As part of our expedition of “What do stories tell us about Autumn?” The Nursery children have been thinking about wildlife and how the birds will feed as the weather changes. Nursery have made their own bird feeders using their fine motor skills, threading cereal onto pipe cleaners. We then hung them onto the trees and bushes around Nursery. During our Thoughtful Thursday Crew we have also examined bird seed and filled up see through bird feeders to hang in Nursery’s garden, so we can watch the birds feed.
Since the return to school nearly two weeks ago, Nursery have been working hard on becoming familiar with each other and staff, learning new routines and settling into school life – we have all done superbly well. However Nursery needed to learn what a Crew actually means, as it is their first time in school; we had to learn “What is a Crew?”
Through the modelling and explanation of our HOWL’s the children have discovered that we are all expected to Be Kind, Work Hard and Get Smart. Children have been building relationships with both staff and their crews through crew games and activities. Everyone tried hard to be collaborative and inclusive, working as a team, sharing and being kind to each other. We have learned how to form a Crew Circle using song, as that’s always a good way to make routines fun! Check out our Crew building activities:
We played “Fill Up the Bucket” where each Crew had to pass coloured balls, backwards along the line and place them in the bucket with their final crew member. The children loved this game and enjoyed racing to see which crew could empty their starting circles first. We also changed positions to allow children to adopt different roles in the game.
We brought in our own special soft toys from home and began to celebrate how we are all different and like different things. We told our crew members all about our toys and then played a game of “Bounce the Teddy” encouraging the children to pass their special toy on to a friend and understand that sharing is caring and to trust their crew mate with their treasured toy. The children really enjoyed this activity and did very well in sharing and understanding that their toy would be safe and looked after.
We finished our crew weeks with celebration parties from Mr Dan. He made us all feel good and laugh. The children loved his tricks and learnt how to spin a plate! We have had the most amazing two weeks and have enjoyed getting to know each other better. We are Crew!
Today Nursery sat and shared a story with their teddies and friends to acknowledge National Read a Book day. The story was titled “Bunny Loves to Read”. In our story Bunny shared his love of reading and teaches all of his friends that you can travel to different worlds, even when you can’t go anywhere due to the rain! Bunnie’s friends realise how exciting reading is and when the rain stops they play games like the characters from their stories.
As part of Nurseries on going investigations into our current expedition, ”Would you travel by wheels, wings or other things?” This week we are exploring boats. We began by reading the text “The Boy Who Sailed the World” by Julia Green. We have learned about lots of different types of vehicles that move on water including; sail boats, cruise ships, ferries, hovercrafts, submarines and canoes.
We have began to create our own boats from recycled pop bottles, with sails made from recycled paper, just like the boy in our story. The children have independently constructed their boats and secured the sails using play dough. They have then predicted whether their boat would float or sink?
Nursery then tested them in the water tray. Some of the boats floated, whilst others sank as they “tipped”. Some of the words the children used to describe why, they thought the boats had tipped were ; ”Sail is wonky”, ”it’s (sail) too big”, ”it’s not a right shape (sail)” and ”the play dough was too heavy and tipped it”. Great investigations, I’m looking forward to seeing more throughout the week!
P.s. Check out our flashing Torpedo’s too! They are great fun, they light up and glide through the water, lets hope they don’t blow up our boats!
Nursery were visited on Wednesday 24th May by an expert visitor, Holly, from the Yorkshire Air Ambulance charity. Holly talked to the children about the role of the Air Ambulance and it’s Crew, whilst telling us interesting facts such as; it travels at 160mph, the helicopter costs £19,000 per day to run, there are two of them across the region and patients are treated on board just like a regular ambulance.
Nursery created their own air ambulance land art today, (after modelling and the use of a photo as a stimulus) using large loose parts in the outdoor area. They worked as a team to decide which materials to choose and which materials were most suitable in terms of shape, colour and size.
I think you’ll all agree the children have created some amazing land art in the shape and tones of the Air Ambulance. Such beautiful work! They have also learned key words such as Landing Skids, Propellers, Rotors and Ambulance body.
On Friday Nursery were practising for Walk to School Week, creating a walking bus and taking a tour around the Norton Campus. Our expedition this term is all centred around transport and examining different vehicles. We were lucky enough to experience workmen resurfacing the road and saw exciting large, heavy duty vehicles in action. There was a dumper truck, a tar spreading vehicle and roller. The children were fascinated.
Nursery did extremely well and behaved impressively throughout their walk. They all held hands and stayed in the walking bus, singing songs along the way. Upon our return to Nursery we made a pledge to walk to school at least one day the following week. Well Done Nursery, lets see who can keep their pledge to help save our environment and enjoy the outdoors.
As part of our expedition on Transport this term we have been looking at maps. Today during a maths related activity, Nursery were exploring a familiar route. First they learned about what a route is and then they used a map to guide them and thought hard about positional language including; forward, left and right. They walked the route and then explained how they got back to Nursery talking about familiar landmarks and beginning to use key words above. Well Done to our little Orienteers!
Today Nursery had an awesome day, expressing themselves in an African drumming workshop provided by Steve from Unbeatable Energy. The workshop was provided by our expert visitor as the whole of EYFS have been looking at African culture through the story of Handa’s Suprise in comparison to Little Red Riding Hood a more traditional tale. The children learnt to listen, repeat and keep a beat and experiment with different sounds as well as stopping in time.
We all had great fun and there were lots of smiles all round, especially when our parents came to watch and join in! What an experience, Nursery enjoyed showing off their new skills. Well Done Everyone!
This week Nursery have been enjoying two days of exploring and being immersed in our own micro expedition “What’s a Coronation all about?” based upon our text ”The Kings Pants” by Nicholas Allan. We learnt that King Charles, will be King Charles the third, as there were two other Charles that were Kings before him many years ago. We have listened to royal military marching music, looked at Royal Guards and observed what musical instruments are played during ceremonies. Then we practised and acted out our own parades.
Our thoughtful Thursday Crew was based around if we were a King or Queen for the day, what rule would we make? Some of the responses included ”Have chocolate for breakfast”, ”Only eat healthy food”, ”Clean all of the house everyday”, ”Be kind and gentle”, ”Don’t drive the bikes too fast”, ”Try our best”, ”Help our friends” and ”make everyone laugh”.
We thought about how we would like to celebrate and talked about parties that may be happening this weekend. Nursery made cupcakes and decorated them for a special surprise!
Our cupcakes were decorated with Red, White and Blue sprinkles – Just like the Union Jack.
Outdoors we took part in a Coronation Hunt, looking for key items and symbols of royalty… we enjoyed dashing around to find them and learnt lots of new words linked to the coronation, such as Septre, Red Arrows, Carriage, Bearskin Solider, Union Jack, Parade and Coronation.
Finally our Big Surprise was a ”Right Royal Tea Party” with a special visitor…see if you can spot him? We had juice in china tea cups and had special treats including our own cupcakes that we created. It’s been a very fun week and we have certainly worked hard, to get smart. Nursery would like to wish King Charles lll a very happy coronation! Long live the King!
Nursery have been immersed in the story of Little Red Riding Hood this week. We have been identifying the main characters, thinking and talking about what they are like and comparing the Wolf and Red Riding Hood. We have been retelling the story in a host of ways including sequencing using story stones…
We have experimented with role play and acted out the roles of our key characters in small groups using story language and we were fabulous!! Look out for our videos on Dojo!
