Oi Frogs!

Nursery have been very “hoppy” this week as they moved on to exploring the life cycle of a frog, continuing our “We are scientists” agenda of our expedition. We began our investigations with a very engaging and funny rhyming text by Kes Gray titled “Oi Frog!” The children immediately fell in love with the comedic main character Frog, who explored what a host of animals sit on, as he didn’t want to sit on a log, as Cat demanded he should. Nursery enjoyed matching animals to their rhyming seated objects and have practised independently over the week, even sharing their rhyming with their parents in our family stay and play session on Friday.

On Tuesday after the children were hooked into frogs, we investigated how a frog begins its life revisiting some of our prior learning from both caterpillar and chick life cycles. We placed toy models of the varying stages of frog into our cycle. The children connected that the caterpillars eggs and frogs were similar in more of a bubble kind of egg, rather than a shell. As we moved through the stages, the children suggested their own movements of how we could represent the cycle. We then played a game of “Froggy says…” called out the stages and the children demonstrated their moves to embed their learning.

During Tranquil Tuesday and Thoughtful Thursday crew the children followed models of how to draw a tadpole and a frog. They independently had a go with fantastic results! Such beautiful work.

The children used their scientific knowledge, construction and creative skills to create an egg box tadpole or frog, as a choice in provision. They copied examples and produced some amazing models!

Even our Maths work was frog themed, as we have been getting better at counting to three, using careful counting (touch counting to check our thoughts). We sang three little speckled frogs and acted out the song, supporting each other to count in sequence. Next we considered if we had three frogs, how many lily pads would they need to have one each? How many tadpoles if each had one baby? And how many flies they would need to feed the mummy frog? Of course I threw a few too many tadpoles and flies in the mix to check the children’s understanding, but there were “no flies on them” – the children could “toad-ally” see through my trickery.

Nursery then demonstrated and consolidated their understanding by counting out three frogs from a pond to a lily pad.

As a lovely end to our week we shared our learning with our families, playing in the provision during a family play and stay session. Mums, Dads, brothers and sisters, Grandmas, Grandads and Uncles all had lots of fun spending time and playing with their special little people. Thank you to all who attended and for all of your support, they were two beautiful sessions and we even squeezed in a demonstration of our daily Nursery Rhyme singing as part of our phonics!

Self Regulation Strategies.

This week is Children’s Mental Health Week, so to advocate for this Nursery have been taking part in some mindful and relaxing activities to help them understand how it feels to feel calm and relaxed but more importantly how they can achieve this in times of upset, sadness or anger.

In our Mindful Monday Crew the children took part in animal yoga. They worked hard and had lots of fun recreating the modelled poses and practising yogi breathing.

During our Wise Wednesday Crew the children talked around what they noticed about the faces of some characters on a feeling thermometer as we checked in. Some children said that the characters from 3-5 on the scale looked; “Sad”, “Scared”, “Frightened”, “Worried” or were “Crying”. The children then pop corned, what they could do to cheer themselves up? Some of our ideas were fantastic, the children said “Go for a scooter ride”, “Get a hug”, “Play with toys”, “Bounce on my trampoline”, “Stroke my doggy”, “Read a book”, “Bake”, “Watch Bluey” and “Sing”.

Nursery then took part in a carousel of four different activities, each lasting 3/4 minutes which taught them strategies of what they can also do in school and at home to help them calm, relax and self regulate. These activities were;

Dancing to guided movement songs.

Completing a jigsaw.

Guided breathing patterns including; Balloon breath, Bumblebee Breath, Snake breath and Finger breathing.

And mindful colouring.

At the end of the session we all checked back in to share how the children thought the characters on the feeling thermometer would feel now, if they had taken part in the activities we had? The children said “happy and calm”, “excited” or “relaxed”. The children then suggested which was their favourite activity – lots of fun and relaxing had by all. Great, powerful work Nursery!

How are you feeling today?

It might be Mental Health Awareness week this week but we think it is important to understand and talk about how we are feeling everyday. We decided to make some bookmarks to remind us to think about how we are feeling and to ask others too.

Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week

This week is Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week. The theme this year is ‘Know Yourself, Grow Yourself!’ We started the week by looking at some of the different characters from Disney’s Inside Out. We thought about what we knew about the characters and discussed where we thought they might sit within our zones of regulation. When we circled up for our debrief we realised that some of the characters might not just fit in one zone and the zone wasn’t always the one we thought!

Some really thoughtful conversations happening in Crew this morning ⭕️

Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week

In crew this morning we looked at the characters from Inside Out and thought about which of the zones of regulation they would belong in. For some of them it was tricky to put them in just one zone!

In our check out we thought about which of the characters we feel most like today, luckily we didn’t have any Angers or Ennuis in crew this morning!

Mindful Monday

We started our morning with a rose and a thorn check in followed by a talk about why World Religion Day is important. We decided to test our knowledge with a game of dominoes made up with lots of religious symbols. Our check out was what skills we needed to be successful this morning at our game.

It was a lovely crew start to our week,

Mrs Parsons xx

Y2 SLCs Prep

In Crew this morning Y2 have all been preparing for our SLCs next week. We got our Autumn Term expedition books out and picked our favourite piece of work as well as one we really grappled with. We can’t wait to share our “Rags to Riches” learning with you all next week.

Thoughtful Thursday

Thoughtful Thursday really got our brains working this morning! We had to work together try try and solve the puzzle – there was lots of communicating and resilience shown!

Super job year two crews

Hot Chocolate And Marshmallows

As a reward for all their hard work last week, year two had a ovely morning in crew this morning drinking hot chocolate and marshmallows. We also listened to a Christmas story and had a quick dance to some Christmas songs before opening our letter from Zoink the elf!