Yorkshire Air Ambulance Land Art.

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 Ā£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.

Walk to School Week!

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.

What direction are we heading?

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!

We bounce to the beat of our own drums!

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!

The King’s Pants!

This week Nursery have been enjoying two days of exploring and being immersed in our own micro expedition ā€œWhat’s a Coronation all about?ā€ based upon our text ā€The Kings Pantsā€ 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 ā€Have chocolate for breakfastā€, ā€Only eat healthy foodā€, ā€Clean all of the house everydayā€, ā€Be kind and gentleā€, ā€Don’t drive the bikes too fastā€, ā€Try our bestā€, ā€Help our friendsā€ and ā€make everyone laughā€.

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 ā€Right Royal Tea Partyā€ 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!

We are storytellers.

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!

Making our own transport.

Nursery have been experimenting this week with building our own vehicles from large deconstructed materials. We have been teamwork tigers, helping to source, fetch and carry the different parts. The children have been building upon each others ideas, particularly after the inspiring visit from the vintage bus and seeing what our reception classes have created throughout the week also.

Vintage Vibes!

This week Nursery have been lucky enough to have had a visit from a vintage, red, London bus to kick off our new expedition on ā€œWould you travel by wheels, wings or other things?ā€ The children were very excited to climb aboard the double decker and were interested in examining key features of the bus acquiring lots of new language such as…

The driver kindly played along with an imaginary trip to the seaside, pulling the bus forward and backwards in the car park to allow the children to experience the sound and buzz of the engine. He also sounded his horn and let the children experiment with the bell. Nursery sat on both the lower and the top deck of the bus and looked out of the windows to see what they could see.

Final Touches and Bear-ginng our farewells!

The finishing touches have been added to our bear cub, with Olivia completing his head and each child from the foundation stage putting their hand print on his back as part of our community crew. All that remained to do, was for the logos to be attached and the bear to be varnished before Crewso began his journey to Leeds to join the Leeds Bear Hunt for the summer.

Crewso said his farewells to Norton and began his journey all shiny and proud, to represent the children of Norton Campus!

He was excited to meet his new temporary crew when he arrived in Leeds, stopping for a minute to take in the view of the River Aire across Rose Wharf in the sunshine. Then he happily climbed the stairs and joined his pack ready to be situated in his new home somewhere in Leeds City Centre. He’s going to let us know exactly where he is soon, so that we can all go and visit him! Have fun Crewso! #leedsbearhunt #leedsbearhunt2023 #leedshospitalscharity

It’s Bearly Believable…

But yes, Norton Infant School has it’s very own Bear Cub – Crewso!

A short while ago, I launched a competition to design a limb or part of a large fibre glass bear cub in aid of raising funds for Leeds Children’s Hospital, who are currently supporting one of our families. Below is Bruce, who has found the very first bear on the Leeds Bear Hunt Trail, at Leeds Hospital whilst receiving his treatment.

We have received some beautiful, thoughtful and intricate entries for the competition from most year groups across the campus and I am very proud to announce the artists taking part in the design and decoration of our very own bear cub are…. Ava from 6SO, Evelyn from 4TE, James from 3LG, Olivia in Class 4, Isla in Class 2, Alarna in Class 1 and Lily-Mai in Nursery. As the project forms part of a legacy from our 2022 Foundation Stages Autumn Expedition of ā€œHow do we care for the bears?ā€ Every child in the Foundation Stage and Nursery will be contributing their hand print to the final design also.

The artwork on the bear has commenced and each child has been carefully following their designs to produce an outstanding piece of art, which will be displayed in Leeds City Centre over the summer. Everyone is invited to visit our bear and take part in the Leeds Bear Hunt and feel proud that we have contributed to this fantastic event in aid of such a worthy cause. These children are activists making a difference to their community and we are incredibly proud of them. With teamwork and collaboration anything is possible! Here is a sneak peak of what has been happening….

Keep your eyes peeled for the finished bear over the coming week, before it makes it’s trip to Leeds for it’s temporary home over the summer during the trail. After the trail has finished the bear will return to us at the Infant School to live in our EYFS outdoor space as it’s forever home. There will be more fund raising events happening throughout the rest of the school year, to contribute towards the sponsorship of our bear cub, to raise money for the Leeds hospitals charity. As always your support is greatly appreciated and we are truly thankful that we can make a difference together as a community. For more information follow #Leedsbearhunt #Leedsbearhunt2023 #leedshospitalscharity