Fylde Foodbank is a charity which fulfils the aim of providing food to people and families in crisis. Please give them your support.

As in previous years nursery will be doing the Harvest Samba song and dance (along with other class choices). Click here to have a go at home!

There will be a box outside nursery from next week to collect your donations. As always thank you.

Admissions

Some of our families have mentioned that they are struggling to find the school admission form on the website. It is located on the main school page. If you scroll down you will find a selection of buttons including the Admissions button.

If you click on the button below I have put the correct form to complete. I would advise that you still visit the school website as there will be additional information for you.

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone, 

What a wonderful fun packed week we have had.

On Fridays we take a little walk across the playground and school field to the Chapel. We take our feelings jars and our reflection candle to help us say a prayer and talk about who we would like to pray for. We try to learn a new song about God or Jesus each week! The children really enjoy their visits to the Chapel.

As the season is changing, it’s that time of year for putting away our summer clothes and bringing out our thick coats, hats, scarfs and gloves.  It would be really helpful if you could have your child's name on the items which are likely to be removed (and lost) but also it helps the children to recognise their name. Thank you. 

We have also been practicing putting on our own coats, by laying the open coat flat on the floor with the hood facing their feet, the children put their hands in the arms of the coat then they flip it over their heads. It's a bit tricky but we are practicing and improving. Doing this will help the children become even more independent. Shoes next!!.

Something exciting has happened in nursery.  We have an Autumn table full of all colours with leaves, conkers, acorns and also there may be a squirrel and a hedgehog (not real) hiding in there too. We have been making some Autumn pictures for our wall display using Autumn coloured paints and different autumn coloured collage bits and bobs to decoration. If you are out and about on a walk or in the park this weekend, see if you see any different coloured Autumn leaves and bring them in to add to our table. I've also printed out an autumn hunt checklist for when you are out and about. It would be lovely to see what you have found in your area.

The children have been having so much fun learning some new songs by Spud and Yam. Their songs are packed with lively Celtic and Caribbean rhythms, rhythm and songs. The children’s favourite song is all about the Bogey Man! But if your child sings it to you, you might be scared BOO!

Have a lovely weekend and see you all on Monday.  

Emma

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone

We have had another fantastic week of brain growing.

We have had lots of fun with Mr. Nay during our PE which we managed to do outside. This week we had to listen carefully to his instructions as we moved around the playground in different ways.

We have also continued to explore Numberblock number one, learning to recognise him and when he is hidden amongst numerals. We have also been learning how to use the interactive white board to work out our number problems.

We have also been learning more about our bodies and what keeps us healthy, sorting food into healthy and unhealthy categories. It was ne of our friend’s birthdays this week ad we helped them to celebrate by sharing chocolate cake which was ok because we have lots of healthy fruit and milk, so a little treat is ok.

As the weather turns a little cooler we have been discovering all about Autumn as we went for an Autumn Hunt. We found lots of clues that tell us Autumn is now here. An Autumn Hunt is a fun activity to do this weekend if we get a nice day. You can always send in any finds for our Autumn Investigation table.

We have been trying really hard to put our coats on by ourselves and have been using this fantastic trick. Click here

Being independent and doing things for ourselves gives us a confidence boost and helps us to learn more. If we think we can then we can!

Have a lovely weekend everyone,

Michelle

Worship

In this weeks session we explored the movements our bodies can make by taking part in a story where Freddy Teddy and Mollie the Cat take a morning walk. It helped us to realise how wonderful our unique, God-given bodies are.

Click on the button to read the story at home.

Storytime

This week we had the BIG story telling puppets out to help us retell the story of the Three Little Pigs…what fun we had. There were some really scary wolves! Click here to listen to the story of the Three Little Pigs at home. Perhaps you could act it out at home!

Lastly, I hope you all manage to get five minutes rest and quiet this weekend to recharge your batteries for what will inevitably be another busy week next week. Stay safe.

God Bless

Barbara

This week....

A bit of a wet one this week. The children have been less keen to go in the garden. Towards the end of the week when the sunshine popped his head out we quickly found that the garden was a bit muddy and full of leaves and twigs that had been blown off the trees! A big clear up team was needed!

Dan Worsley: Author visit

On Wednesday, Dan Worsley came to school. Dan is a local author and ex-primary school teacher who is passionate about developing a love of books and story telling. Mrs. Gregan invited some of our children to join Dan as he told magical stories. We loved it!

Worship

Me, My Body, My Health

The children met the story book characters of Freddy Teddy, Mollie the Cat and Billy Bird who will reappear throughout this scheme of work. They will learn about their uniqueness in real terms, including celebrating differences and individual gifts, talents and abilities. They will learn about looking after and using their God-given bodies and develop their vocabulary around this topic.

Click on the button to read the story

We also continued looking at God’s Wonderful Earth by watching a short video about the story of ‘Creation’. Click here to watch.

Meet One- counting to one

A little block falls out of the sky, meets her numberling and discovers one wonderful world, singing and counting to one. Click here to watch at home.

The children have been spotting ‘one’ everywhere! Click here to meet one and perhaps you could count ‘ones’ at home; one pan, one chair, one carrot…you get the picture…enjoy.

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone

We have continued with learning about the Creation and this week have concentrated on "one world, one me" exploring similarities and differences. We learnt that although we are all people, we are all unique, with our own skills and talents. Even though people can have the same name, nobody is the same. 

We are absolutely loving our PE sessions with Mr. Nay and this week we also had a session of Cherry Tots, where we explore our emotions through music and dance. This week we met Sad and Glad cherries and had lots of fun pretending to be sad and glad.

One of our independent skills we have been practising this week is putting our shoes and socks on after PE. This is a good skill to have so any practise the children can get at home will help your child enormously when they go to school.

Some of the children were chosen to represent nursery at a storytelling workshop by a local author. This was lots of fun and we were so proud of how well the children sat and listened during this event.

This week we have also met Number block number one and have been exploring the oneness of one. We will be meeting the rest of his friends over the coming weeks. 

As part of our healthy eating project we made (and ate) fruit kebabs. They were delicious!

As you can see we have been so busy this week, I'm sure I've forgotten lots of other things.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and we will see you all next week.

Michelle 

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone I hope you are all well.

All the rain and wind has not stopped us from having so much fun this week at nursery.

The children have been working on moving their bodies in Mr. Nay's PE class on a Monday morning. Mr. Nay has been very impressed with how our children can follow his instructions by showing him how good they listen. We played a game where the children were split in to 3 teams and they took it in turns to run to the middle of the room to get a bean big and then take it back to their team. At the end, we all counted how many bean bags each team had collected. The children thought this was brilliant. We also played a moving game where Mr. Nay would shout out a movement such as hopping, running, backwards, jumping etc. The children had to listen and follow the instruction but he was quick at changing the movement. The children are having so much fun in Mr Nay's PE classes. 

This week we have started to look at the number 1. We have been busy with different activities such as playing find the number one on the tuff tray. There were different numbers in the tray and the children had to pick out the number 1 by covering it with a gem. The children found this to be working there brains. I'll be sending this activity to take home and you could try using an object to cover the number 1 and when you find number 1 colour it in. We also have been looking at the number blocks on the screen and meeting number 1 which children recognise. We also have been writing the number 1 on the TouchTV. The children all did really well with controlling the big pen for the screen (duck fingers). There were lots of different coloured number ones; we had a rainbow of ones! 

Here is a number counting game for you to play at home. If you start from 1 to 5 and if children would like it a bit trickier, go higher with your counting. Have fun and good luck. Click here

The children have been busy painting their own colour monster out of kitchen roll. The children chose the colour which showed how they were feeling; red for anger, blue for sad, green for calm, pink for loved, yellow for happy and black for scared. When the children had finished, they glued on some googly eyes to make them look more like monsters. The children had lots of fun and enjoyed tell us how they were feeling. They are now pinned up on our colour monster wall in nursery. The children are so proud of their monster.

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend. See you all next week, take care.

Emma 

…and a few extra form Justine.

This week we met Sadie Spider...

Nestled in the rolling hills of Cape Ability, lies Weaver’s Cottage.  This is where Sadie Spider lives, spending her days trying to catch those pesky little flies for her lunch, but it isn’t easy!  

Through her story, Sadie showed us how to keep going when things got difficult. She helps us to change our mindset and have a more resilient attitude towards challenges in life.

Sadie showed such resilience when she kept trying to make a successful web. She modeled true grit and has the mantra, ‘Try, try, try (to catch that fly)’ She expects to work hard and enjoy the process! We have all been trying to be more like Sadie Spider and not give up when things get tricky!

Lastly, this week we have been celebrating our uniqueness and the fact that we are all so different. Click here to read about Colin and Lee Carrot and Pea and find our how it’s good to be unique. Click here.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and enjoy being together.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Wow, what a week!

The children are really enjoyng nursery and making new friends. We have had a fun week even though the weather hasn’t been too good.

We have visited the chapel and we each friend said a prayer for someone they love. we talked about how we were feeling and chose a pom pom to represent our emotions. I was glad to see we were mostly yellow, green and pink, phew!

Worship

Our worship this week introduced the children to the story of creation, where God created the earth, sea, stars, plants, animals and humans. The five-story sessions encouraged children to creatively explore this topic and help them to deeply know that they are created by God out of love and for love.

Click on the button below to talk about the slides at home.

Click here to read about God’s Wonderful Earth.

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone,

We have had another fantastic week at nursery and we can’t believe some of these children have only been with us a week. We have all been so impressed with how they have taken to all the nursery routines- it’s like they have always been here!

Thank you to everyone who read last week’s blog and has sent in their child’s snack in their book bag, it makes it so much easier for the children if they can get their own snack out of their trays. Independence is a big part of what we do at nursery, as we prepare all the children for their next journey, which will be starting school. We impressed Mr Nay, the sports teacher for the school at our first PE lesson this week. He said our listening skills were amazing. Thank you, Mr Nay, we thought our PE lesson was amazing too, and we can’t wait to do PE every week. We are going to be just like athletes by the time sports day comes around.

As well as PE, we have also had lots of practice balancing in the garden as we built our own obstacle courses. We turned ours into a pirate ship and used the telescope to look for pirates. We do have good imaginations. It has been so much fun this week getting to know all our new friends and playing games together. Here are some ideas for imaginative play outside while the weather is still nice Click here.

Our busy week continued as we explored our topic of All About Me by painting our self-portraits. They are so good we are going to have to display them in our very own art gallery. We looked really closely at our features in a mirror so we could make sure we used the right colours for our hair and our eyes. We learnt about differences and similarities and this theme continued into worship this week as we learnt about the Creation and how God created everything, including us.

We learnt we are all people but we are all different. I don’t know how we found the time but we also visited the castle on the school field, for a play and decided to make our own box of props to take with us next time, lots of knight costumes, some princess ones and even a dragon. After we had been to the castle we also visited chapel, where we prayed for all our loved ones and sang a song about how God is big and mighty.

Take care everyone and have a lovely weekend

Michelle

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone,

We have had a fun packed week with lots of giggles and working our brains hard.

We have been getting to know each other by looking in the mirror and talking about what we see, eye colour skin, hair and we have been painting pictures of ourselves to go onto the nursery wall.

We continue to make our faces using paper plates, coloured buttons for eyes and wool for hair. The children drew their nose and mouth, then we talked about how they feel by discussing the expressions shown from the mouth. The children wanted to take them home so maybe try to make your own faces at home using paper plates and different household objects and talking about your feelings based on the facial expressions.

In nursery, we all like to be healthy and we have been looking and talking about healthy and unhealthy foods. We play a game with the children where there are different foods in a shopping basket and the children had to think about the foods and pick foods as to whether or not they are healthy using a thumb up for healthy and thumb down for unhealthy. It really made the children think about whether sweet foods were healthy or just for treats. I have added a link to a game below for you to play which is all about healthy foods. Click here

We have been on an adventure to the castle in the school field. The children have been really excited to see it and we had lots of fun playing in it and climbing. We decided to make a flag for the castle and get dressed up so we could play the roles of knights, princesses, witches, dragons and we even had a parrot! We talked about what we would put on our flag and the children came up with a dragon, star and moon and we called it St Patrick’s Castle which is after the name of the road the nursery and castle face onto. The photos of our castle adventure are in the blog, the children had a fanatic time.

We had an adventure out of nursery with some of the children, taking them to the library for story time with myself and Barbara. We walked all of the way there and when we got there we sat and looked at the books whilst we waited for story time. The lady at the library read three books about different animals. The children sat really nicely and enjoyed listening. When we finished, the lady gave the children a picture of a parrot so when we got back to nursery we coloured and glued coloured feathers to our parrot pictures. The children loved doing this.

We have had a fantastic second week. I wonder what fun next week will bring.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Emma

…and just a few from Justine!

Our Visit to the Castle

Such a fabulous week at nursery. Next week watch out for your child’s Purple Mash codes coming home. You will be able to access the virtual classroom and home learning that your child’s key person will post. It’s great fun!

Health and Safety notice

Could I please ask that if your child is bringing grapes, cherry tomatoes or large blueberries for snack or lunch, could you please cut them into quarters accordingly e.g. grapes need cutting into quarters. They foods can pose a choking hazard to young children

Family photos

We have started My Family wall but we are still some family photos missing. It would be great if you send in a photograph of your family for our wall. The children love to talk about everyone who lives in their house. Thank you.

Don’t forget it is the parent drop in on Tuesday 3.45-4.45 pm. We are looking forward to a catch up. Please note this is a catch up for you, could you if possible find alternative care for your child.

Lastly, I’m not sure what the weather will do this weekend but I’m sure you will find lots to do. Keep safe and I will see you all on Monday.

God Bless

Barbara

Welcome to nursery

Welcome to nursery everyone!

It has been such a lovely week, God even sent us the sunshine to enjoy. The children have enjoyed their first week even though there may have been a few wobbles.

Everyone has explored both the indoor and outdoor learning environments and we are trying very hard to remember where everything lives and the routines of the day. There is sooo much to think about.

Each week I will be writing a blog to let you know what we have been learning at nursery along with any key information you will need to know. Also, your childs key person will be posting images along with details of the weeks learning, and maybe some activities for you to try at home.

I have some housekeeping information for you:

• When bringing and collecting your child could you pleas wait at the main gate and a staff member will come to greet you. We are endeavouring to make the children as independent as possible in readiness for school. On that note School Admissions for September 2024 is now open online www.lancashire.gov.uk/schools or call 01524 581148. The closing date is the 15th January 2024.

• Could each child please bring one piece of fruit or veg for each session that they attend (two for a full day). We are encouraging the children to eat fresh fruit or vegetables as part of our healthy eating commitment. Please no sugary snacks, such as cereal bars etc.

• We are getting in muddle with belongings. Could you please make sure that anything that comes into nursery is clearly labelled.

• Each child will require an Our Lady’s book bag. Our entrance is no big enough to house large back packs and they are causing a tripping hazard. Bags can be purchase for Top Marque on Park Road St. Annes.

  Sorry to nag…..

This week the children have LOVED singing the Little Rabbit Foo story. I promised them that I would put it on the blog for you to listen to at home. Click here to watch and listen. Enjoy!!!!

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone,

What a fantastic first week we have had. It has been lovely to hear what you have been up to over the summer break and getting to know our new children.

We have been very busy in the garden playing in the water, cooling down whilst having lots of fun. 

The children have really loved digging for the potatoes that have grown over the summer, and we found lots of different sizes. The children were so proud.

The children have also loved exploring the sand and were digging and creating roads, tunnels, and mud pies, which I was told I must REALLY eat! You can imagine I really enjoyed that!

We have started talking about our feelings, looking at the Colour Monster book. Click here to listen. We used the colours from the story to choose a coloured pom pom to show how we were feeling.

There were lots of loving and happy feelings going into our jar, which was great to see. I have attached a feelings song for you to watch, I hope you enjoy it.

I am looking forward to our next week of fun, and fingers crossed that the sun will still be shining.

Have a super weekend, and enjoy the kite festival if you are planning to go.

Take care

Emma

Michelle’s Blog

What can I say, what a fantastic start to the new nursery year we have had!

It’s never easy, starting a new place, especially when you are only 3 years old. But I have been so impressed with how all the new starters have started their nursery journey this week.

There has been so much to learn; where to put our bags and lunch boxes, when to tidy up and when to sit and listen at Carpet Kingdom. I’m sure all of you are just as pleased with your children as I am.

Getting to know each other and getting to know the nursery rhythm of the day has been our main focus this week and will be for another couple of weeks until all the rhythms of the day are embedded and come as second nature to the children. One thing that will make snack time easier for the children is if you make sure that your child has their snack separate to their lunch in their blue nursery bag. We have snack time both morning and afternoon so your child will need 2 snacks for a full day. Please can this be fruit or veg, as part of our nursey healthy eating policy. These go into the children’s drawers in the morning so please be mindful if using plastic boxes that they are not too big. We have started to give the children opportunities to be independent, such as putting their snack in their tray themselves and dispensing their own water at snack times. In order for the children to recognise their own bags at home time, we will be attaching labels with the children’s names on. Anything that you can do at home to help your child to recognise their name will be fantastic.

Apart from all that, we have also had lots of fun painting, squeezing the playdough, drawing and cutting, singing and dancing, gardening in the sunshine, lots of wet water play, working out tricky jigsaws and learning everyone’s names. No wonder we are all exhausted by Friday!

Have a fantastic weekend and we will see you next week for lots more super fun.

Michelle

and a few extra from Justine….

I’m sure you will agree that we have all been very busy.

Drop in Session

This half term we will be holding our parent drop in session on Tuesday 19th September from 3.45- 4.45 pm. All the nursery team will be there for you to have a chat with. We look forward to seeing you.

Finally, to find our more about your childs learning and how you can help, click on the following links.

Development Matters

What to expect in the Early Years Foundation Stage: a guide for parents

Have the most lovely weekend and enjoy your time together as a family. I will see everyone bright eyed and bushy tailed on Monday for another fabulous week at nursery.

God Bless

Barbara

It's always hard to say goodbye....

Our final blog is always the hardest. We have cared for your children all year and it is now time for us to let them continue on their journey.

Most of our children will be moving on to Reception in September and I just know they will have the most wonderful adventures with Mrs Hartley and the Reception team. Others will be staying in nursery for another year. We too have lots planned and can’t wait to get going!!

On behalf of all the nursery ladies I would like to say a HUGE ‘thank you’ to you, our fabulous parents. You entrusted your children to us, to nurture and help them grow, and this has been a privilege and an honour.

This year has been an exceptional year and we will miss everyone enormously. I feel so proud of everyone’s achievements, especially that the children aspire to be more like Jesus each day.

Luckily for us we will get to see the children as they progress through the school and we will have a feeling of deep pleasure and satisfaction that we were there when it all began!

Party photos

The Wizard of Oz

Everyone enjoyed this years panto. It was soooo much fun!! There are photos on the school blog but here is one from us to you!

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue and the dreams that you dare to dream, really do come true!

Lastly, I would like to say another heartfelt thank you for all your kind words and generosity they are very much appreciated. We couldn’t have done it without your belief in us and your continued support.

We hope that you all have a lovely summer holiday wherever or whatever you may be doing and remember you all will have a special place in our hearts.

Take care of each other, I am sure I will see you in September.

God Bless and stay safe

Barbara and the Nursery Team

This week...

This week will be our final learning blog of the year…next week is all about farewells and our Leavers Party. It’s so hard to believe the year is ending!

It has been an exciting week with the children having a visit from the Fire Service and the Grand Opening of the castle on the school field. Watch out for the pictures below!!

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone,

What a fantastic week we have had. We have thoroughly enjoyed playing on the new castle on the school field. It is absolutely wonderful, we love it!

We were also excited to have a visit from the fire brigade. We got to climb up and sit in the fire engine and then we got to spray the hose. Brilliant!

We have had lots of fun practising our running and hopping skills. The nursery ladies couldn’t believe how our physical skills have developed over the last few months. It must be all those PE lessons.

Another skill we have been practising is recognising our letter sounds. We are getting so good at speedy sounds, the nursery ladies can’t keep up with us.

Next week is party day! We have so many party games planned. Its going to be so much fun!

Have a lovely weekend,

Michelle

Steph’s blog

Hello everyone

What another lovely week we have had. We’ve enjoyed the variety of weather and our sunflowers have definitely liked having some rain! We also enjoy running around getting wet!

We used our big butterfly wings to practise our number bonds this week. We placed the gems (we love anything sparkly!) on either side of the butterfly wings and worked out which 2 numbers made up the whole number e.g 3 and 2, 4 and 1 and 5 and 0 to make 5. We swapped the gems around but the total always stayed the same! I could see how much we have grown our thinking brains as the children were coming up with the combinations before we even moved the gems! We have definitely concentrated like Cooper Crab this week!

We also enjoyed being creative this week. We used different materials in the workshop area to make creations to take home (again, lots of sparkles!). Some of us made the link to our minibeast topic and made bug hotels. They look great! Here is an easy bug hotel you could try at home: Click here.

We have continued to enjoy drawing this week. We drew all the people in our family. We had a look back at our drawings from the beginning of the year and we couldn’t believe the difference! We love drawing the people that are special to us. We are great at using describing words to tell our friends what everyone looks like.

Have a lovely weekend and I’ll see you next week – I can’t believe it is our last week already! We have such a fun week planned – I can’t wait!

Steph

Emma’s blog

Hello,

What a wonderful week we have all had.  We have been working hard as it’s our last full week in nursery before the summer holidays.

We have made our very own hungry caterpillar by painting different sized pebbles in green for its body and one in red for its head. Barbara asked the children to count to 10 as she wrote numbers on the pebbles. The children were so excited about what they had made.

We have been continuing with our theme of mini beasts and working with numbers. We made caterpillars out of pom poms using different sized lines as our guide. The children came up with some amazing shapes, sizes and patterns whilst working out how many pom poms they would need to complete the caterpillar. We had so much fun.

As the weather has been a little wet recently, the children have noticed that there are more bugs around than there was in the dry, warmer days. They have been asking if they can go on another bug explorers walk. The children got their backpacks on, grabbed their magnifying glasses and off we went. They loved finding and learning about the mini beasts.

I played the children a video about ‘dough disco’. The children had so much fun having a go, listening to the instructions given in the video about different activities to do with the dough to the music. Playing in the dough this way will help to strengthen the children’s hand muscles and helps them to concentrate and follow instructions whilst having fun. I’ll pop the link at the bottom so you can all have a go over the holidays.

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend. It’s going to be an emotional week next week as I know for some of you it’s your last week in nursery. Get lots of rest this weekend and ready yourselves for lots of fun and games at our beach party!

Dough Disco

Make your own playdough!

1 cup of plain flour

1/2 cup of salt

1 teaspoon of cream of tartare

1 tablespoon of oil

1 cup of water

Food colouring

Put all ingredients into a pan and stir until it resembles playdough!! Enjoy!!

…and a few extras from Justine!

Eco Day

As you know Friday was ‘eco day’ in nursery. We are collecting for new recyling bins for around school. What a splendid day!

We watch a couple of short videos about the recycling centre before playing the recycling game. We had to sort all the objects into the correct bin. You will be able to access the game aand video on your Purple Mash account. If you open ‘Simple City’ you will find the recycling centre there! Good luck!

It’s been a full on week, and great fun! I think the weather this weekend is a bit rainy so snuggle down and watch Wimbledon (if you can)!

Stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Yet another busy week. On Friday after assembly some of the children were collected by Mrs Hartley and the Reception and went for a play session in the Reception classroom. They had the most brilliant time, I don’t think they wanted to come back to nursery!!!!

Take a look at these fabulous photos.

Click here to watch The Colour Monster goes to school!

Emma’s blog

Hello,

We have had a fabulous week!  We had some exciting news over the weekend, all our butterflies have broken out of their cocoons and we now have five beautiful Painted Lady butterflies. They were happily stretching their wings and flying around their enclosure. Everyone was excited to release them, we all said our good-byes and then released them into the garden and beyond! The children and the nursery ladies have really enjoyed looking after our caterpillars and watching them go through their metamorphosis (this is one of our ‘wow’ words).

As a celebration for our butterflies, the children wanted to make their own butterfly wings so they could wear them around nursery. They created some fantastic symmetrical designs.

Some of the children have wanted to learn more about bees so we watched an information video all about them. We learnt some really interesting facts! Did you know that bees can’t see the colour red? Did you know there are more than 20,000 species of bees around the world? Myself and the children found this really interesting and exciting.

During the week we have had great fun turning rocks into mini beasts using different colour paint and googley eyes. The children have made their own version of beetles, ladybirds and many more. Keep a look out at home, you may find one coming to stay with you!

We have worked out brains so much this week but I have squeezed in a bug game about quantities for you to play at home. Click here.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Emma

Michelle’s blog

This week we have been super busy. We have taken part in lots of activities to practise our listening skills. One of our favourites is a game called Wonkey Donkey where the children have to pull a donkey’s tail (not a real donkey!) and say ‘Wonkey Donkey’ . They then have to guess who had pulled their tail. This was tricky but we all concentrated like Cooper Crab and tried to identify our friends by their voices.

Another of our favourite games is the whispering game which we often play at snack time. This is a really good game to play at home. You have to whisper a word or phrase to the person next to you and they pass it on until the last person. This makes us laugh as we don’t always get it right!

In worship this week we have remembered that God loves us all the same and that we should be kind to everyone, and be more like Jesus. Our nursery has been full, full, full of kindness as the children have all shown how to be a good friend.

We finally got to release our butterflies in to the wild this week, though didn’t seem to want to fly away, they followed us back to nursery. We have really enjoyed learning about minibeasts, especially the life cycles of different animals and creatures. The children have said they would like to find out about slugs next week, so we will be off on a slug hunt to see if we can find any.

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week.

Michelle

Steph’s blog

Hello everyone

What another lovely week learning about mini beasts. We left on Friday having 3 butterflies and came in on Monday to 5! They were so beautiful! We would have loved to keep them but we needed to set them free so they had space to fly and leaves to lay their eggs on. We took them down to the field and let them fly out of the net. Some of them were a bit wary to go and landed on our feet and hands! One even tried to follow us back to Nursery. We keep looking out for them in our garden!

We have worked hard this week measuring objects. We used the mini beasts in our bug research lab and could choose to use a ruler or the number blocks to work out which bugs were the biggest. We concentrated like ‘Cooper Crab’ and looked at the number on the ruler or counted the number of blocks. Some of the children then went on to measure other things such as pens, pencils and even each other! Our mathematical language is brilliant – tallest, smallest, taller, smaller.

We worked together to make a big craft picture on Thursday. We placed a big piece of paper on the floor and all sat round it to get creative. The children loved to choose different colours and textures to stick down. Now we just need to decide which bug to make it into! I think it might end up being a butterfly…!

To finish the week we loved dressing up as a beautiful butterfly, flying around the garden! Here is a video we have watched if you’d like to watch at home. Can your child remember all the bugs we have spoken about Nursery? Click here

Have a lovely weekend and I’ll see you next week.

Steph

and just a few from Justine!

Green Day

Next Friday it is going to be Green Day in school. Everyone is invited to wear green for the day and pay £1. All the proceeds will go towards buying new bins for the outside environments around school. We must look after our PLANET EARTH!

If your child’s day is not a Friday don’t worry bring £1 and wear green on another day!!!!

Leavers party

Wednesday 19th July 2-3.30pm

Keep a look out for the party invitation in your childs school bag! It is going to be a beach party with lots of dancing, games and of course lots of water!!!!. Come wearing shorts and t-shirts.

We would also like to ask if your child can bring a plate of party food!!!

I think that’s all I need to share with you this week, but I can’t help but think I have forgotten something!

Have a lovely weekend everyone and I will see you on Monday.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

It has been a week full of spotting patterns in the environment. We have seen patterns everywhere and even made our own!

We played a ‘Shape pattern’ game too! Click here to play at home.

The children have been watching and waiting for our butterfies to emerge…not yet Im afraid. We will keep watching, it can’t be much longer.

If you click on the button below you will be able to join in our rhyme about the life cycle of a butterfly. I bet the children can tell you all about it.

Steph’s blog

Hello everyone

We have continued being fascinated by sunflowers this week! We have put our paintings up on the wall in the nursery and have created even more sunflowers this week using coloured tissue paper. We worked hard to choose the correct colours and put them in the right place to make sure our sunflower was soooo beautiful. 

We have also carried on taking care of the sunflowers we have brought in from home. We have 2 beautiful big yellow flowers and there’s are others that look like they may flower soon too! Maybe over the weekend they will.

We all still love dressing up - getting out the box of different materials gave us lots of opportunity to be creative. We were superheroes, wizards and sports people! We had so much fun doing this in the sunshine in the garden. 

We have enjoyed a big hunt this week. We love going around the garden with the clipboards finding out. We feel like real explorers, especially when we use the explorer backpacks with binoculars and magnifying glasses! We drew pictures of what we found, and also of our favourite bugs. Here is the template we used, why not have a go at home: Click here

We have continued practising counting and ordering numbers to 10 this week. We are going to know so much when we go into Reception! Here is a game to practise at home: Click here

Hopefully the sunshine will continue over the weekend! 

See you next week.

Steph 

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog.

This week has been  all about squirmy worms. We found out that worms don’t have any eyes, or ears or even a nose! But they are really important in our gardens. Nothing will grow without worms. So, we went on a worm hunt, trying to dig them up. I’m sad to say, that we didn’t find any worms, we think we may have scared them all away. This didn’t stop us from making our own worms from pipe cleaners and singing our favourite song about worms, ‘There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden’. I think some even managed to wriggle their way into our bags this week, you may have found them at home. You can use them to sing along with Mr Tumble, click here

We have been in a musical mood this week so we had our own marching band in the garden, singing our favourite nursery rhymes which may have involved bananas and pyjamas. If you don’t know this one then I’m sure your child will sing it for you. It starts ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, eating a bunch of bananas….’

We have been practising some new skills this week, as we used the ribbons to thread and make patterns in the garden. They look so pretty blowing in the wind, but it was really tricky to thread them through the frames. Threading is an important skill to learn as it helps us as we learn to hold a pencil and form letters when we start to write. Here is another really good activity for developing fine motor skills, click here

We also had a tricky challenge of moving the ball just using our legs and feet on the wobble board. This is really tricky and took lots of concentration. But we got there in the end. Try, try, try, just like Sadie Spider.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week.

Michelle

Emma’s blog

Hello!

We have had an exciting week, full of fun!

Firstly, the caterpillars are now in their cocoons, which the children have been very excited about. We have even made our own cocoons by wrapping ribbons and string around a cocoon shaped piece of card, and then hanging them from the ceiling. We have also been looking at some real, now empty cocoons and talked about what patterns, shapes and colours we could see on them. We wrapped two of our children up just like a cocoon using toilet roll (clean of course!!) which they all found so funny, but it showed the children what the caterpillars did to build their cocoon, and how they then emerge when they are a butterfly. It was funny for everyone to watch. I wonder what will happen in the coming week with our cocoons, mmmmm?

The children have been exploring patterns this week using shapes and colours and to keep with our mini beasts theme, we made a large spider and gave it two colour pattern legs using blocks.

Our snails had a great week in our snail hotel, but we decided to put them back in the garden. The children said their goodbyes and watched them slide off into the bushes. The next day, the children went out to see if they could see them in the area where we released them but sadly they had disappeared (I can’t blame them!) . One of the children did though spot a snail trail going into the reception class garden. We did follow the trail to see if we could find our snails but only found one more trail, and definitely no snails. If you live close to nursery, please keep a look out and say hello to our snails (numbered 1 - 6!).

Have a wonderful weekend

Emma

Here is a fun pattern game to do over the weekend. Click here and have fun!

…and a few extras form Justine!

Library

As we are quickly approaching the end of the year, could I please ask you to return any library sacks that you may still have at home. We will have to collate, prepare and wash everything ready for Sepetmber! A huge task I fear! Thank you so much.

Leavers party

Watch out next week for more info on this years Leavers Party!!

I think that’s all for this week, but I do always manage to forget something!

Have a lovely weekend and enjoy Lytham Festival if you are going!

God Bless

Barbara

The Hungry Caterpillars!

It’s been such an eventful week, everyone is exhausted. We kick started Health and Happiness fortnight with Sports’ Day quickly followed by the Gym Jam Jog on Wednesday. That was such an early and energetic start for the children they were tired by lunch time! Make sure you check out the school webpage for more pictures of these events.

A big ‘thank you’ to everyone who has already sent in their sponsor money. If you haven’t managed to do that yet don’t worry, next week will be fine. I think Mrs Nel wants to count up the grand total!

Our caterpillars have grown over the weekend, I think that they had double in size!! They truly are very ‘Hungry Caterpillars’ . By Thursday we noticed that the pupa are now inside their chrysalis! It’s a waiting game now!

Emma’s Blog

Hello, what a wonderful week we have had! The children were fantastic in their Sports’ Day.  They have worked so hard in their teams and have had so much fun doing it.

We have had some new friends in our classroom this week, we would like to welcome 5 young caterpillars and 6 snails. The children are doing a fantastic job looking after them and making sure they are safe. We are going to watch and learn how the caterpillars change though the different stages whilst transforming in to a butterfly. We have learnt what this process is called ‘metamorphosis’. Wow, what a great word.

The children have been drawing their versions of the life cycle as well as the home link activity that we have sent home this week. I hope you all had fun doing it. At this stage, the caterpillars are munching their food and growing bigger every day, it's so exciting to watch.

The children have been practising their numbers this week by creating a caterpillar using their fingertips dipped in paint and making dots to the number from random number cards. They looked brilliant!

The snails are really enjoying their 'hotel' at nursery.  The children have been exploring the snails by letting them move around their hands, which they have loved.  The children have given the snails names, such as George and Coco, and they have numbered them too!. The children and nursery ladies took the snails outside to have a race. We were all cheering (even if most of the snails did go the wrong way!) And they found it so funny and tried to help them along their way. Coco, number 3 was the winner as it made it to the finish line. The children love having the snails.

We continue to be busy. The children have been looking at ‘symmetry’ and what it means.  We drew a butterfly on the Touch TV and the children had to create marks and patterns on the wings. We had to remember to do the same pattern on each side to make it symmetrical.  We also drew a butterfly on the tuff tray and added objects to make a design in a symmetrical shape on both wings. The children have had so much fun doing this.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I can’t wait to see the change in our caterpillars when we are back next week.

Emma

Here is a link to a symmetrical game to play at home.

Michelle’s blog

What a brilliant week we have had.

Thank you if you were able to come to Sports Day on Monday, we all worked so hard at our Fundamental Movement Skills but those hurdles were so tricky!

We have continued with our Minibeast explorations and on Wednesday we went on a bug hunt to the Environmental Garden. The weather was so lovely that we had our snack alfresco.

On Thursday we had great fun as we did Yoga outside, based on the Very Hungry Caterpillar. We had to curl up like a tiny egg, crawl like a caterpillar, be still like a cocoon and then flutter like a butterfly.

We have also been practising our ‘duck fingers’  by using pencils to decorate butterflies. Symmetrically, of course, its our new favourite word!

Next week we hope to make rock bugs, so if you have any spare rocks or pebbles in your garden, then feel free to send them in.

Till next week, have a lovely weekend

Michelle

Steph’s Blog

Hello everyone

What another glorious week in the sunshine! We have spent so much time in the garden – the children are good at seeking out the shade when needed! We love playing under the trees at the end of the garden. We also like cooling down with the water, we are so good now at pulling the water into the syringes! This will help the muscles in our hands develop to help our writing ready for Reception.

Another way we have been developing these muscles is practising with the scissors. We cut out pictures of mini beasts and worked hard to arrange them in size order. Some of us chose to start with the small one and some with big. We were so proud once we were finished.

We also enjoyed developing our gross (big) motor skills this week by moving like mini beasts. We had to crawl like a worm, fly like a bee and flap like a butterfly! Here they are if you’d like to have a go at home. Click here

We have been to the school field this week too – for a mini beast hunt, Gym Jam Jog and Sports’ Day! We have had so much fun! We love seeing the older children and our brothers and sisters, but especially being part of the whole school community, including YOU!

Have a lovely weekend and I’ll see you next week.

Steph

…and as always a few extra from Justine!

I think you will agree it’s been a full on week! If you think you will have any time this weekend here are couple of activities for everyone! Don’t forget there’s Purple Mash too!

Click here to listen to the story ‘Mad about Minibeasts’

or, why not go on a butterfly spotting expedition! Click on the button below.

The weather looks a bit unpredictable this weekend but I hope in-between showers you will have some lovely family time. Don’t forget it’s Lytham Club Day on Saturday. I will keep a look out for you.

Keep safe and God Bless

Barbara