All Things Bright and Beautiful.

15th September 2025Sarah Winkley

What a “Marvellous” hook week Nursery had last week! As part of our first expedition “Marvellous Me” the children shared parts of their personality that make them “the same, but different” to each other. To begin the week we all dressed in our favourite colour, we were all very bright and beautiful, very much like the rainbow.

Over the next couple of days the children brought in their favourite toys, certificates or props from a hobby to share with their friends during Crew and explain a little bit more about what they like and are interested in. Here are a few;

On Thursday we shared photos of our families and spoke about who our special people are. The children loved to see their photos up on the big screen or being held up. We played a short guessing game to see if we could work out whose family it was? There were also lots of beautiful pets that featured in the photos – We were all excited to see them.

Friday saw us finish our hook off with a teddy bears picnic. The children brought in their favourite friend in the form of a soft toy or teddy and we shared a delicious brunch together in the sunshine. We sang nursery rhymes and some tried croissants and fruit juice for the very first time. It was just lovely.

“Loving Lions“ Settle.

8th September 2025Sarah Winkley

During our first official week back with all Nursery children together, they have been focusing on being kind, like “Loving Lions” through carefully chosen texts. The children have began to play co-operatively and alongside each other with more respect and kindness. We have focused on sharing toys and resources and praised the children when we have seen this in the areas of provision. Children continued to familiarise themselves with the environment and begin to follow routines with increasing ease.

Here are a few photos to show how well the children are settling in, having fun and becoming Crew and getting used to routine and the expectations for the beginning of their school journey.

Taking part in fun, active listening Crew games such as the Animal Freeze Song.

Beginning to play collaboratively or being “Teamwork Tigers”. Over the week we heard lots of children say; “You can play with me” or “I will help you” or “Can I play?” We are beginning to make new friendships.

Next week we begin our first ever learning expedition… how exciting! I wonder what it could be about?

Nursery’s introduction to Crew.

2nd September 2025Sarah Winkley

This week Nursery have began to learn what Crew is? And how we take part in it?

We have circled up using our special circle song and we have began to become more familiar with our Crew leader’s. Each crew has the name of a bird as their Crew name and a little pet to help the children to understand being kind, helping them to focus and concentrate whilst take turns to speak. We wonder if you can guess the names of our Crews?

Our focus this week is one of our core principles “ Being Kind”. We are teaching this through a host of stories about kindness and friendship, in particular “Kind” by Axel Scheffler where the key character is lion. This links to our characteristic’s of effective learning character’s, where we encourage the children to show kindness like a “Loving Lion”. Being kind underpins everything we do at Norton Infant School, especially in the Early Years as it helps children to build strong bonds and relationships with each other and staff. This character trait is essential for learning those early social skills, how to treat others, how to play fairly and respectfully and how to look after each other and our Nursery. Let us know if you catch your child being kind – Look out for reward stickers and certificates to praise their acts of kindness this week.

Did you guess our Crew names?

That’s right Crew Puffin’s, Crew Blackbirds, Crew Penguins and Crew Robin’s.

EYFS Community Meeting

4th July 2025Emma Powell

Our postcard winners this week…Some amazing examples of being kind, working hard and getting smart.

Well done to everybody – you are all amazing.

EYFS Community Meeting

20th June 2025Emma Powell

Well done to all of our postcard winners today…..we had lots to share and celebrate!! We heard some lovely examples of children leading their own learning, being creative, doing teamwork and persevering with tasks. Another fabulous week in our Nursery and Reception classes.

EYFS Community Meeting

13th June 2025Emma Powell

Here are our HoWLs stars of the week from Nursery and Reception. It was so lovely to hear how hard the youngest children in our school are working. We heard about some amazing acts of kindness and great examples of hard work and teamwork. Well done to all of our postcard winners today.

Friendship blocks

22nd May 2025Sarah Winkley

This mornings Crews in Nursery were spent thinking about the building blocks of friendship and being kind. Each crew member were given a block or brick and encouraged to think about what would a kind friend do to help make their friends happy? How can we play nicely together? How can we make sure everyone feels included? How we can manage our feelings if our friends don’t want to play at that moment?

Some of the thoughts that the children offered were; “Be kind”, “Share toys or food?”, “Ask someone to play with you too”, “Give them a cuddle or a kiss”, “Be nice”, “Sharing”, “Ask them to play” and “Play with someone else”. Good thinking Nursery, we’re all friends in Nursery.

Run, Run as Fast as you can….

21st May 2025Sarah Winkley

This week Nursery have began case study two of our expedition “ Who is hiding in the pages of this book?” We have been immersed in our new text The Gingerbread Man. To hook the children into their learning they were detectives on a hunt for character body parts in our outdoor area. When they found all of the characters parts the children put them back together again revealing what our key text of the week would be. They were very excited for it to be The Gingerbread Man!

We modelled role play of the Baker and the Gingerbread Man to the children. The Gingerbread Man was apologising for running away and asked if he could help to make more Gingerbread to show how sorry he was. But how would he do this? The children hot seated the Baker and were encouraged to think about the ingredients that the Gingerbread Man may need. The Baker explained that they would need follow a recipe and a method, showing this to the children.

The children have had lots of fun role playing with the masks themselves in provision.

We then of course baked Gingerbread Men, following the Bakers recipe and instructions. The children were encouraged to think about first, next and then sequencing whilst they were baking. They also learned about different forces which they were using to make the gingerbread men as they mixed, rolled and pulled the rolling pin through the dough or pressed their Gingerbread Man shapes out with the cutter. These are pushes and pulls!

Luckily none of our gingerbread men tried to make a run for it! Great work Nursery.

Who’s that Trip, trapping over my bridge?

21st May 2025Sarah Winkley

Last week Nursery continued to be geographers as they explored the final part of our first case study “Where in the world will this story take us?” The children explored rivers, comparing our local river in Norton; the River Went to the River Congo in Africa.

To hook the children into their learning and help them explore their local area they observed the “Adventures of our Everywhere Bear”, as he sent them a special dojo message with photos of his trek to the River Went, through the magical forest. They loved to see their special class mascot out on his own adventuring and exploring around our village. Many of the children recognising key landmarks on his journey.

The Everywhere Bear beginning his adventure.

The Everywhere Bears adventures led us to our key text of The Three Billy Goats Gruff as we immersed ourselves into the story, due to it being set over a river. The children enjoyed learning about the characters in the story and identified that the Big Billy Goat Gruff was a hero and the wicked troll a villain. They were delighted when the troll was tossed into the river! Here are a few of our representations of the Troll and the Billy Goats Gruff from our maths learning this week focusing on triangles and rectangles.

This got us thinking about how deep the river might be? We then compared the River Went to a much deeper and wider river – the River Congo. The children took a gallery walk of photos of the river, noting differences and similarities between the Congo and the River Went.

We then boarded our imaginary canoes in groups of three, dressed with our binoculars and went on a virtual tour of the River Congo. Thinking about and imagining what we would be able to see, hear, smell and feel. We were very surprised when we were chased by crocodiles and sea snakes! We had to paddle fast! It was very scary and exciting. Not something you’d usually see or encounter at the River Went, thankfully.

The children had so much fun and used the imaginary experience to talk about what they may sense by a river. Beautiful work Nursery and something which you may get to experience for real sooner than you know as part of our fieldwork – shhh!!

A super week of learning in EYFS

16th May 2025Emma Powell

Wow……Nursery and Reception had so many postcard winners in our community meeting this week. Lots of kindness being shown by the youngest children in our school and some great examples of working hard and getting smart. Keep up the super work everyone.