As part of the close to an amazing hook week, last Friday the children came in their summer clothes and brought in their special soft toys and teddies to share a picnic with their new friends. The children and their families kindly donated food to show an example of how we are kind and share. We all had lots of fun and it was a special end to a very positive first week exploring our new autumn expedition “Be Kind – How do we show we care?”

Over the past eight days of this brand new school year, Nursery have been immersing themselves, exploring and adjusting to their new environment. The children have had lots of fun and have began to make new friendships through Crew and playing together. We have been learning all about what Crew is and how we gather for Crew each day, circling up and sharing information about ourselves. We have taken part in crew challenges where the children have had to work together to play simple games and compete against either Crew Mortimer or Crew Winkley. The children have worked very hard to understand and take part in the games and shown courage when talking in their Crews.

Passing the ball above their heads in their crew line.

Gathering balls and replacing them in the baskets – fastest crew first.

We also had some surprise visitors this week that have helped us to begin to understand how to spread kindness. They were the “Kindness Elves” and they brought with them gifts for the children which were Everywhere Bears for each crew. These bears will be sent home each week with a child from both crews, to have adventures of their own, just like the children from our hook text “The Everywhere Bear” by Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb. The children are very excited to have met the elves and have been trying hard to show kindness to each other.

Today Nursery took part in a sea habitat gallery walk as they explore all of the different environments that sea creatures can be found in, live in and thrive amongst.

The children learned about the most familiar places such as the sea and an aquarium, whilst also discovering what a sea sanctuary hospital and a rock pool are. We watched and exciting video about what a rock pool might house, in preparation for an awesome, surprise experience later this week! Finally Nursery listened to the story “Billy’s Bucket” by Kes Gray, which tells of a little boy who would like a bucket for his birthday. However inside the bucket is another world – a rock pool world! We spoke about what we would like to see inside our buckets, if we had one like Billy’s. Some of the suggestions were; “shark”, “whale”, “a mermaid”, “Two little dogs”, “a unicorn”, “a stingray”, “a starfish”, “an octopus”, “a crab” and much more! What great imaginations, just like Billy’s!