This week...

Here comes the sun! What a fabulous week. It has been so warm we have set up our BIG water play in the garden. Such fun even if we did get a bit soggy!

Our garden is now beginning to look spectacular, there is so much growing…we can’t wait to start eating everything, mmmm.

This week we managed to go on another Super Croccy mission. The Owl babies mother has gone missing and had been frozen by Ice Woman. We found her camouflaged high up in a tree, and shivering. We had to rescue her and warm her up!

Just in case you haven’t met Super Croccy…here he is!

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone,

We have had a fantastic week, we have been so busy growing our brains. 

The children have had a great time in Mr. Nay's PE class, the children really look forward to it. This week included a tricky game, and the children had to throw a tennis ball into a football net which was quite far away. Some of the children couldn't believe their eyes after their ball went into the net. Mr. Nay split the children into 2 teams and they had to throw as many balls as possible into the other teams net. It was great fun with balls being thrown everywhere. The children are really working hard on their over and underarm throwing skills. Well done everybody. 

The children have been practicing their listening skills and following instructions to the Superman, and There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden song. The children have asked if the songs can go on the blog, so here they are, enjoy! 

Click here for Superman

Click here for Wiggly Woo

Speaking of worms…something very exciting has happened to our wormery and fruit seeds. The worms have started to bury the leaves that we put in the wormery. They have been pulling them down, making more gaps and tunnels in the soil. It's amazing to see. Also, some of our fruit seeds have started to germinate. The apple seeds and the tomato seeds are coming along well but the orange seeds are yet to crack open and shoot.

The children have been busy in the garden making a snail hotel and ant farm (known as a formicarium).

The children were looking and following snail trails to find some guests to stay in our hotel. We have found around 12 snails in total, and we left some fruit outside to see if we could attract some ants but so far, we only had a few visitors. In the end, the children found more ants dotted around the garden, so in they went into their new home. 

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

See you all on Monday for another fun week.

Emma 

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog. The weather has been kinder to us this week, so we have mostly had fun in the garden, looking after our plants and seeds that we are growing. Everything has really grown so much, we are taking lots of care and giving everything lots of water to drink.

This week we have continued to watch our worms in the wormery and we decided to make our own worms out of spaghetti. They were very wormy and squirmy when we used the tweezers to try to pick them up.

Why not make your own worms at home, just soak the spaghetti in hot water with a little food colouring for your very own worms.

We read Superworm again, it’s one of our favourite stories and we started to think about how the Wizard Lizard was always telling everyone what to do and did not listen to others views. We know how important for everyone to have a voice in nursery. Sometimes when we can’t decide we take a vote…the biggest number of votes wins! We decided to watch a video about democracy on CBeebies, the Treasure Champs. Click here to watch. We voted for which story to have before lunch, maybe you could have a family vote this weekend.

As you will have seen in Mrs Gregan’s newsletter last week, the month of May is walk, scoot or cycle to school month and in nursery we are joining in too. Every day we are collated the numbers to see how many of us walk, scoot or cycle to nursery. This is a good way of keeping fit as well as being really good for the environment. Fewer cars means a better planet for all of us. We’ve only got one planet so we have to look after it.

Have a lovely weekend and enjoy the Bank Holiday on Monday,

Michelle

‘Walk, Scoot, Cycle or Skate’ to school month

The council have decided to hold a ‘Walk, Scoot, Cycle or Skate’ to school month during May. We want to encourage all members of our school community to get involved. If you drive to school, could you park a little bit further away so that you could walk in and quieten the roads? There is the Parish Centre car park that can be used or even just further down the road. Do you have bikes or scooters in your shed that need their cobwebs brushing off?

Each day during May we are going to tally this in each class and create a whole school picture. We really are counting on you to keep our roads around school safe.

Sport’s Day

Sports Day

Well done to everyone who has already sent in their t-shirts…I am impressed! Don’t worry if you have not had time we still have time.

Foundation Sports Day is being held on Tuesday 18th June at 2.00pm. All children are invited to attend this event but must be in nursery no later than 1.45 pm wearing shorts and trainers. As in previous years each child will be designing their own t-shirt. We therefore ask if everyone can bring in a. s. a. p. as named, plain white t-shirt. We have to start early to ensure that we get them all finished in time!!

Lastly, don’t forget that it is Bank Holiday this weekend so sadly there will be no nursery on Monday., but we will be back on Tuesday!

I hope the weather remains sunny and warm so we can fire up the BBQs.

Stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Such an exciting week, our seeds have started to germinate!! The children couldn’t believe their eyes. The nursery garden will look so beautiful this year.

As we have had lots of sunshine this week we have spent most of time outside tending the garden and getting our new house decorated and ready to use. The new flooring went down on Tuesday and it looks fantastic. We have new curtains and fairy lights along with some rare pictures hanging on the wall. Come and have a look on our drop in session.

Drop in session

This terms parent ‘drop in’ session is being held on Tuesday 14th May from 3.45- 4.45 pm. This is an ideal opportunity to pop in to see all our wonderful learning and have a chat with the nursery team. No appointment necessary.

Sports Day

Foundation Sports Day is being held on Tuesday 18th June at 2.00pm. All children are invited to attend this event but must be in nursery no later than 1.45 pm wearing shorts and trainers. As in previous years each child will be designing their own t-shirt. We therefore ask if everyone can bring in a. s. a. p. as named, plain white t-shirt. We have to start early to ensure that we get them all finished in time!!

We have been practising our fundamental movement skills and team games with Mr. Nay and Mr. Murray and we are getting better and better.

Getting ready for school

Click here to find out more about the skills your child will need to be school ready.

Click here for What to Expect When. This is a really useful document.

We have also been on a ‘mission’ with ‘Super Croccy’. The Big Bad Wolf was busy blowing things down and we had to catch him! We listened to the Amazing Super Hero song and decided which special super powers we may need! Click here to sing along at home, maybe you could go a secret mission too!

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog.

We have all had a lovely but busy week at nursery, planting more wild flowers and plants to eat. We have planted peas, beans, different herbs and also raspberry plants. We are hoping we get lots of lovely fruit and vegetables to eat.

We were very excited this week as our new house outside has had new flooring put down and we can now use it. We had a grand opening this week. It looks really fantastic, just like a real house.

We met another number this week, number nine. We worked really hard to think of different ways to make number nine. We watched numberblock number nine and it helped us to remember that nine can be made from three plus three plus three. We also practised writing number nine ‘loop and then a downward line, that’s the way to make a 9’.

In PE we have concentrated on practising our Fundamental Movement Skills, ready for Sports Day. We are getting very good at throwing, running, jumping and hopping.

We were very excited when Emma showed us the wormery and we could see that the worms had wriggled and writhed in the sand and soil. We then enjoyed an activity where we had to rescue Superworm from the Wizard Lizard and his crow. This was tricky as we couldn’t use our hands, we could only use clothes pegs. It was lots of fun, but it also turns out that using clothes pegs is a good way to exercise those muscles in our hands that we need to be wonderful writers. Here are some activities to try at home. Click here.

The weather has been great this week so we have enjoyed our time in the garden, where there were lots of superheroes. We practised our superhero jumps and runs, and of course, rescued lots of our friends who were in tricky situations. We spoke about our superpowers; everyone has their own superpower. We are all superheroes! What’s your superpower?

Have a lovely weekend everyone

Michelle

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone 

We have had a very busy and exciting week.

Firsty, some of our seeds have germinated inside and outside. We have carrot, lettuce and sunflower seedlings and now we just need lots of sun to help with the rest.

Something exciting has happened to the wormery as all of the food has gone, and there is more compost than before. The children have been helping by giving the worms some more food, and you could see that the worms have started to pull down some of the new leaves. We are very excited about the changes. 

We have been brain growing, looking at the cycle of a seed from an apple using a chain to link the cycle together. The children worked out in order of events and we all agreed that, we eat the apple, we find and plant the seed. The sun and water help it to grow. We then eat the apple and give the core to the worms for them to turn it into compost. The whole process then starts again. 

To continue our thread, learning about planting, we have been busy making spring flowers out of dough by following Dough Disco. It's a little bit tricky, but the children all did fantastic in having a go. Here is the link to practice at home, click here. Enjoy!

We became scientists this week and we wondered what would happen if we put food colouring in the water of some flowers. We used red, blue, and yellow food colouring, and the children worked out that as the flowers would drink the water, they would charge colour. And guess what, they did! We couldn't believe it. I'm sure the children will tell you all about what's happened. Click here.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone. 

 See you all on Monday 

Emma 

Meet number 9!

We met number 9 this week and the children were excited to meet another new number.

Saying the counting numbers to 9

We recognised the cardinal principle of counting that the last number counted represents the entire set of the objects counted.

Partitioning and combining to 9

We noticed that nine if formed by combining one and eight and then partitioned again.

9 and 4 are square numbers

Although the children are not formally introduced to square numbers until much later, number 9 provides us with an opportunity to look at both the structure of squares with 4 equal sides and 4 corners, and square numbers make a shape with the same number of blocks down as across. Identifying pattern and seeing structure in number is important to early maths development.

Complicated stuff don’t you think!

Click here to watch the episode.

Wow, such a busy week!! A well earned rest is deserved.

Have a fabulous weekend.

Stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Such a busy week. All our flower seeds, veggies and fruits are now planted!! It was such a mammoth task. Mrs Mather also gave us some peas and beans to plant too! If we are lucky enough for everything to grow we will be full to the brim with healthy foods!

The weather has been a bit better this week which has allowed us more time in the garden. The children really do miss being able to access both learning environments.

On Wednesday we explored what would happen if we put carrot tops in a little dish of water…would they grow….mmmm? We then watched a short video, click here. We are watching our carrot tops very closely. I have sent home an experiment sheet so you can join in at home. Let me know how you get on.

Worship

I have had a request from the children to put ‘My Lighthouse’ song and actions on the blog. We have been learning it all week in readiness for assembly on Friday. Our link class also came to visit in Wednesday to help us remember the actions. Here goes…click here for the actions and here for the song.

Our word of the week has been ‘witness’. We have been witnessing others who are sharing the news of Jesus. All the friends and nursery ladies have been spotting disciples of Christ in each other.

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone, 

We have had a fantastic week of brain growing, and lots of fun too.

Firstly, we have been busy exploring the different parts of a flower, and what helps the flower needs to grow. We found some really interesting names with one part being called the petiole, the part of the leaf which joins it to a stem or branch. Also, the flat part of the leaf is called a blade, and the children found it so interesting. The children then drew a flower on the touch screen, adding details such as nutrients and roots. Look out for the children’s wonderful creations as they bring them home.

The children have continued to plant seeds in the garden and everyone has planted a sunflower seed in their own pot. The children are working hard to make our garden look, smell and feel fantastic. I can't wait to see what it will look like once everything has grown. 

We have some exciting news too, our wormery has started to change in just 1 week. The dead leaves are starting to disappear and we can see worm tunnel. The sand and soil has started to mix together. It’s all very exciting, I will keep you updated with further changes.  

Here is a video of a wormery over 20 days (don't worry, please don't think you have to sit and watch it all day, every day. The video has been speeded up!). It’s so incredible how the amazing earth worms work so hard under the ground. Click here

The children are always so curious about finding seeds in their fruit; they say we should plant them and see what's happened. We did some exploring by cutting up some fruit with safety knives and looking for what seeds we could find in apples, pears, blood oranges, bananas naval oranges and tomatoes. We found seeds in everything apart from the pears and we couldn't understand why there weren't any seeds. Once we collected the seeds, we then diced the fruit to make a smoothie with the blender. We had it with our snack, it was delicious, mmmmm

 We are going to put the seeds in a clear bottle and see how the seeds germinate. Fingers crossed something happens to them and as always, I will keep you updated.

We have also been so busy with numbers this week, continuing to make 8 using our fingers and working out where numbers should go to be in order. Here is a game to play. Have fun! Click here.

 Have a great weekend everyone 

 Emma

Michelle

Hello and welcome to this week’s blog. T

This week we have continued learning all about worms, including reading Superworm and exploring worms. We found lots in the garden, maybe you could look for worms in your garden.

We have enjoyed playing a game looking for the vegetables with Supertato on Cbeebies. The children requested the link on the blog, so here it is. Click here

We have continued with our gardening in the sunshine and have planted sunflower seeds and more wild flower seeds. Our garden is going to look so beautiful when they bloom and we can’t wait to see all the bees and butterflies they attract.

We have been looking closely at the different parts of the flower, from roots to petals, and have used lots of different media to represent our own flowers, from the computer, to painting and collage.

We have been practising recognising all the letter sounds we have learnt so far. Some of us are getting a little mixed up with ‘d’ and ‘b’ when we see them written down. Here is Geraldine the Giraffe exploring these 2 sounds: Click here and here. Why not go on a letter hunt for ‘d’d and ‘b’ and see how many you can find in your house or when you are out and about.

We continue to practise our Fundamental Movement Skills in PE with Mr Nay and Mr Murray and we have gained more and more confidence when using the beams to balance and jump. We are concentrating on our landing, making sure we land on our feet with our legs bent.

Activities for practising jumping at home, click here.

As you will know we have worked hard at independent skills, and now the children can mostly put on their own coats and zip them up, put their shoes and socks on after PE, recognise their own name on their tray and book bag. These are all essential skills your child will need when they start school in Reception. One other important skill that children will need to master is to use a knife and fork to eat their lunch. We can only practise this with the children that have a school lunch, here at nursery, so now would be an ideal time to give your child lots of practise at using a knife and fork at home, ready for September.

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

Michelle

Purple Mash

I have updated the pinned learning threads in the virtual classrooms, if you have a minute take a look. Also, keep checking to see if your child’s key person has posted any activities to do. Purple Mash is a safe site and it is FREE!

Finally, I’m sure you will agree that we have been extremely busy.

Try and have a restful weekend as next week will be just as busy. Most of all make time for enjoying being together.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Welcome back! I hope that everyone had a lovely Easter despite the rain and the wind!

We have started our new learning thread ‘growing’. A big thank you to everyone who has donated seeds and pots. Our delivery of soil arrived just before Easter…I may have over ordered, it’s HUGE bag.

On Monday we planted carrots, meadow seeds, lettuce, tomatoes and strawberries. Now we are waiting patiently. In the meanwhile we have been discussing what will be happening under the soil and what the seeds need to thrive. Click here to watch and here to see the seeds start to germinate.

Worship

This week we explored the concept of the Trinity, where God is three-in-one and each part loves the others and loves us. We discussed how Children we are made in the image of God, we are designed to love God and love one another in our wider communities too.

Our word of the week is ‘believe’. Even though we have seen the season of Lent cumulate in Easter Sunday, and Jesus’ Resurrection, Eastertide still continues. Now ids the time to celebrate in the risen Lord; during which we are called to grow in friendship with Jesus, believe in Him, and tell others about the Resurrection. We have been learning the hymn ‘Be Still for the Presence of the Lord’. Click here to join in at home.

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone, 

Welcome back. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. It's been lovely hearing the children telling us all what they have been up to over the holidays.

As it’s a new term and Summer is here, we have been busy planting seeds in our garden. We have planted strawberry, carrot, tomato and cucumber plants as well as wild flower seeds, and lots more. We have been working our brains and learning about how seeds germinate, and how the roots of the seed need water and nutrients to feed the plant and to help it grow from under the ground. Talking about nutrition in the soil, how does the soil gets the nutrition I here you ask? Earthworms are fantastic burrowing creatures and are the living, breathing, engineers of the underworld, eating and recycling organic matter to keep our soil healthy with nutrition ready for planting.

We also found out lots of interesting facts about the earthworm, and here is a link for you to look at: Click here to learn more.

The children have been working together to make a wormery in nursery, to see how the worms live and eat underground. The children really enjoyed looking for the worms and layering their new home with sand and soil and feeding them by leaving out dead leaves and plants on top of the soil. I will keep you all updated with how they are getting on.

We have also been busy learning our new sounds, ng, nk, qu, th, ch this week. The children are working really hard with their sounds.

See you all next week.

Emma

Michelle’s blog

Hello, and welcome to this week’s nursery blog. I hope you all had a restful and peaceful Easter and didn’t eat too many eggs.

This week we have jumped straight into our new topic of spring and growing with both feet, or should that be both wellies?

We have decided we want to grow lots of things , lots of flowers and lots of fruit and vegetable. We have spent some time planting seeds and plants with pots and compost. We keep looking but they haven’t grown yet.

Here are some fantastic spring ideas for you to try at home. Click here.

If you would like to have a go at growing at home but are short on space or time, here are some ideas for growing using vegetable scraps, click here

In PE we have continued to practise our Fundamental Movement skills of throwing, catching, jumping, running and hopping. Catching is really tricky but we keep practising. This is a skill that you could try practising with your child, as you can throw and catch anything, it doesn’t have to be a ball.

We have also continued  exploring numbers this week and have been growing our brains trying to find all the different ways we can make different numbers and also looking for numbers in the environment. When you look, they are everywhere! Which numbers can you spot?

Here is a link to some fantastic number games, including letter formation, counting and number recognition. Click here.

That’s all for now. Have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week.

Michelle

Storytime

The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle; Click here

Please look out for a seeds sequencing card game to make at home…coming home this week! Enjoy!

Lastly, it has been so lovely to see everyone back at nursery this week, ready and eager to learn. Next week…more growing! We can’t wait.

Have a lovely weekend

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Such an emotional week. We have travelled through Holy Week attending each moving assembly which has depicted Jesus’ journey to the cross. We have been discussing each event by visiting the stations of the cross. The children have been truly reflective, trying to comprehend ‘why’? On the morning of the Crucifixion assembly we were so overcome with sadness it made some of us cry.

It has not been all sadness though, we have enjoyed lots of fun in the garden, organising everything in readiness for a planting bonanza when we return!!

Our learning thread focusses on ‘cycles’; plants and animals, and also a complementary thread- ‘Superheroes’! Click on the button below to see our planning.

We were lucky enough to have Year 2 newly hatched chicks come to nursery for us to look after. It was thrilling. We watched a video of one of the chicks emerging from its shell (see year 2 blog from last week).

Easter Egg Hunt!

On Thursday Easter bunny came to nursery and hid eggs for everyone in the garden. We had great fun searching for them. Take a look!

Read, Write Inc.

We are so proud of ourselves…we have completed Speed Set 1 sounds, phew! We now need to keep practising them so that we get better and better.

Click here for z

Click here for ch

Click here for qu

Click here for x

Click here for ng

Click here for nk

Try and think of words with these sounds in them. Good luck, it’s tricky!

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone 

We have had a fun packed 4 days this week.

Nursery has been into the school assembly every day this week to watch years 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, tell different parts of the Easter story. We have really enjoyed it. 

The children have continued learning about the 14 stations of the cross by using objects to represent each station. For example, a rock represents the tomb, 3 plasters represents Jesus falling 3 times, lolly sticks for the cross and many more. The children linked the objects to each station to help us remember and retell the Easter Story.

A big thank you for bringing back your Lenten boxes. Your kindness will really help those less fortunate.

We were so excited we met x and z letter sounds this week as the children have been waiting so long for these as its seems they really like saying them. The children also use there whole body to represent X.

We had some visitors in nursery this week. Some baby chick's from year 2, where the children in year 2 have been looking after them. They have had them since they were eggs and looked after them as they hatched. The children in nursery were really grateful that they got to see and touch them. Thank you year 2 for letting us spend time with your chick's.

As Easter is this weekend, here is a recipe to make chocolate nests and an Easter counting game. Click here and here. Enjoy!

Have a wonderful Easter and enjoy your week off, and I can’t wait to hear what you have all been up to.

Emma 

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's blog.

This week we have had assembly every morning as we have watched the juniors tell the story of Easter. Mrs Gregan has said she was very impressed when visiting nursery at how much the children could recall about Easter. The children are very aware of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection as we have had many discussions over the previous weeks about many aspects of Easter.

Thank you so much for all the Lenten boxes that have been returned. We have been very humbled by your generosity.

We have continued learning new letter sounds this week and have been practising our writing too.  Here is a reminder of the sounds we have learnt so far.

Click here

We are enjoying our revamped garden and have been enjoying it, whatever the weather.

Have a lovely Easter and we will see you after the holidays.

Michelle 

Finally, I would like to wish everyone and Happy and Holy Easter. Thank you for all your support of nursery this term, you are truly wonderful!

Stay safe and God bless, I will see you on the 8th April.

Barbara

This week...

What a week! You may have noticed that our garden is nearing completion. The children have been thrilled to be able to access our new builders yard. They have been laying pipes, hoisting brick and mixing cement! On Wednesday we had a had a beach delivered! We are now in the process of cleaning our sand area and trundling the new sand into situe…it is really exhausting. The only thing that we are waiting for is our new flooring for the house, then we can move in! We can’t wait!

On Friday our compost arrives. We have started to prepare the planting boxes by removing all the weeds and turning the earth. We have also managed to plant some potatoes, a buddleia, an apple tree and some strawberries. Can I say a big thank you to everyone who has donated seeds and plants to make our garden BEAUTIFUL!

As we continue our exploration of the solar system we happened across a new planet song. The children thought to was wonderful, although we were a bit sad about Pluto! Click here to listen at home

As we have been spotting daffodils everywhere around school we decided to paint pictures of them. Take a look.

Daffodils

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone, 

I hope you've all been enjoying the bit of spring sunshine we have been having this week. 

We have been so busy this week working hard as always and we have all enjoyed being challenged in Mr Nays PE class. Mr Nay had us working hard with a tricky game, we had to really listen and follow his instructions. We had four teams; our challenge was to run around cones, find a ball, then pass it onto a friend. Whichever team had the most balls at the end were the winners. The children did so well in understanding what they had to do, it was complicated!

We have also been working hard in the garden, weeding, sweeping, planting, tidying up, and helping put the new sand in the sand pit, getting ready for Spring. The children have really enjoyed finding insects in the garden, and looking at all their different shapes and sizes. The children used magnifying glasses and pots to observe how they moved. Now all of the weeds have gone, we will be ready for even more planting after the Easter break. Thank you for all the wonderful garden donations.

The children have enjoyed being back in the garden which is now finished. The garden looks brilliant and the children  have been busy playing and leaning in all of the new areas.  

We met number 8 this week or should I say 'Octoblock'. We worked out that by adding one more to 7, this made 8, and that we could find different ways to make 8 with our fingers. The children also have also been practicing how to write the number. The rhyme helps us to remember how to write Octoblock 8, here it is:

S to start looking great, and loop back up and there's your eight.' Here is a rap all about the number 8, enjoy. Click here

Thank you to the parents I have have seen and spoken to earlier this week. It was nice to chat and catch up on your child's development.

Have a fabulous weekend, see you all on Monday.

Emma 

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog. We have continued this week in our worship learning about the Easter story. We have thought really hard about how the individuals felt. How did Jesus feel and how did Mary feel? We watched a film about how people celebrate Easter. Click here to watch at home. We also completed a quiz to find out what we know about the festival of Easter, click here and then watched a film about an artist who works with sand. The children thought it was wonderful click here.

This week we have also met Numberblock number 8, Octoblock and have been growing our brains working out how we can make number bonds to 8. There are lots of different ways. Maybe you can think of some ways to make 8 at home.

In PE we were excited to play team games with Mr Nay and Mr Murray. We also practised hopping and jumping.

We have been very lucky to have had some sunshine this week and this has allowed us to do some gardening, to weed and to plant some new plants. We are very excited to wait and see if they grow.

We also had an opportunity to eat the moon this week, as we made our very own moon biscuits, complete with moon craters. They were delicious!

See you all next week

Michelle

Meet Octoblock!

We have been saying and counting numbers up to 8. Our aim for the children to recognise the cardinal principle of counting that the last number counted represents the entire set of objects counted.

We have also been partitioning and counting to 8. We have learnt that Eight is formed from combining One and Seven and then partitioned again. Tricky stuff!

With this in mind now watch the episode. Click here

Story Time

We read two fabulous new stories this week. I promised that i would put the on the blog, so here goes:

Billy’s Bucket: Click here

Stone Soup: Click here

Enjoy!

Worship

We have visited the Chapel this week, to see the prayer area that Mrs Gregan has made. The children reconised the crown of thrns which was resting on the cross. We discussed how it made us feel. We recalled the Easter story in detail, the children even remembered the role of Simon of Cyrene and Veronica. The children offered a prayer for someone. They spoke with such compassion and understanding it was hard to believe they are only three and four years old. We we so moved.

On Friday we start the our Holy week in school with Jesus riding into Jerusalem. We will continue to follow Jesus’ journey throughout next week.

Lenten boxes

From Monday we will start collecting in the Lenten boxes.

This week...

This week we have been investigating ‘magnets’. We have found out lots of information by exploring which objects our magnets would stick to…we have also found out some new ‘wow’ words…attract and repel.

Throughout the week we watched some short videos which helped us to understand a bit more. The childrens favourite was ‘Magnet Man’ and they asked if I would put it on the blog! So here we are, click here.

We also watched a video about two clever mice that used magnets to steal the cta’s cheese and then to escape being caught. Click here

Lastly, we watched how Kit and Pup explore how magnets attracts metal….mmmm but all metals! We had to find out! Click here

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone, 

I hope all of the mummy's had a lovely Mothers’ Day last Sunday.

We have had a very exciting week. We have been learning about magnets. The core of our planet earth creates a magnetic field all around our planet which has a north and south pole. In the same way, all magnets have a north and south pole, with each opposite pole attracting the other. When you place two of the same poles together (north to north or south to south), they will repel each other. The children found this so fascinating. When they were playing with the magnets, the children were going around nursery seeing what their magnets could pick up. They worked out it was just metals like steel or iron, and objects that were plastic were not magnetic. The children had the best time exploring and finding out.

To continue with our thread learning about space, we have been looking at constellations, groups of stars in the night sky that make up a recognisable picture or pattern. It could look like an object, animal or something in your imagination. The children made their own constellations by sticking stars on to paper then drawing lines between them to see what shapes they had imagined.

Here is a short clip all about constellations. Enjoy! Click here

As some days our garden has been out of use due to all the building work going on, we have been going into the school playground to play on the gym trail and the castle. The gym trial is a bit tricky with lots of different obstacles. The children have loved it and have enjoyed the opportunity for challenge, testing their limits, exploring boundaries and pushing these boundaries. 

It was great to see how each child challenged themselves. 

Thank you to our parents I have  seen and spoken to earlier this week. It was nice to chat and catch up on your child's development.

Don't forget to have a look on Purple Mash as I have set some fun activities.

Have a lovely weekend everyone. See you next week for our last full week before we break up for Easter. 

Emma 

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog.

This week we have continued to explore all things alien and have had lots of alien conversations. This is a fun way of exploring different and silly sounds. Why not have a go at having alien conversations at home. This is also a great way of letting your child practise any sounds they may be struggling with in a fun way. Eg. Pnipppopipnipep if they are struggling to pronounce ‘p’. Make it fun!

Our alien display is looking very out of this world with lots of fluorescent aliens with their weird bodies and tentacle arms. The children really used their imaginations to think about how they could make their alien more ‘alien’ looking.

We have also explored the properties of magnets as we try to work out why they attract and repel. 

Mr Nay and Mr Murray have kept us very busy in our PE lessons as we have practised our Fundamental Movement Skills. This week we concentrated on throwing, hopping and jumping. We have also built a giant obstacle course so we can practise our jumping and landing safely on our feet. Have a go at home, make your own obstacle course and practise landing on your feet.

We were very excited to see the garden is nearly finished and ready to use. We have been practising using the monkey bars. It is very tricky but we are not giving up, we keep on trying to swing from one to the other. By developing the muscles in our shoulders and arms and developing core strength we are getting them ready for learning to write in reception and a whole lot more. Here is some information on why developing core strength is important and other activities you can try at home to help your child. Click here

We have noticed that there are some signs that spring is on the way, the flowers are appearing in the garden and there are more mini beasts about. We hope to be very active in our garden over the coming weeks an would like to plant and grow lots of plants. Please think of us if you are having a sort out in your garden and you have any unwanted plant pots or plants, seeds or bulbs or gardening equipment.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend get to spend some time in the sunshine.

Michelle

Parent evening

Don’t forget if you have not managed to book a time to catch up with your childs key person, it is not too late. Drop them an email and we can sort our a time.

Easter Holiday

We break up for Easter on Thursday 28th March at 2pm and return to school on Monday 8th April. It’s hard to believe it will be the last term of the year.

Lenten Boxes

Lenten boxes are being collected week commencing 25th March. Let’s make it a bumper year!

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend and that it stops raining!!

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Each week seems to be getting busier and busier, we are running out of time every day. We have and lots of glorious sunshine which has enable us to play in part of the garden. The builders have been hard at work making our new play house, the children think it looks fabulous and can’t wait to play in it. Next week they will be replacing equipment in our builders yard and rebuilding the wooden pathway between Reception and us.

After the Easter holidays we will be focusing on growing and planting, all donations gratefully received!

Worship

As it is world book day on Thursday we have been reading stories from the Bible, and what great stories there are. We particularly enjoyed Noah’s Ark. We used our Noah’s Ark resource to tell the story along side the book. Click here to watch the story at home.

If you fancy reading more Bible stories at click here.

As you would expect we are continuing our deep dive into the Easter story. This week we have discussed further the feelings of Judas, Mary, Jesus and His disciples. The peg people that Mrs Gregan made have help us to understand the meaning of Easter.

World Book Day

World Book Day provides a fantastic opportunity to focus on reading for pleasure, supporting children's autonomy in book choice, and embedding a habit of reading that brings a wide range of benefits.

On Thursday we all came to nursery dressed as a book character. We also joined in the school challenge of writing a story to go into the story telling chest. Our story was a Space story about the adventures of a moon rock!

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone, 

We have been very busy again this week.

Firstly, we have been continuing our learning thread about space. We have been looking at the different planets and wondering what they look like. Did you know that there are 3 gas planets, and that the planets closer to the sun are the hottest. The ones farther away are the coldest.

The children have been busy making planets with Justine, using lost of different materials and textures to bring them alive.

We have also made our own story about a piece of moon rock that Barbara found on the moon! The children all contributed to the story, they had some great ideas. 

As number 7 is the number we have been leaning about we decided to explore rainbows (as they have 7 colours). The children drew rainbows using chalk, blending the colours.

We investigated how rainbows are made in the sky, we became scientists. We found out that rain and light from the sun together make a rainbow, with the rain causing the light to refract (the bending of light). We did an experiment using a torch, water and a mirror to see if we could make a rainbow, and it worked! The children were very excited to see the rainbow we made.

 Click here to see how rainbows are made.

We also did another experiment using Skittles sweets. We added warm water to the sweets which we had placed around the outside of a plate; we watched the colours creep towards each other, making an amazing rainbow. Have a go at home. I will be sending home some instructions for you to have a try.

We have been outside this week enjoying the Spring sunshine, getting back into our garden. It's not finished yet, as you have probably seen, but the children have been busy making their favourite obstacle courses which has been lovely to watch. 

For all of you mums, have a wonderful Mother's Day and a great weekend. See you all on Monday.

Emma

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog. We have continued growing our brains by learning the names of the planets in our solar system. We are learning that different planets have different properties. Some are big, some are small, some are made of rock and some are made of gas. Here is a fun quiz about planets, why not do it with your child. I am sure you will be surprised by how many planets they can identify from the clues. Click here.

This made us think if there were any other people/ creatures/ aliens living in our solar system. What would they look like? What would they sound like? We have decided to paint lots of aliens to decorate the wall. We read Here Come the Aliens to give us some ideas. Click here to listen at home. We then made our alien and called him Neno Cloudy.

We have continued our role play in our very own space station as we pretend to be astronauts in space. We have also practised our counting as we made an astronaut number line, blasting down from 10 to 0. We explored the one hundred square as we blasted off with the Numberblocks in space Click here.

We developed our physical skills by making a huge astronaut agility course in the garden. It was very big, and included lots of tricky balancing and our favourite thing of jumping off at the end.

This week was World Book Day and we have enjoyed learning about the greatest book of all, the Bible. We have re-enacted on of our favourite stories, Noah’s ark. This led to a discussion about looking after the world and the children had lots of suggestions for what they could do to help keep the planet safe for us all. They said we should not throw rubbish in the sea and we should look after the elephants and the tigers. We then visited the pen recycling centre in school to recycle some of our old pens.

Don’t forget we have parents’ evening for the next 2 weeks. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone and sharing all the fantastic progress all the children have been making.

Lastly, please log in to Purple Mash when you get the chance as there are some activities for your child to do.

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

Michelle

Just a few reminders (sorry)

Check that you have booked a time to meet with your childs key person. I am available too if you need to see me.

Have you been on Purple Mash recently?

Lenten Boxes are being collected week commencing 25th March

Lastly, to all our wonderful mummy’s, have the most wonderful Mothering Sunday. I will everyone on Monday.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

This week we have been finding our about our moon. We have found out lots of interesting facts such as the moon is silent, there is no air and little gravity. We have discussed how we would get there, what we would have to wear and the phases of the moon each month. Click here to find out more.

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone,

We have been so busy again this week with all our learning. Here is what we have been up too.

We have been very excited as a space rocket has landed in nursery and this must mean one thing, we have been growing our brains and learning about space. We have been looking and learning about the moon. The children have been amazed with facts about the moon and they were so excited to here that 3 men, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were the first men to land on the moon. They can't wait to learn more facts about space. 

We have also been having fun with dough disco. Playing with the dough we have been zooming into space, walking on the moon, and making our own rockets and using these moves to continue to help strengthen the children's hands and muscles. Here is the links for you to have a go at home.

Click here

Click here

Click here

The children continue to really enjoy Mr Nays' and Mr Murrays' PE sessions. On Monday we had to work hard with our listening, and following quick instructions, the children had to run, hop and jump towards a coloured cones, but Mr Nay would change the move and the colour of the cone each time making it tricky for the children and making them listen carefully and think quickly. The children had so much fun.

We have met some new sounds this week, j, v, and w. The children have been working hard practicing the sound and their accompanying rhymes.

The nursery went on a journey to visit the 14 stations of the cross, that each class have created.

They are all wonderful pieces of work and as we walk around, we discussed the Easter story and how each station made us feel.

Have a great weekend and I can't wait for more fun and learning next week.

Emma 

Michelle’s blog

Hello and welcome to this week's blog.

We have been very excited this week as we have started our new topic of space.

We have been finding out about the moon. We learnt that the moon has very little gravity and only 3 astronauts have been there and it takes about 3 days to get there.

We were very excited to take home our very own moon rock. You will find this in the brown envelope with your child's name on.

We watched a video about the moon that explains why sometimes you can only see part of it and not the whole moon. Click here

We have also had lots of fun in our own space station putting on our suits and moon boots.

I hope you have been able to observe the moon this week if not then have a look out for it next week too 

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week 

Michelle

Worship

We have continued our journey to the cross by creating the story using the peg figures Mrs. Gregan made. The children were able to tell the story of Easter using the appropriate figures. It was so beautiful to observe.

This week each child has made a prayer pebble and Easter cross. Keep a look out in your child’s bag- all will become clear when you read the poem.

Number 7

Seven shows the others how to be lucky: ask a number friend to jump on your head! But how do you know which friend? Click here to watch.

Geraldine Giraffe- sounds

Everyone was so excited to start learning new sounds. We must keep practising the old ones too though!

Click here for j

Click here for v

Click here for y

Click here for w

Click here for th

Storytime

We visited the school library this week. We found the funniest and silliest story called ‘Stuck’ We all laughed so much. Click here to listen at home.

Also, here’s another good nonsense story. It is called ‘Man on the Moon’. Click here.

We’re going to the moon

We have found a good action song for everyone to join in at home. It is called ‘Zooming to the moon’. I can see you now zooming around your lounge. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did at nursery. Click here

Book Fair

The Book Fair will be in school Friday 1st March, Monday 4th March and Tuesday 5th March. It will be held in the school hall it would be lovely to see you there. Each child will have a 31 token towards the price of a book.

ALSO, next Thursday (7th March) will be World Book Day. Children are invited to come to nursery dressed as a book character. Please bear in mind health and safety, toileting etc (preferably no onesies/slippers- sensible shoes please).

Purple Mash

Please don’t forget to keep visiting Purple Mash, there is so much to explore as well as the learning your child’s key person has set. I have changed the pins on the virtual classroom, if you have time take a look.

You will have noticed all the building work that has been happening in the nursery garden recently. We thought it was coming to a close but we have found our that our outside play house need urgent attention. From Monday Sam the joiner will be taking it down and building a new one, along with a few more bits and bobs….watch this space (and the garden).

Lastly, don’t forget to book a Parents’ Evening appointment with your child’s key person. It would be lovely to see you for a catch up. If anyone would like to speak with me just drop me a email.

I think that’s everything. Please have a lovely weekend and we will see you on Monday for even more learning.

Stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

This week...

A huge welcome back to every one. We missed everyone.

As Lent began during the holidays it has been a bit of a catch up week. It can be of no surprise that most of the week had been dedicated to walking alongside Jesus during His last week. The children have been visibly moved by the Easter story, which as prompted some in depth discussions. One of the questions was “when did God die?” One for Father Peter I think… we will write it in his book.

In our mission to be more like Jesus our Lenten promise wall is full of the qualities we aspire to maintain each day. The children are filling our Lenten Heart by being kind, loving, thoughtful and giving. We are all trying to put others needs before our own, just as Jesus would do.

We have contributed to the whole school Stations of the Cross by depicting the stations 2 and 9. Take a look at our interpretations. Take a look.

Thank you to everyone for bringing in your Lenten boxes. They have now been successfully swapped with our class partners and sent back home. We have talked about completing acts of kindness each day and in doing so collect money that can be donated to our chosen charity, Cafod. Cafod is an international development charity who reach out to people living in poverty with practical help, whatever their religion or culture. CAFOD is the official aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales and part of Caritas International.

Through their global Church network, they have the potential to reach everyone; campaigning for global justice, so that every woman, man and child can live a full and dignified life.

A worthy mission, let’s work together to make it a huge success and to help as many people as we can. In anticipation, thank you.

As we have been so busy with the Easter story we have delayed our NEW learning thread. We are launching it tomorrow! So you can join us in our learning this half term click on the button below.

Lucky Number 7

This week we have been excited to meet Number 7. Click here to watch.

In this episode the children discovered the relationship between Seven and the other Numberblocks. It gave us the opportunity to practise counting numbers to 7nandto say their ordinal names (first, second third) 7 is also related to the number of the colours of the rainbow and the days of the week.

As with previous numbers, Seven is created through adding one to the previous number, combing 6 and 1. Each consecutive number is one more than the previous one. The children are also beginning to compare 7 with other numbers; seven is taller than six; 7 is one more than 6.

Don’t forget to keep practising writing numbers 0-7 using the special rhymes! Click here for a reminder. Remember duck fingers!

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone,

Welcome back, I hope your all had a wonderful break. We have got straight back into growing our brains and having lots of fun.

We started off this week talking about Lent and it has been lovely seeing all of your amazing lent boxes coming in that you have worked so hard on, so thank you. The children were very excited to swap their Lent boxes with year 3.

We have made a heart that represents our lent promise, and the children have come up with words that relate to this promise such as loving, kind, helpful, patient and many more. The children each get a smiley face stamp on the heart each time they show they are representing one of these words and are so proud when they get a stamp. 

Mrs Gregan has asked the nursery to help make a part of the Stations of the Cross for the school and has given us stages 2 and 9. The children have been very busy painting and helping to bring them to life. 

We have been looking and talking about the 14 Stations of the cross, and reading the Easter story. The children are shocked to hear how Judas made a bad choice, and very sad to hear what Jesus had to go through. But as the children say, it has a happy ending when Jesus “was alive again” Here is a link for the Easter story.

As you may have seen, our nursery garden is having a bit of a makeover and the children have been very excited watching all of the building works that's been going on. The children can't wait to play in their new garden. 

We have been on a walk around the school grounds, looking for signs of Spring. I know, you are all saying 'it's too early', but we found daffodils, crocuses, daisies and snowdrops. We also tried to find some birds nests; we didn’t find any though. The children had so much joy in finding them.

This week we have met number 7. We have been working out with our fingers how we can make 7 in different ways. The children have also enjoyed having a go at writing the number 7 as well.

Have a great weekend everyone and see you all on Monday for more fun and leaning. 

Emma 

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's blog.

I hope you all had a lovely restful week at half term.

This week we have been consolidating our previous knowledge of the letter sounds we have learnt so far. We had done so well!

We have revisited the letter sound ' p' and watched a video of Geraldine the Giraffe and we could think of lots of words that begin with this sound.

Why not have a hunt for things in your house that begin with 'p'

We were very excited this week to watch as our garden is undergoing a bit of a change. It looks very exciting and we can't wait to try it all out. This has not stopped us from going outside as we have visited the castle, investigated signs of spring in the environmental garden and we have even been invited to use reception's outside space too. Thank you Mrs Hartley.

We are now in Lent and we have been exploring the Easter Story. We have tried really hard to be like Jesus and his disciple to earn a stamp on our Lenten promise wall. Although the story of Jesus makes us sad we know that it has a happy ending.

Our crafts this week have mostly involved reflecting on Jesus’s journey to crucifixion.

Have a lovely weekend

Michelle

As usual nursery has been frantically busy again, but we just love growing our brains. Added to all our learning everyone has been keeping a special eye on the building works that are happening in our garden…we are so excited!!!

I suggest a quiet weekend may be in order because we have lots planned for next week!!! Please keep safe and enjoy just being together. I will see you on Monday.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Another half term over. We are already half way through our year at nursery…tempus fugit - time flies (when you are having fun)!

We have crammed so much into this week. It has been Online Safety Week and Mental Health Week. To help us understand how to stay safe online. We read the stories Once Upon an Online, Chicken Clicking and Smartie the Penguin. This stimulated a huge discussion about when and how often we should use our tablets and what we should do if something happened that worried us -who are safe people to sort the problem.

If you want to read the stories at home:

Click here for Chicken Clicking

Click here for Once upon an Online

Click here for Smartie the Penguin

I hope these stories help you approach the difficult topic of staying safe online at home.

Throughout the week we have been looking after our minds. We have talked about how our brains can sometimes become ‘overloaded’ and too busy’ and it can make us sad and fuzzy. To help us reconnect with ourselves and others we have been doing yoga and mindfulnes techniques…we are all so zen now. On Friday we will be having a Spa Day at nursery where we we be relaxing our minds and bodies, doing hand massages and breathing exercises. Here are a few links for you to try at home.

Bubble bounce

Smell the flower, blow out the candle

Rainbow relaxation

Thought bubbles

Body Scanner

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone,

I can't believe it's our last week before half-term. Time goes so fast when your having fun at nursery. 

We have been busy enjoying helping the dinosaurs escape from the ice. We put some toy dinosaurs in water and popped them in the freezer. The children then used pipettes with warm water to melt the ice. We were working on our pincer grip and strengthening our muscles. We also used toy hammers, as some dinosaurs were very tricky to get out. As the ice melted, we talked about how the ice was solid at first, then as it melted it turned back into a liquid. The children ended up releasing 10 dinosaurs from the ice, it was great fun.

The children have been little artists outside, drawing their own dinosaurs with chalk. They came up with some fantastic dinosaurs. We did have some sad news though… the stegosaurus that we had made has gone on a new adventure to find a new home. The children have followed its footprints, but just can't seem to see where it has gone. I think the stegosaurus will enjoy a bit of peace and quiet wherever ever it has gone to.

The children did make another dinosaur with Justine, a small t-rex and a pterodactyl. They used the children's arms as a template for their wings. Why don't you have a go at home and see if you can make your own dinosaur over the holidays. Here is a video to give you an idea.

Click here Have fun!

Continuing with the dinosaur learning thread and improving our fine motor skills and hand strengthening, the children have been putting pegs onto dinosaurs. The dinosaurs all had a number on them and the children were working out how many pegs to put onto the dinosaur to match the dinosaurs number. Good counting everyone!!

We have been working hard giving our house outside a 'Spring clean'. We have spruced it up with some curtains, lampshades, fairy lights, and pictures on the wall. We have also added our nursery family pictures…IT LOOKS FABULOUS! The children have really enjoyed going in and playing, as well as looking after their new house. 

This week has been 'online safety week' at nursery, and we have been reading, watching and singing about how to be safe online, and what we should do if ever something unexpected pops up on screen whilst online (tell a safe grown up).

We have been so busy, and now its time for a well deserved rest.

Have a wonderful week off, and see you all soon.

Emma 

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's blog.

We have had a lovely week this week concentrating on our mental health.

We have had lots of lovely calm moments. One of our favourite moments was rainbow breathing. This is a good technique to use to have a calm moment. Click here

We have also continued to practice our letter sounds and have been playing a game to help. This has helped us with the letter sound g. Here is a link

Playing board games is a great way to practice taking turns. This week we played snakes and ladders and we had to throw the dice and say the number. Subitising is an essential skill to master that will make us maths wizards.

Our wellness week finished on Friday as we had a spa day. So relaxing, what a great way to start the half term

See you all soon and have a lovely half term.

Michelle 

 Worship

This week we linked our worship word of the week ‘HEAL’ to mental health week. Our lively discussing as always came back to be kind and loving just like Jesus. Everyone, including Mrs Gregan was given two smiles to give away to someone who has lost theirs. We were inspired by two quotes one which said “if you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours” and …in a world where you can be anything, BE KIND. The impact has been astounding, without being prompted the children noticed if a friend needed an extra bit of love, and gave them one of their smiley faces.

Half term Wednesday Word click here

We have been practising our new hymn Shine Jesus Shine and we are getting FABULOUS. We sang so loud that Mrs.Gregan heard us in her office and came into nursery to join us.

Art Exhibition

Don’t forget to pop along to the Art Exhibition at the Heritage Centre in Lytham to take a look at our exhibit along with exhibits from the rest of our school, and other local school! I believe it will be there during February.

Lenten Boxes

As in previous years we will be joining in with school and producing Lenten Almsgiving boxes. Over half term we would like each child to make a Lenten box to swap with a child from our Class link (YR 3). The children could use a margarine tub, small cardboard box or container and decorate it how they choose. Please ensure Lenten Boxes are brought back into nursery by Wednesday 21st February ready to swap.

Spa Day

Such a wonderful way to finish our Mental Health week….

Half term

Nursery closes for half term Friday 9th February and reopens on Monday 19th February. As always I would like to say a huge thank you for all your support of nursery… you are wonderful.

When we return we will be exploring a new learning thread so watch this space (that’s a clue!)

Enjoy a well earned rest if you can and I will see you all on Monday 19th, bright and early.

God Bless and stay safe.

Barbara

This week....We're going on a dinosaur hunt...we're going to catch the big one!!!!

Such an eggciting week (sorry about the pun). Our dinosaur egg has finally hatched. Wait till you see what was inside it!

Worship-Forever Friends

This week we listened to a story about Freddy Teddy struggling to share at a picnic with his friends. We then children consider how to resolve conflict in friendships through saying sorry and asking for/receiving forgiveness. Children learnt that when we hurt others, we also hurt Jesus – but that Jesus teaches us how to forgive ourselves and others! Click on the button below for the slides.

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's blog.

We have continued our exploration of all things dinosaur. Finally our dinosaur egg has hatched and we were amazed to watch as a triceratops was filmed in our nursery. Luckily, it was a herbivore so only eats plants. We saw evidence of this on our potted plant it where it has nibbled the leaves.

If you would like to experience having a AR dinosaur in your house I can recommend the app ARLOOPA.

Did you know that if you Google the name of a dinosaur you can see it in 3D?

We also enjoyed practicing our throwing skills in PE.

On Wednesday we made another volcano and watched a short film about volcanoes. We learnt there are volcanoes in parts of the world but none here. 

We continue to practice our counting skills as we had to count out the correct number of plates for the stegosaurus.

What a busy week!

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

Michelle 

Emma’s Blog

Alert! Alert! Alert!
What a fantastic week we have had.

Dinosaur egg update... The children have been really good looking after the dinosaur egg in nursery, keeping it very safe. However, on Wednesday morning the children were very shocked to find that the egg was broken on the floor. Before nursery opened, Barbara and Michelle caught the dinosaur, and sent it back to the dinosaur zoo, but they managed to record a video to show the children. When the children saw the video, they couldn't believe their eyes as they watched a baby triceratops hatch from the egg, and saw it eating one of the plants in nursery. We were so lucky that Barbara found the egg. The children then each took a bit of the dinosaur egg shell to colour on and take home. What a exciting morning we had.

Justine has been adding some fantastic skin to our stegosaurus, and it even has a pair of eyes now. The children have been really looking after it and have been on some more dinosaur hunts, exploring all the areas of the garden to see if they can find any more eggs or dinosaurs.
The had their nets and explorer backpacks with pairs of binoculars, and although they didn't find any eggs or dinosaurs, they did find some friends who were pretending to be dinosaurs. They found it so funny being caught.

We have a new exciting area in nursery. Our café has now closed its doors for now, and a shoe shop has opened in its place. The children are so excited about this and are really looking after their shop. They like to take turns being a shoe shop person or a customer, but they especially like trying on all the shoes. The children's role playing in the shop is so nice to watch and listen too. If you have any adult shoes you no longer use and would like to donate to our 'shop' it would be much appreciated.

We have started to join in assembly on a Friday afternoon with the whole school. We have been learning a song that the school children sing in assembly called Shine Jesus Shine. The children are trying really hard to practice it so we can join in with the school. The children especially like singing the chorus of the song. Click on the button below to sing along at home!

The children have been very busy learning to write number 6 on paper, on tubes, or outside on the floor, and we have seen lots of fantastic 6's. Here is the saying used on the Numberblocks programme to help when you are practicing at home.
'Start with a curve, then round with a swish, that's the way to make a 6’.

Have a wonderful weekend. Only one week left before half-term. I wonder what fun we are going to be getting up to.

See you all next week.
Emma 

Here’s the video you have all been waiting for...don’t be to scared, it’s a herbivore!

Isn’t that amazing!!!

I think that is enough excitement for this week! Watch this space to see if another egg appears…and hatches!

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

Stay safe and God bless

Barbara

This week.....

A blustery week! Some days we struggled to get outside in fear of blowing away!!

Nonetheless, our learning has known no bounds. In our quest to find out as much as we can about dinosaurs we even incorporated into our PE sessions! Mr. Nay has been so inspired that he bought a book all about dinosaurs and created new dinosaurs games to practice our Fundamental Movement Skills! Click here to find out more. On Wednesday we pretended to move like dinosaurs to the dinosaur song. Have a go at home….click here and enjoy!

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone, 

We have had a fantastic week of fun and brain growing.

We have met new number this week, 6.

We have been very excited as the 'Number Block' 6 has introduced us to a dice and we have been having fun exploring it. From subtising, to copying the numbers with the same amount of number blocks and pom poms, painting dots on the dice and even having a go a writing number 6. We have be so busy. Click here

We have also met some new letter sounds, e, r, h, l, and special friends 'sh'.

The children have really enjoyed meeting the sounds and working hard to learn them. 

We have been continuing to make tricky obstacle courses in the garden with different height obstacles with the children crawling through large hoops, lots of balancing and jumping. They are enjoying the challenge and are also strengthening their muscles, sensory processing and building confidence, and most of all, the children really enjoy doing it.

You may have noticed that the children have brought home a fantastic fossil that they have made. We have been waiting for them to harden before we could add some powder colour to them so the children can see the indentations, shapes and shadows of the fossil. They all look brilliant. 

To continue with our thread learning about dinosaurs, the children have been very busy with Justine, making a very large junk model stegosaurus, adding lots of different materials, boxes, and paint using different colours to give a textured skin effect. The children will continue to add more objects to their stegosaurus and I will keep you all updated on how it's coming along.

The children have also been looking at dinosaur pictures to work out how tall they are using number blocks, by building the blocks to the height of the dinosaur and then counting the number of blocks. It was a bit tricky but the children loved the challenge.

There will be more details to follow soon.

Have a great weekend everyone see you all on Monday.  

Emma.

Emma’s visit to the Museum

Donald Rodney art

We are so very excited to tell you that the school and nursery are going to be entering an art competition with other local schools. It is going to be held at the Heritage Centre in Lytham during February. The competition is about different artists, as the school has been looking at black history, we have decided to focus on The Black Art Group, which was an association of young black artists who were inspired by the black arts movement.

Our art work has been inspired by is by an artist named Donald Rodney. We have explored some of his art and noticed it was monochrome with black and white drips running down his pictures.

We decided to use our ‘feelings’ as a vehicle to create some Donald Rodney inspired art. Like Donald we only used black runny paint and each mark represented an emotion, for example, a wavy line means calm, a swirl; happy, two lines together; sad, a zig zag; scared and lots of dots meant we were excited. The art that the children have done is truly inspired. Each child was able to describe how they were feeling at that moment in time: a snap shot of emotion. Take a look and see if you can spot how we were feeling.

Michelle’s blog

Hello and welcome to this week's blog 

We have continued to explore our topic of dinosaurs and have been testing our knowledge with Andy's quiz on cbeebies. 

We have also explored where dinosaurs lived and gave made our own volcano, this enabled us to learn words such as lava and eruption. Here is how to make your own volcano at home Click here

We have been very busy learning some new letter sounds this week and have been keen listeners as we need d to work out if we had any of the new sounds in our names 

Recognising our names written down is an important skill to learn. Every day the children have to identify their bag by looking for their name tag. Sorry if it takes them a little longer at the end of the day for them to spot their name. Any practice you can give them at home would be fantastic.

We also met Number 6 this week and have been number detectives working out all the different ways to make number 6.

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

Michelle 

Meet our new sounds

Click here for ‘h’

Click here for ‘l’

Click here for ‘e’

Click here for ‘sh’ - special friends

Click here for ‘r’

See what you can find at home using these sounds. Good luck!

Hello Number 6

Click here to meet number six

Counting to 6. This episode give another opportunity to develop counting skills from 1-6. Watch out to see if your child uses one to one correspondence (match one number name to each object) and, know the number names in order.

Subitising Dice Patterns. The children experince reconising the spot patterns on the dice without counting. This is known as subitising. Being able to subitise small quantities has been shown to be a key skill in developing number sense.

Have fun with six.

Click on the button to make a dice at home

Worship - You’ve got a friend in me

This week we discussed friendship and the different qualities of a positive/negative relationships. We learnt to look to Jesus as a role model for being a good friend.

We have tried all week to be part of Team Jesus (one of our friends at nursery though of the name). We have been casting our net to be fishers of people to join our team.

As usual we have been working so very hard. Next week we will continue to challenge ourselves and to learn even more!

Have a lovely rest this weekend.

Stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

This week....

What a week!

We have completed two displays. One by painting dinosaurs and another by drawing our favourite dinosaur independently. The children have really thought about their paintings and recreated all the characteristics that make them unique.

We have added to our wow words dictionary with words such as extinct, fossils, herbivore, carnivore and omnivore and all the names of the dinosaurs…they are really tricky! We are definitely being challenged!

On Wednesday we read the scary story ‘Wolf’s Coming’, it’s one of our favourites. We noticed at the end of the story there was a pin the tail on the donkey game at Wolf’s birthday party. We decided to make a pin the tail on the dinosaur. What great fun we had, we pinned stegosaurus’ tail in very odd places. Click here to be scared!

Worship - Created to Love Others

This week we explored the individual’s relationship with others. Building on the understanding that we have been created out of love and for love. We talked about how we take this calling into our family, friendships and relationships, and learnt strategies for developing healthy relationships and keeping safe both online and in our daily lives. Click on the button below to discuss the slides.

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone,

We have been so busy this week working our brains.

We had a fantastic time with Mr Nay this week. He was helping us to practice our throwing, and he gave the children some shuttlecocks to throw around. The children loved this as they could see how far they would fly through the air. Mr Nay and Mr Murray had hung a huge parachute with a target on, and Mr Nay asked the children if they could throw the shuttlecocks to try to hit a particular colour. When some of the children hit the bullseye and we all cheered. We had so much fun.

We have been making some tricky assault courses in the garden to help build the childrens strength and to work their muscles. The course involved climbing and balancing which also helped them with there confidence. We made our own pretend ball pit using bits of foam which the children loved falling into.

We are continuing our dinosaur topic and are very excited that we have found 'dough disco dinosaurs'. It's brilliant and the children got to make a herbivore chewing leaves, the diplodocus neck and the pterodactyl’s beak. Here is the link for you to have a go at home, have fun. 

 Click here

Click here

 Click here

To concentrate on strengthening our hand muscles, and practice using our knife and fork, I made a dinosaur spaghetti swamp but the only way for the dinosaurs to get though it wasfor the children to cut the spaghetti up using their knife and fork. Let's hope some of the dinosaurs didn't get stuck.

We have been busy continuing to work on our letter sounds and our numbers, and we have been working our brains with our maths mastery wall, working out how many animals are in the grassy field and the flower meadow, then adding the total together, a bit like a number strory. The children enjoyed getting involved. Here is a link to a number ordering game for you to try at home. Click here.

I hope you all have a great weekend, and with the weather being so cold, wrap up and stay cosy.

Emma 

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's blog.

We have continued exploring and investigating dinosaurs.

We have been investigating what a t-rex ate and how they found their food. We have found out about carnivores, and herbivores and also omnivores.

We looked closely at the t rex this week and we discovered the head of a t rex was 1.5 metres wide. We measured this and this is as wide as 6 children or 3 nursery ladies 

Justine very kindly shared her photos of her visit to a real dinosaur fossil in Manchester Museum. Thank you Justine. This is a very worthwhile trip to make if you are looking for a day out. The museum can be found on Oxford Road in Manchester.

We have been very busy making our own dinosaurs, painting, drawing and using junk materials 

Emma let us help her in her activity to cut up the swamp spaghetti to help the dinosaurs feed. But we only had knives and forks! It was tricky. Using a knife and fork is an essential skill and one your child will need to master. Let them have as much practice with this at mealtimes as you can.

As well as PE on Monday and Tuesday, we now have a session on Wednesday. This week we practiced our running skills and our throwing skills. So much fun.

Apologies for the link not working last week for the dinosaur discovery game. Here it is again. Click here

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

Michelle 

Justine’s trip to the museum

Parent questionnaire

Thank you to everyone that has managed to complete this years questionnaire, it is greatly appreciated. Don’t worry if you have not had time yet I have attached another copy, just in case you have a few moment this weekend.

Parent ‘Drop In’ session

This half term we will be holding our drop in session on February 6th from 3.45-4.45 pm. This is a great opportunity to have an informal catch up with the nursery team and to see what we have been doing. Please try and pop in for five minutes we would love to see you…no appointment necessary.

Andy’s Dinosaur adventures

If you fancy finding our more about dinosaurs click here

Meet the Dinos click here

Inspired by our discovery of all kinds of dinosaurs we have written a song and also a started our own dino story.

Ask your child to sing our dinosaur song…its funny! When we have finished our story I will put it on the blog!

Next week we are planning to meet Number 6 and a new set of sounds. We are sooo excited. Keep practicing at home!

I hope the weather isn’t too cold this weekend although a bit of snow may be fun!

Have a lovely weekend everyone and I will see you on Monday morning bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Keep safe and God bless.

Barbara

Welcome back!

Welcome back to nursery everyone, and a Happy New Year! I hope all had a fabulous Christmas and managed a little rest too. It was so lovely to see how the children were happy to be back at nursery.

We have started this year finding out about ‘dinosaurs’. This was the children’s request and we have learnt so many facts already. The children are really growing their brains!

If you click on the button below you will be able to see everything we will be doing this half term. Perhaps you can get involved at home too. I will be sending home little challenges for you to do.

As you can see we are going to be extremely busy! All this on top of what the learning we so on a daily basis!

Worship

Religious Understanding.

This helps children to understand why the Bible is so special to Christians, showing us that Jesus loves us and is a role model for us to copy in loving one another. We discussed the Gospel account of Jesus washing His disciples’ feet, showing that He loves us and is a role model for us to copy in loving one another.

We looked at our Bible in nursery and then challenged ourselves to be good role models to one another and show Jesus’ love in all that we do.

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome back. I hope you have all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year. It has been lovely listening to the children excitedly telling us all about their experiences over the holiday period.

Thank you so much for all the lovely cards and gifts, it is very much appreciated. We hope you all liked your boxes.

This week we have begun a new topic, by request of the children we will be learning all about dinosaurs. As you know, some of the children are already experts in dinosaurs, so I expect they will be teaching us grown ups a thing or two. We have begun by looking at the different types of dinosaurs and have explored and investigated their differences and similarities. We then discussed our favourite dinosaur and had to tell our friends why we had chosen that particular dinosaur. Mine is a Parasaurolophus, because I like the idea that it used its horn to make a noise. Maybe you could draw a picture of your favourite dinosaur and bring it in next week. This is a good game to play with your child, it made us do lots of thinking, growing our brains as we investigated and asked lots of questions about dinosaurs. Click here.

We have continued to practise our letter sounds, we really do know quite a few now. We have not forgotten them over the  Christmas holidays!  We have also really enjoyed our PE lessons this week, as we now do PE on a Wednesday as well. We are getting so good at putting our shoes and socks on now and nearly all of us can now zip up our coats. With practice we know that we will all get there!

Have a lovely weekend everybody and we will see you next week,

Michelle

Cherry tots

As well as practising our Fundamental Movement Skills we have also started ‘Cherry Tots Dance. These are activities with words, actions and music designed yo help young children to recognise and react to their moods and emotions. This week we have been ‘Sad and Glad’ cherries and ‘Quiet and Mad’ cherries.

Emma’s Blog

Happy new year to you all, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and new year. I've really enjoyed listening to the children talking about what fun they got up to over the holidays. 

As we approach the end of our 1st week at nursery of 2024, you are not going to believe what we have been up to. One word... Dinosaurs! This half term, to start of our brains growing we will be learning all about dinosaurs. As you can imagine, the children are very excited. 

As we become paleontologists and dinosaur explorers. We have been digging and searching for fossils and bones in the sand, using our small brushes and mini spades to search with. The children found different sizes of bones and were trying to work out, by the size and shape, which part of the dinosaur body they came from. The children enjoyed doing this, so we decided to make our own fossils out of salt dough. The children helped to make the dough and we used different parts of a dinosaurs body, or fossils, and printed them into the dough. When it dries out, we will add a bit of colour to them and then hide them in our sand for the children to dig and search for. Here is a link to see some facts all about fossils. Click here.

We have also become dinosaur explorers. Andy the explorer, on cbeebies, has inspired the children and nursery ladies to go on a dinosuar hunt in the school woodland trail. We had to look for dinosaurs hiding in the bushes or up trees. We were so happy and relieved that we found the nine dinosaurs that had escaped from nursery! We put them all safely back in our explorer's backpack and took them back to nursery. The children and nursery ladies had so much fun!

We have been exploring what different dinosaurs eat. Those that have only a diet of meat are carnivores, those with a vegetarian only diet are herbivores and those who eat both are omnivores.

Which one would you be? 

On Wednesday, something very exciting happened and the children couldn't believe there eyes. We found a dinosaur egg in nursery!

The children are going to keep it safe and look after it and we will have to wait and see what's going to happen to it. I will keep you all posted. 

Have a 'roarsome' weekend, 

See you all on Monday  

Emma 

Andy’s Adventures

Dinosaur facts, want to know more, click here

Parent questionnaire

Each year we send out a questionnaire for your feedback about nursery. We are always seeking to improve our practice so if you could take a few moments to complete it we would be most grateful.

Lastly, I hope everyone has a lovely weekend and I will see you on Monday for even more fun and learning.

God Bless

Barbara

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