This week...

This week has been an odd sort of week. I feel the children sense we are coming to the end of the year.

We have been spending lots of time preparing the children for the next stage in their learning journey and everyone is really excited, they can’t wait to grow their brain even more!. The children who have another year with us in nursery are looking forward to being the ‘big’ children in September.

A a democracy we asked the children what they would like to learn and find out about this week. As we suspected there was lots of physical activity, messy play, building, music and story telling. The children particularly enjoyed reading Peely Wally with Hannah. They then drew some fabulous pictures (even Hannah)!

Peely Wally was a small bird who lived high up in a tree . . . One day she laid an egg . .

Click here to listen to the story. Perhaps you could draw some of the pictures in the story.

The children also wanted to make tunnels and chutes from large cardboard tubes. We raced the cars to see which went the furthest! Great fun!

We worked out that the cars would not roll if the tubes were flat on the floor so we propped them on the tables and furniture.

We have been practicing our numbers and doing really hard problem solving activities. The children watched the Numberblocks video about when Ten turns up to tell the Numberblocks what it's like to be a perfect ten. Click here to watch at home.

Just in case we had forgotten, we revisited ‘shapes’. We went on a shape hunt to find lots of different shapes and noticed how many sides they had, if they were curved and rolly, how many corners and the length of the sides. Click here to watch the shape song.

Please don’t forget our Leavers Party is on Thursday 9.30- 12.00. All the children are welcome and it’s fish and chips for lunch!!! Mmmmmmmmm!

…and finally a message from Miss. Hornby.

Over the past few days some of you have been asking again about gifts. The first thing I need to say is that please know that everyone in the building already knows just how much they are appreciated. You have already given us the biggest gift of all; the trust to teach your child. We never presume that we will receive gifts; our jobs are jobs of passion. We teach because we love the craft of guiding little minds to actively seek to learn. At Our Lady’s we have the most important mission to help children to become the ‘best versions of themselves’ just as Christ yearns for us.

I do appreciate that no matter how many times I say this, there are those of you who just want to say a personal thank you and please know we never want to offend and seem unappreciative of your kindness. However, we have all been through so much together this year and you have already given us so much. Please can I request that no class collections are asked for as many parents and families are genuinely struggling financially and often feel obliged to contribute, causing distress and anxiety. I do know that beautiful words in a card always give staff a sense of worth and a card or a letter is probably the most appreciated gift of all. During this year, some parents have made donations to charities such as CAFOD on the school’s behalf and have sent us a card in to share this; bringing our mission firmly to life!

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you on Monday for our last week together at nursery.

The Nursery team.

"Give me your hands, if we be friends, And Robin shall restore amends" Puck

What a joy it is to explore a Shakespeare play with children!!! We have had so much fun this week in class and in the forest beyond the field! We started by exploring power and status before we went through the whole play on Tuesday- this is called a “swoosh” were we understand who is who and the plot! We have invented some pretty scary fairies and today we explored how the four worlds in this play collide! Great fun so much creativity!

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This week...

This week we have been taking advantage of the lovely warm weather. As you can see our learning activities have been varied!

Now we have all learned our letter sounds we tried to make some CVC words ( CVC words are words created using a consonant, vowel, and a consonant. Vowels are the letters A, E, I, O and U, while consonants are all the other letters in the alphabet. Examples of CVC words can include 'new', 'hat', 'cot', 'lit', and 'pit'. You can also create nonsense words that follow the rules of CVC words.) It was a little bit tricky to begin with but we soon got the hang of it.

We have continued with our investigation of mini beasts…still no snails! We have lots of spiders though! We watched ‘Come Outside’ with Auntie Mabel, all about spiders. Click here to watch Warning: may contain spiders!).

The children noticed this week how big the broad beans had grown. We decided to pick the biggest ones and see what they looked like inside. It was really interesting.

On Wednesday there was great excitement as all our butterflies had hatched out of their chrysalis. We had five! We gave them some sliced oranges to feed on and then released them on Thursday. Jacqui from the kitchen came to see them too!

A group of construction mad children made ‘Pride Rock’ for all the animals using the large bricks and boulders. We had to place the bricks and the animals carefully, one false move and the whole ‘rock’ fell down! It was quite spectacular when we had finished.

….and now for our regular feature ‘photos’ of the week! This weeks images range from under the sea world, afternoon tea in the house, making pictures at the workshop and more generally having a fabulous time at nursery!

Lastly, a quick reminder that our leavers party is being held on Thursday 15th July, 9.30- 12.00. All children are invited to attend. Lunch of fish and chips is kindly being provided by St. Annes Fish Restaurant… mmmm we can’t wait!

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday, only two weeks left to the end of term, it’s hard to believe it! Where has this year gone!

The Nursery Team