Easter Traditions

23rd March 2026Sarah Winkley

Last week Nursery were exploring and for most being introduced to the real meaning of Easter for the first time. We told a child friendly traditional tale of Easter and the children explored themes of whether the treatment of Jesus was fair and kind? Were the people who hurt him “Loving Lions”? They were hooked into the story, using a Good Friday version of pass the parcel. The children pulled out items that were significant to the story and suggested what they maybe… They had some great ideas, grappling that a bamboo cross was “a sign” or “an arrow”. They suggested that the piece of red material was “a towel” or “scarf” and that a crown made from pipe cleaners was “a hat” or a “hula hoop”. They correctly identified bread and fish and stones.

The children carried large construction tubes, testing their gross motor skills, around the outdoor area including up and over the hill. They worked in pairs mostly, being teamwork tigers. The tubes symbolised Jesus cross. The children offered some wonderful ideas around this activities, understanding that Jesus must have been “tired”, “aching”, “sore” and they found it “tricky”.

Throughout the week the children had the opportunity to create an Easter crown using craft materials.

To activate and construct the idea of Easter being a time of new life, the children took part in some planting. They each took turns to plant their own cress seeds, learning what things plants need to survive and grow. The children really enjoyed this activity and were able to explain that plants need “sun”, “water”, “air”, “soil” or “muck” to grow.

Our maths work also centred around traditional Easter and new life last week too as the children recapped on repeating patterns using traditional pictures and baby animals.

Where will our vehicles take us?

18th March 2026Sarah Winkley

Last week Nursery brought case study three of our expedition to a close by thinking about “Where will your vehicle and imagination take you?”

We all bordered the “Imagination Station Train” and pretended as we chugged along the tracks and pulled into lots of imaginary worlds. The journey began by being modelled to the children, encouraging them to think of far away or imaginary places, such as Lollipop land or Chocolate World. As the children became immersed in their play, they began to suggest stops of their own such as Dinosaur Land, The Jungle, Mermaid World, Unicorn Land and Sweetie Town.

The children were then asked if they could go in any vehicle, to any place – Where would it be? How would they get there? And most importantly what would their vehicle be powered by? The children made some wonderful suggestions using their imagination and knowledge, built up from throughout the expedition, really consolidating their learning. We really have been on the move!

In provision the children also explored, used their imaginations and translated their learning to create their own imagination station journeys.

Mindful Monday

9th March 2026Sarah Winkley

Today in Crew Nursery kicked back with a follow up activity to world book day. They each attempted a Fairytale character Hide and Seek. The children looked for traditional characters and counted how many times they could spot them. Most children attempted to write numbers or make marks to represent what they had found. Amazing work and lots of fun!

World Book Day 2026.

9th March 2026Sarah Winkley

On Friday Nursery celebrated World Book Day. Children were so excited to come to school in fancy dress as a book character or with their home made Dr Seuss inspired crazy hat. All children and hats looked absolutely amazing!

We celebrated with a a host of book inspired small world activities where children could create their own stories around their favourite characters.

We made bookmarks to help keep our place in our books….

Finally we used our tales tool kit writing frame to help us tell stories by cutting and sticking characters and drawing our own settings. These were amazing, the story language and creativity that the children used was fabulous.

Crew, Collaboration, Critique and Teamwork Tigers!

2nd March 2026Sarah Winkley

The last two weeks have seen the children in Early Years making large scale models of vehicles towards their final product for our expedition, “We are on the move – Would you travel by wheels, wings or other things?” Each child designed their own eco-friendly vehicle and the designs were judged by Miss Tunney. There was one winner from each crew and the children of that crew have began to work collaboratively to create and make their chosen design. The children have worked so hard to make decisions together, exchanging and suggesting ideas of how they could make their vehicles the best that they can be. Carefully choosing which materials would be the best to make their model out of, giving special thought to the eco friendly parts, such as batteries, solar panels, turbines, tanks, sails and propellers! They even took part in a simple vote to help make decisions, by placing a lolly stick on the materials of their choice.

Today as a hook to continuing to finish our vehicles the children took turns to look at each crews model. That crew presented what their model was, how it was powered and why it was good for the planet? The other crew offered critique of what they liked about the model firstly and then suggested what the model was missing to be complete. We had some lovely ideas to help enhance the models, suggestions included, “ A control panel”, “A steering wheel”, “A door”, “seats for the pilot”, “A tank” (to hold the power source), “a button to open the door”, “Windows”, “More wheels” and much more! This is an advanced skill for such young children and with careful scaffolding the children were beginning to understand the concept of critique – Well done Nursery.

“Heal the World… Make it a better place”.

3rd February 2026Sarah Winkley

Yesterday Nursery were hooked into learning for our second case study, How Can we power our vehicles without damaging our world? Through the medium of role play. Nursery staff pretended to be planet earth and a car. The Earth explained to the children, all of the wonderful things that it gives to help us and animals live happy lives including; water, air and food.

Then along came a car, with its polluting clouds of fumes and smoke! It refuelled at the petrol station and was busy tootling around creating more and more pollution.

Sadly all of the cars smoke and fumes began to make the earth poorly…

The driver of the car, then stopped to think about how they could make a small change to help make a difference to the world and help the world to get better and for us to have cleaner air… By walking to places more.

The children were so immersed in the roleplay, that they continued the role play in their free flow play, thinking about the fuels we use to power our vehicles and which vehicles used fuel to make them work? They talked about “diesel”, “petrol” and “electric” cars.

This week the children are also exploring a pollution play tray linked to our thoughts of saving the earth. They have began to explore what happens to the rainforests by large vehicles causing deforestation and how the warming gases and fumes make the ice caps melt that the polar bears live on.

Nursery have been inspired to think of small changes and little ways in which we can help, through our key text “Please Help Planet Earth” a Ladybird eco book. We have found that we can turn off taps, save electricity by turning off lights when we’re out of a room, we can recycle rubbish and place all rubbish in bins, we can plant flowers for the bees and butterflies, we can grow our own vegetables to save the rainforests from being turned into farms, we can help to feed the birds and most importantly we can walk to more places or take a bus or a train to help keep pollution fumes lower. Beautiful work Nursery!

Go, Go, Nursery’s boats.

2nd February 2026Sarah Winkley

Last week Nursery children were immersed in learning about all kinds boats introduced through our key text “Go Go Pirate Boat”(which is a melodic text that tells a story, to the familiar tune of Baa Baa Black Sheep, drawing on the children’s previous phonic knowledge and helping them to create new Nursery rhymes of their own). We began by focusing on the two boats in our story using pictures to support our understanding, these were a rowing boat and a pirate ship. We noticed the similarities and differences between the boats and unpicked key vocabulary, using physical movements to activate our learning pretending to use or be a sail, a hoist, oars and the plank.

The children made up their own boat themed stories using our tales tool kit resources, thinking of their own problems and solutions of what happened to “Sharon” the mermaid and “Captain Pirate Underpants”. The language, ideas and enthusiasm was infectious! The children worked hard to revisit and recall all of the story using repetition. Great work!

On Wise Wednesday the children were encouraged to think carefully about what other vehicles or vessels go in or on the sea? They went on a gallery walk around Nursery and observed several different vehicles, some which were familiar and others that they didn’t know of, including a kayak, a submarine, a cruise ship, an oil tanker, a fishing trawler, a speedboat and a hovercraft. The children engaged in some thoughtful conversations about the vehicles using clues from the pictures to guess what that type of boat would be used for.

Afterwards the children continued their previous learning of making a list, being encouraged to think of the initial sound of the sea vehicle. Look at out our beautiful drawings.

Wheels, Wheels, Wheels.

18th January 2026Sarah Winkley

This week Nursery children have began exploring their first case study into our new expedition “We are on the move – Would you travel by wheels, wings or other things?” In this case study we are focusing on what vehicles move by wheels, wings and other things? We started with wheeled vehicles with the help of our primary text “Car, Car, Truck, Jeep” by Katrina Charman. We learned the “Car, Car, Truck, Jeep” song which is sang to the tune of one of our familiar Nursery rhymes, Baa, Baa, Black Sheep. At the end of the week the children were filmed singing part of the song (which included wheeled vehicles) and this was shared with parents via Class Dojo – check it out!

To activate the children’s learning we shared photos of their own experiences on wheeled vehicles, here are a few.

We also engaged in transport themed yoga where the children used their physical skills to hold poses pretending to be a car, a train and a boat.

We played Vehicle Pass the Parcel, where the children sang as they passed around the bag before taking out a vehicle, attempting to name it and making the sound that it makes. To deepen their understanding of some vehicles the children matched their pass the parcel toy to emergency service vehicles using photo cards.

To consolidate our learning we drew a car, following step by step instructions, using lines both straight and curved and circles. We were very careful in our observations to try and copy our teacher as accurately as we could. Our drawings were amazing!

We were challenged to build vehicles indoors and out using all kinds of construction materials.

Our maths learning focused on parking a number of vehicles in a car park and counting each mobile, to check how many there were in the spaces? We were challenged to think about how many more we could fit in the car park too.

And in our creative moments we collaged a car from our choice of coloured papers and glue, which we will display on a stand to make it look like it’s driving along on its wheels. We also learnt how to finger paint and created vehicles such as a car, a lorry and a train using different parts of our fingers.

To demonstrate all of our new knowledge we finished the week by creating a list of wheeled vehicles. We each took turns to think of and draw a different vehicle and were encouraged to think of and say the initial sound to label the vehicle on our list.

What a fun filled week it has been. We’re excited to explore vehicles that go in the air next.

The Bus was for Us!

14th January 2026Sarah Winkley

During our first week back Nursery experienced a very exciting hook week to power up our new expedition, We are on the move – Would you travel by Wheels, Wings or Other things?

We had a very exciting Vehicle Showcase on our school grounds to support our hook week text The Bus is For Us by Michael Rosen. In the text the children explored various modes of transport that were available for people to travel by, both real and imaginary. To bring the text to life the Nursery children observed a range of real life vehicles or modes of transport that move around our local community including; a tractor, a camper van, an old american Sheriff car, a fire engine, an old vintage car, roller skates, a scooter and a mobility scooter! The children were so excited to look at the vehicles and sit inside/on some of them. The talked about the appearance and colours of the vehicles and picked out key features, such as wheels, mirrors, lights, fuel cap/bottle and special features such as ladders and raised roofs!

Nursery also went on a short trip to the Junior school to make traffic observations. They were excited to count and see various modes of transport that moved up and down the busy road. We saw a van, a post van, several cars, a bike, someone walking and a dog, birds flying, lorries and two trucks. Finally after a little wait we were even lucky enough to see a Bus!! “The Bus is for us, the Bus is for everyone!”

We then thought carefully about what we had seen and placed lollypop sticks to mark a simple tally, which helped the children to remember the different kinds of vehicles.

Each day we are encouraged to walk to school to stay healthy and help the environment, we complete a Travel Tracker to record this. When we were completing this in hook week, the children were encouraged to consider how they move through their journey to school, is it by wheels or other things?

Finally to race to the finale of our week Nursery were asked to come to school on their bikes or scooters as an alternative to walking or driving. The children were so excited to share their bikes and scooters with us.

What a wonderful hook week and first week back it was to chase the Christmas blues away and accelerate our learning into their latest expedition.

Remembering and letting our lights shine.

11th November 2025Sarah Winkley

This week Nursery are thinking about cultural celebrations/traditions and have been exploring Diwali and Remembrance Day.

We began the week by hooking the children into Diwali, the Hindu celebration of light, by immersing the children in special Indian music and entering Nursery in the darkness, lit only by Diya lamps. The children were so excited and soothed by the atmosphere as they drew pictures of the diya lamps. They listened carefully to our key text “Binny’s Diwali” by Thrity Umrigar and learned that the lamps are traditional and used as decorations to guide in luck and light and warn off any darkness.

We have also paused to remember and celebrate the fallen and serving armed forces on Remembrance Day, by listening to an age appropriate story “Lest We forget” by Kerry Brown during our Tranquil Tuesday Reading Crews. The children came to school dressed in patriotic colours to show their support for the cause and made donations to the British Legion. Nursery have drawn some beautiful pictures of Poppy’s using their observational, considering shapes and simple details including colour.