Yesterday Nursery had brief history lessson, learning what VE Day is and why we celebrate it? The children joined the whole school for a special VE Day assembly and we had Crew’s dedicated to the celebrations where the children watched red arrow displays and VE Day parades. We all looked beautiful in our red, white and blue clothing with our lovely flags and home made accessories.
The children enjoyed colouring VE Day posters and celebrating with special red, white, blue buns kindly made by our school cooks – they tasted amazing!
What a way to start our new case study! Exploring space in the WonderDome. We can’t wait to use what we have found out to help us answer our guiding question – where could your journey take you?
This week began with Nursery taking a trip into the woods (within school grounds) to explore and experience what it would be like to be inside a forest as part of our first case study; Where in the world will this story take you? Our first anchor text of this case study is the classic fairytale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The children were so excited to go on an adventure and were also a little bit nervous about who or what they would find in the woods, as they explored using their senses.
Once inside the woods the children were relieved to find there weren’t any wolves, bears or Gruffalo’s! We used our senses to think about what we could see, hear, smell and feel with both our hands and feet. The children were read the story inside the woods to set the scene and bring the story to life. They really enjoyed it and listened attentively whilst holding their sticks, leaves, flowers and ferns.
Once back in the classroom the children shared thoughts of their experience and completed a class sense map, noting down ideas of what they could see, hear, smell and feel. There were some beautiful thoughts and sentences that were communicated from the adventure which really helped the children to understand what a forest is. We have used this knowledge and experience to inspire large scale pieces of artwork, which will be part of our final product in terms of creating a story setting. The children also watched a short video of a virtual tour through Sherwood Forest, in Nottingham, where they tried to spot Robin Hood! They then compared that to the experience of our school woods in Norton and talked about what was the same and what was different? They soon realised that forests were much bigger with larger trees, thicker bushes and more undergrowth. They also learnt that not only animals but people could also possibly live in a forest like in olden times. You have been great geographers Nursery! Here’s a sneak peak of our artwork…
We left our classroom this morning and used our boarding passes to travel to Paddington Station. We spent the morning exploring London landmarks that we had found on our map or read about in our Paddington books.
Nursery have had a wonderful time over the past week celebrating Easter. We began the week with a puppet show telling the traditional easter story of Jesus. The children listened carefully and were encouraged to ask questions after the show or explain their feelings or opinions about the story. Some of which were; “I think it’s sad because Jesus died” and “It was mean, because they made him carry that cross up the big hill”.
During their free play we captured some of the children creating their own puppet shows about Jesus, showing they were embedding their learning in their play.
The children baked and decorated their own easter themed biscuits, using flour, sugar, butter and an egg. They carefully took turns to weigh out ingredients with support and followed instructions to mix, beat, roll and cut out their dough. The children each chose their own easter time shape cutter and colour icing along with decorations to make their biscuits extra yummy!
We also had an egg-stra special visit from the Easter Bunny himself, who had heard about how hard we have been working and how kind we have all been, so decided to bring some of our treats early! He brought us an Easter Egg and we all had cuddles or high fives! There were some very excited children and grown ups….
At home we have been working hard and collaboratively with our parents to design and create a decorated boiled egg. Some entries were a single egg whilst others were a whole scene of egg themed characters. They were all absolutely amazing, so much effort and time had been spent working together. The winners of our EYFS competition in Nursery were chosen by the Reception children, who judged and voted for all of the entries (an extremely tough job). The winners were Willow from Am Nursery for her egg filled bonnet and Jenny from Pm Nursery for her Leonardo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Well done girls! However a huge thank you and well done to everyone, as all of the entries were outstanding, such beautiful work and the children were so proud. Here they are…
We finished our week with lots of fun in the sunshine including an Easter Egg Hunt, the children had lots of fun.
We have been busy learning about 1/2 in maths and decided the best way to find out about a whole one and making two equal parts was to make some delicious marmalade sandwiches … just like Paddington Bear! Who knew maths could be delicious?!
These children blew me away today! Not only did they read their new text beautifully but they managed to read all their words including the tricky words to play our game!
