Over the past few weeks Nursery have been working hard as “Artists” to create a petal each or as a duo, in preparation to be used as part of their final product for this expedition. Through our stories “Little Sunflower” by Igloo Books and “Sam Plants a Sunflower” by Kate Petty the children gained inspiration for their artwork as they learnt how a sunflower grows and blooms. They have been investigating and exploring techniques using both paint and collage. The children have grappled with the effects that they could create using ready mixed paint and different brush strokes or manipulations of their paint brush. Some children chose either medium of paint or collage, whilst others chose to create with both. Here are some wonderful examples;
Upon completion of this beautiful artwork, the children worked collaboratively to first build their own sunflower for each nursery group, and then as a collective of Nursery as a whole merging both groups petals (later to be revealed on their final product at our celebrations of learning). Just look at the children’s beautiful work!
This week Nursery have been enjoying their outdoor learning/play at the same time as one or both of the Reception classes in EYFS. For younger children this can be daunting, having to share their space and equipment with older children and finding the courage and confidence to ask others for turns with toys. With support and modelling the children have began working collaboratively, beginning to resolve minor conflicts and starting to work co-operatively with each other ready for the summer term. The reception children were welcoming and kind, showing compassion to our youngest children. Thank you, beautiful work guys.
Nursery have been very “hoppy” this week as they moved on to exploring the life cycle of a frog, continuing our “We are scientists” agenda of our expedition. We began our investigations with a very engaging and funny rhyming text by Kes Gray titled “Oi Frog!” The children immediately fell in love with the comedic main character Frog, who explored what a host of animals sit on, as he didn’t want to sit on a log, as Cat demanded he should. Nursery enjoyed matching animals to their rhyming seated objects and have practised independently over the week, even sharing their rhyming with their parents in our family stay and play session on Friday.
On Tuesday after the children were hooked into frogs, we investigated how a frog begins its life revisiting some of our prior learning from both caterpillar and chick life cycles. We placed toy models of the varying stages of frog into our cycle. The children connected that the caterpillars eggs and frogs were similar in more of a bubble kind of egg, rather than a shell. As we moved through the stages, the children suggested their own movements of how we could represent the cycle. We then played a game of “Froggy says…” called out the stages and the children demonstrated their moves to embed their learning.
During Tranquil Tuesday and Thoughtful Thursday crew the children followed models of how to draw a tadpole and a frog. They independently had a go with fantastic results! Such beautiful work.
The children used their scientific knowledge, construction and creative skills to create an egg box tadpole or frog, as a choice in provision. They copied examples and produced some amazing models!
Even our Maths work was frog themed, as we have been getting better at counting to three, using careful counting (touch counting to check our thoughts). We sang three little speckled frogs and acted out the song, supporting each other to count in sequence. Next we considered if we had three frogs, how many lily pads would they need to have one each? How many tadpoles if each had one baby? And how many flies they would need to feed the mummy frog? Of course I threw a few too many tadpoles and flies in the mix to check the children’s understanding, but there were “no flies on them” – the children could “toad-ally” see through my trickery.
Nursery then demonstrated and consolidated their understanding by counting out three frogs from a pond to a lily pad.
As a lovely end to our week we shared our learning with our families, playing in the provision during a family play and stay session. Mums, Dads, brothers and sisters, Grandmas, Grandads and Uncles all had lots of fun spending time and playing with their special little people. Thank you to all who attended and for all of your support, they were two beautiful sessions and we even squeezed in a demonstration of our daily Nursery Rhyme singing as part of our phonics!
Yesterday KS1 celebrated Bob Manley’s 80th birthday by joining a worldwide singalong. We have been working really hard to learn the Marley Magic medley.
This week is Children’s Mental Health Week, so to advocate for this Nursery have been taking part in some mindful and relaxing activities to help them understand how it feels to feel calm and relaxed but more importantly how they can achieve this in times of upset, sadness or anger.
In our Mindful Monday Crew the children took part in animal yoga. They worked hard and had lots of fun recreating the modelled poses and practising yogi breathing.
During our Wise Wednesday Crew the children talked around what they noticed about the faces of some characters on a feeling thermometer as we checked in. Some children said that the characters from 3-5 on the scale looked; “Sad”, “Scared”, “Frightened”, “Worried” or were “Crying”. The children then pop corned, what they could do to cheer themselves up? Some of our ideas were fantastic, the children said “Go for a scooter ride”, “Get a hug”, “Play with toys”, “Bounce on my trampoline”, “Stroke my doggy”, “Read a book”, “Bake”, “Watch Bluey” and “Sing”.
Nursery then took part in a carousel of four different activities, each lasting 3/4 minutes which taught them strategies of what they can also do in school and at home to help them calm, relax and self regulate. These activities were;
At the end of the session we all checked back in to share how the children thought the characters on the feeling thermometer would feel now, if they had taken part in the activities we had? The children said “happy and calm”, “excited” or “relaxed”. The children then suggested which was their favourite activity – lots of fun and relaxing had by all. Great, powerful work Nursery!
We have been learning about imperative verbs and time conjunctions this week to help us with our writing. We really have been leading our own learning by using the iPads to check our work before moving own.
We have been busy in class five today looking at different seed packets. We thought about which we liked and why. We then thought carefully about which important features were on the packets that we would need to include if we were going to create our own. We came up with a list to help us with our writing this week.
Some amazing collaboration and kind critique – well done.
This week Nursery and EYFS had the most exciting expert visitors arrive at school in their shells! The children have been hooked into our latest text “How does an egg hatch?” By Eric Carle by watching real chicken eggs hatch courtesy of The Happy Chick Company. The children were so excited and completely in awe of seeing the eggs and observing the daily changes of how the eggs have changed and chicks have grown and hatched. A truly magnificent experience met with care, concern and compassion for the chicks from our youngest children.
On the first day the children observed the eggs and made predictions of what would happen and who might come out of the eggs if they were left inside the incubator. Some of the children’s ideas included; “a penguin”, “a caterpillar”, “a dinosaur”, “a chicken”, “a duck” and “a baby chick”. They drew the eggs inside the incubator in our message centre (below).
On the second day the chicks had began to hatch and the children were amazed to witness the hatchlings make their journey out of the eggs using their “Egg Tooth” one of the new words we learnt from our key vocabulary. To consolidate their understanding of the hatching process the children took part in a chick life cycle hunt in our outdoor area. When the children found photos of the key points of development, they brought them to our crew circle and we examined them and ordered them in the correct sequence using key words from our Maths learning; “First, next and then”.
As we investigated the life cycle further Nursery thought about the most important stage of the cycle. Our text explained that the hen makes a nest that is “warm and dry” (more of our key vocabulary) using sticks and straw. The children explored that the eggs we had in school didn’t have a nest or a mummy hen to sit on them to keep them warm, instead they had an incubator to replace those things. However in the wild or on the farm, there probably wouldn’t be any electricity for an incubator, so the children learnt that building the nest as a “warm and cosy” home for the eggs to be sat on, is the most important part of the process that allows the fertilised eggs to grow. The children had lots of fun making their own chocolate coated shredded wheat nests and filling them with chocolate eggs to show the nests significance.
The children observed the changes in the state of the chocolate as it was melted and then again as it was mixed with the shredded wheat and cooled in the fridge to harden again. They thought carefully of the order in which they were constructing the nests, again using our sequencing vocabulary; “First, then and next”.
In provision this week the children have learnt the song “Chick, Chick, Chick, Chick, Chicken”, painted chicks using yellow paint and a fork to mark on their fluffy feathers. They have sculpted eggs, nests and chickens from play dough, taken part in a cut and stick version of the life cycle of a chick practising their cutting skills. The children have also examined and matched mummy and baby animals together in pairs, learning the new vocabulary of the infant animals names eg; Horse and foal, Cow and calf, Duck and duckling and noticing the differences between the young and older animal as they grow and change.
Finally Nursery were super excited and eager to prepare their own chick box in preparation for us to host our own chicks in Nursery, now that they are all hatched and getting stronger and ready to be handled with care.
