Autumn 1

Our Learning

This half term is all about settling in and becoming familiar with the daily routines such as finding pegs, names and finding pictures for milk. We will be getting to know all about each other and learning about our favourite colours, foods and toys. We will also be doing lots of fine motor activities to get our hands strong for writing, this will include lots of playdough, threading, using big tweezers, big pom poms and giant chalk! How exciting! Our role play area is set up as a home corner and I am sure the children will love replicating what they see in their own kitchen at home!

We have had a fantastic first week in nursery. Although it can take a little time to settle in, the children are doing a great job. Don't forget to check out our class gallery to see the photographs from our first week. 

Week Beginning 7th October

Now we have all settled in we are beginning to establish some structure and routine in nursery. Here is a little insight into our day.

Morning

• We start the day with the children coming into nursery all by themselves. This is great for promoting independence and gives them a sense of trust and responsibility. 
• The children then have a small period of time to settle and have a nosey at the new activities that we have set for the day. 
• We then have carpet time where we sing a 'days of week' song and take part in some morning exercise to prepare our brains for a busy day of learning. We are now starting our Phases lessons which is very exciting as it gives us an opportunity to listen to lots of different sounds. The children are becoming more confident in identifying different sounds and they love to take part in our 'listening moments.' This is where Mrs Slattery makes lots of noise and we have to try and guess what we have heard!
• This is followed by 'COOL' (choose your own learning) time. The children are able to play and explore all of the areas in nursery, including our outdoor area. 
• Before lunch, we love to practise our counting and recognising numerals. 

Afternoon

• After lunch, we split into 2 groups for some more 'COOL' time. Half of the children stay indoors, with the other half exploring our outdoor area. 
• We come back together for carpet time before preparing for hometime.

Autumn 2

Week Beginning 28th October

Toast Time

We have had major developments in our 'toast time' this week in nursery. We have provided children with their own order form so that they can order their own toast with their favourite topping! This was a huge success and the children were extremely excited about ordering their own toast. We then took it a step further and gave the children the repsonsibility of putting their own topping on their toast. The children were very careful when using the knives to spread their topping and they did a great job of sharing. We are very proud of how far they have come in a matter of weeks, especially in terms of their communication and language skills. Toast time is such a fantastic opportunity to sit around the table and talk. We are now practising our speaking and listening, turn taking and physical devleopment on a daily basis, without even realising it!

'Wake Up, Shake up!' 

We start our day in nursery with 'wake up, shake up!' The idea is to get the children 'moving and a groovin' and our brains warmed up set for a day full of learning. The children thoroughly enjoy dancing along and copying the actions and I am sure over time our dancing will get even better! 

15.11.19

We have had a fantastic week in Nursery. We are continuing with our daily routines such as 'Wake Up Shake Up' which helps us to start our morning and afternoon sessions alert and full of enthusiasm. Toast time has continued to give us lots of super speaking and listening opportunities, and the talk topics introduced by the children themselves have included healthy eating, holidays and even an imaginary journey to the moon. 

We followed the children's interest in going to the moon by sharing the story 'Whatever Next?' by Jill Murphy. The children have enjoyed retelling the story and trying out lots of different activities linked to the moon and space. There has been some super creativity on display as children created space collages with different media, created rockets in junk modelling and in construction, and explored in our space-themed playdough area. 

In maths we have been continuing to practice our counting, number recognition and formation skills and have been focusing on the number 5, trying to show the number in different ways. The children are also practicing counting out up to 5 objects from a larger group, and have become really good at doing this when using our interactive whiteboard maths games. 

Week Beginning 9th December

There is no escaping Christmas in nursery, especially when Miss Bermingham and Mrs Slattery are the world's biggest chirstmas fans! We are embracing the festive season and we have all things christmas happening in nursery! 

What a busy week we have had! Our week in nursery began with our 'Nursery Christmas 'Sing-a-long. The chidren did an absolutely superb job and made us all so proud. Not only did they remember their words, they also rememebered their actions when signing their final song. Such a great achievement for 3 and 4 year olds! 

On Wednesday we began making our wonderful Christmas cards. We gave the children as much independence as possible when making the cards, as a result, we have some beautiful red robin christmas cards ready to go home. 

Thursday brought us our 'Christmas craft day.' We made some delicious melting snowmen using biscuits, icing and marshmallows. We talked about what snow is made of and how it melts. We also discussed hygiene when baking and practised our fine motor skills by using a knife. 

As well as making melted snowmen, we have also been having a try at threading. This isn't the easiest thing to do but the children demonstrated great patience and resiliance when threading their christmas trees. 

Welcome back!

Please check out our Spring 2020 newsletter. You can find this in our 'Nursery News Items' section. 

A typical day in the life of nursery. 

Blending

As promised oat parents' evening, I will add some hints and tips for practising blending at home. 

'Simon Says...'

The children in nursery love to play 'Simon says...' and this is a perfect way to practise our blending. 

1. Give the children a instruction and blend one of the words in the instruction. For example, 'Simon says, touch your h-ea-d,' or, 'Simon says, r-u-b your tummy.'

Blending when getting dressed

Getting ready for nursery can be the perfect opportunity to practise blending skills. 

For example, 'Can you find your s-o-ck-s?' 'Please can you put on your t-o-p?' 'Go and brush your t-ee-th.' 'Would you like a d-r-i-n-k?'

We do this daily in nursery and it may be something as simple as, 'please can you sit d-ow-n.' The children enjoy the challenge of blending the words and it gives them great practise. 

I hope this is helpful! I am sure that by the end of the year we will have a class full of brilliant blenders in preparation for reception! 

Pancakes!

For maths this week, we are learning all about capacity, so it made total sense to incorporate this with pancake day! Children have been measuring out the ingredients using everyday vocabulary to descirbe the measures. We have discussed full and empty, half full and we have even been looking at the numbers on a measuring jug and talking about what they mean. We will be continuing to make pancakes throughout the week as part of our learning and we will be extending this by using a variety of measures to make different sized pancakes and looking at how the size of the pancake is detemrined by how much mixture we make and use.