Class Blogs | Norton Infant School

In the moment learning and play.

20th February 2023Sarah Winkley

One of the children from morning Nursery found a dead spider today in the playroom. They brought it to me and asked me to look how beautiful it was. We spent a little while admiring the spider and its markings along with its long legs. I questioned the child what do you think happened to the spider? ”I don’t know, maybe he got poorly and died?” they replied. The child then shared their own experiences of death linked to a family pet when they were a baby. I invited the other children to come and see the spider and they sat patiently as the child carefully put the spider into a little cup for them to see. He then passed it around his peers.

A whole host of questions and predictions arose from this moment, such as; What do spiders eat? Why do they hang on webs? Do all spiders have long legs like those? Do they all have eight legs? Why is that spider so shiny? I wonder what happened to him? Will he go to heaven? I answered the children questions and fuelled their engagement. They were so respectful of each other during this interaction, allowing each other to speak and following on ideas from one child to another and answering each others questions, leading their own learning. It was beautiful to watch. They were even empathetic and reassuring towards the children who are afraid of spiders, saying “I wont let it go or make it jump, it’s dead, it can’t hurt you.” This then inspired lots of role play about spiders and some other children trying to make other sick animals better in our Doctors role play area. Great Work Guys!

Children’s Mental Health week.

10th February 2023Sarah Winkley

In Nursery this week we have been thinking about how to help keep our brains healthy and how to show kindness. We have taken part in various crews on sharing, kindness, exercise and our feeling monsters (zones of regulation). The children brought in their own teddies to share with their friends in a circle game. Every other child had a teddy and they sang a song called ”Pass the Teddy”. The aim of the game was to bounce the bear on their knee and then when the music stopped they had to pass the bear to the child next to them without a bear/toy so that they could have a turn too. All of the children were very gracious and kind to share their bears and they were very understanding that not everyone was holding a bear without feeling left out or possessive over their teddy.

Today the children thought more about the range of emotions they may feel via the feeling monsters (zones of regulation). We made stick puppets of the monsters. Nursery recognised that each emotion needed different facial expressions, such as a smile, frown, scowl or excited face. The children used amazing cutting skills to create the faces of the emotion they wanted to explore. They used googly and sticky eyes and drew on the appropriate mouth/ expression. We were were very proud peacocks of our final results!

Feeling sleepy!

10th February 2023Laura Parsons

Strange goings on in Class 5 today – everyone is feeling sleepy and forgot to put their uniform on! They have told me it’s because they are raising money for Sheffield Children’s Hospital ❤️

In a deep dark wood…

9th February 2023Anna Wojcik

Class 4 had a lovely afternoon visiting our Gruffalo wood on the school ground. We looked around to spot as many natural things as we could and used some amazing adjectives to describe what we could see.

Exploring Outdoors

9th February 2023Emma Powell

In Crew this week we have enjoyed spending time outdoors making connections between ourselves and the great outdoors. We have spent time talking about ourselves and people that are important to us before spending some quality time together outside, enjoying being in the fresh air with the people that are important to us in school. It made us feel really happy when we spotted some of the first signs of spring time in our woods.

Crew Outdoors

8th February 2023Elouise Chadwick

We enjoyed getting outside this morning. We thought about the importance of working as a team. Our mission was to make a bridge that went over the lava! The children did a great job 👏

Class Connections

8th February 2023Laura Parsons

We have been thinking in crew today about all the different things that make us unique – we then realised that all of those things that make us special help us to make connections too.

Just look how connected we really are with our class five jigsaw.

Mrs Parsons x

Nursery learning how to lift mood with exercise.

7th February 2023Sarah Winkley

As part of Children’s Mental Health Week, Nursery have taken part in a special dancing crew to show how exercise can lift their mood and make them feel happy. We did a comparison of before and afterwards to see if they felt any different. Most children said they felt happier.