Last week Nursery were hooked into our Be Kind, How do we show we care expedition with the launch of our key text The Everywhere Bear. Miss Tunney kindly provided Nursery with their very own Everywhere Bears that we can learn to care for, by taking them home each weekend for adventures.
Nursery learned that caring is looking after each other and our things. In our text, the Everywhere Bear gets lost and we have been thinking hard about how we could care for the bear to keep him safe. We thought how our own families are special and what belonging to a family means, as they help, love and keep us safe. The children took part in special family orientated crews on Wise Wednesday and Thoughtful Thursday, piecing together what makes our families special… quite literally.
The children took part in a thought shower of ideas that would keep the bear safe, from our own experiences of how our parents look after us. The result was that we decided to make identity bracelets for the bears.
Nursery then agreed it would be kind to share the love and safety around the school, to any other class or crew bears, to help be able to identify them easily if they ever got lost and to keep them safe. So the children gifted each class and staff members bracelets for their teddy bears.
Such beautiful and powerful learning to the beginning of expedition, to truly understand what it means to care for someone or something else – Well done Nursery!
This week, we completed our first Crew walkthroughs of the year — and what a wonderful opportunity it was to see our children and Crew Leaders already building such positive, caring and purposeful Crew communities.
Across NIS, we saw lots of examples of children belonging, caring for one another, working hard and growing their character. It was fantastic to see the care and attention being given to Crew time and the way our children are already beginning to understand what it means to be part of a Crew.
🐻 Our Care Bear Crews
Our Care Bear Crews showed some wonderful examples of positive communication, kindness and support.
We saw Crew Leaders using thoughtful prompts and communication to help children share their ideas and participate, alongside lots of kind, caring and supportive interactions. These small moments are so important in helping our children to feel that Crew is a safe and welcoming place where they are valued and listened to.
🪶 Crew Backshall
Crew Backshall showed a fantastic understanding of what makes a beautiful Crew circle.
The children were encouraged to think carefully about how they sat together and how they could make sure everyone could see and hear one another. One child explained:
“If our legs are crossed and knees are slightly touching we can make a perfect circle where we can see each other.”
What a brilliant explanation! 🌟
This is exactly the kind of ownership we want to see developing in Crew — children understanding not just what we do, but why it matters. The children were also encouraged to think about the care and attention they give to themselves, each other and their Crew.
💛 Crew Nightingale & Crew Earhart
There was a lovely warm and welcoming feel in both Crew Nightingale and Crew Earhart.
We saw children making clear connections between their actions, our character traits and HoWLs, with these being explained and discussed in a way that helped children understand what they look like in practice.
We particularly loved seeing children writing Golden Tickets for one another, celebrating the amazing character traits and HoWLs they have already seen their friends demonstrating this year. ✨
What a wonderful way to notice the positive things happening around us and remind each other that our character is something we build together.
🎨 Crew Parks & Crew Simmonds
In Crew Parks and Crew Simmonds, we saw children being encouraged to work hard and take pride in creating beautiful work.
It was lovely to see children being supported to think about the quality of what they produce and to recognise that beautiful work doesn’t happen by accident — it takes care, effort, perseverance and pride.
🌟 We are only just getting started!
Our first walkthroughs have given us lots to celebrate. Most importantly, they showed that our children are already beginning to understand that Crew is about more than sitting together.
It is about listening to one another, caring for one another, celebrating each other’s strengths, working hard, showing our character and making sure that everyone belongs.
A huge well done to all of our Crew Leaders and, most importantly, to our wonderful children for the fantastic start they have made to Crew this year.
This week, Class 1 have been hooked into our exciting new expedition: ‘Be Kind – How do we show we care?’
We had a very special visit from our Kindness Elves, who arrived with a wonderful surprise – a book called The Hugasaurus! The Hugasaurus is a beautiful story all about the magical power of kindness and how a little kindness can make a big difference. After enjoying the story together, the children were inspired to draw their very own Hugasaurus! We were so impressed with the children’s pencil control, careful drawing and fantastic mark-making skills. There were some very creative Hugasaurus designs!
But the Kindness Elves weren’t finished there…
The very next day, they returned with a special Kindness Mission! Their challenge was to write or draw a message to show someone that they care. During Crew, each child decorated their very own love heart, filling it with drawings and patterns. Once their hearts were ready, the children shared them with one another.
It was wonderful to see the children’s faces light up as they gave their kindness hearts to someone special – and even more wonderful to see just how many smiles they created along the way!
Here is our latest mission…
Our first week of Be Kind has shown us that kindness doesn’t have to be big or complicated. A smile, a kind word, a hug or a thoughtful little message can make somebody’s day.
Class 1 and Class 2 enjoyed a very special Teddy Bears’ Picnic to celebrate our first two weeks together as a crew! The children were excited to bring their favourite soft toys into school and share them with their friends. Over the last two weeks, the children have been working hard to build positive relationships, learn our routines and show kindness to one another. The picnic was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate all the new friendships that have blossomed and the fantastic teamwork we have already seen.
Over the past two weeks Nursery have been introduced to Crew and what that means for us as a school. They are beginning to understand that we are all friends and part of a community where we share and care for one another with kindness at the heart of everything we do. The children have made an excellent start to their school learning journey and have had lots of fun exploring and experimenting in the new environment.
The children have learned to circle up at the beginning of their sessions and use their crew mascot as a tool to recognise when it is their turn to speak and share for checking in or taking part. We have explored our zones of regulations, helping the children to name and identify their feelings more easily. They used a lolly pop stick to choose which feeling monster they identified with at that time linked to one of our crew texts; “The Colour Monster Goes to School”.
In our second week we had an exciting visit from the “Kindness Elves”, two magical elves who brought us a gift! It was the story, “The Hugasaurus” which centres around what a little dinosaur can do to help teach her friends to be kind a play together happily and harmoniously. The children have been thinking about this in their play and we have taken pictures of the children in provision sharing, being loving lions and working together being Teamwork Tigers, two of our most important character traits which the children are gradually being introduced to.
As our crew weeks drew to a close the children created a piece of special artwork which will be included in a unique crew final product which will be revealed later, but I can share our beautiful self portraits that will feature on it.
Finally we have celebrated with a lovely Teddy Bears picnic for our community crew on Friday. Each child brought in their favourite soft toy to share with their friends and we talked about how we all have different ones that are our favourites, as we all like different things making us all special. Yummy treats were enjoyed by all. Beautiful work Nursery.
At XP, our first week back looks a little bit different. Across our Trust, students and staff have been working hard to build and reestablish the most important part of our culture – Crew.
