Easter Celebrations

21st April 2025Sarah Winkley

Nursery have had a wonderful time over the past week celebrating Easter. We began the week with a puppet show telling the traditional easter story of Jesus. The children listened carefully and were encouraged to ask questions after the show or explain their feelings or opinions about the story. Some of which were; “I think it’s sad because Jesus died” and “It was mean, because they made him carry that cross up the big hill”.

During their free play we captured some of the children creating their own puppet shows about Jesus, showing they were embedding their learning in their play.

The children baked and decorated their own easter themed biscuits, using flour, sugar, butter and an egg. They carefully took turns to weigh out ingredients with support and followed instructions to mix, beat, roll and cut out their dough. The children each chose their own easter time shape cutter and colour icing along with decorations to make their biscuits extra yummy!

We also had an egg-stra special visit from the Easter Bunny himself, who had heard about how hard we have been working and how kind we have all been, so decided to bring some of our treats early! He brought us an Easter Egg and we all had cuddles or high fives! There were some very excited children and grown ups….

At home we have been working hard and collaboratively with our parents to design and create a decorated boiled egg. Some entries were a single egg whilst others were a whole scene of egg themed characters. They were all absolutely amazing, so much effort and time had been spent working together. The winners of our EYFS competition in Nursery were chosen by the Reception children, who judged and voted for all of the entries (an extremely tough job). The winners were Willow from Am Nursery for her egg filled bonnet and Jenny from Pm Nursery for her Leonardo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Well done girls! However a huge thank you and well done to everyone, as all of the entries were outstanding, such beautiful work and the children were so proud. Here they are…

We finished our week with lots of fun in the sunshine including an Easter Egg Hunt, the children had lots of fun.

Teamwork makes us Bloom.

2nd March 2025Sarah Winkley

Over the past few weeks Nursery have been working hard as “Artists” to create a petal each or as a duo, in preparation to be used as part of their final product for this expedition. Through our stories “Little Sunflower” by Igloo Books and “Sam Plants a Sunflower” by Kate Petty the children gained inspiration for their artwork as they learnt how a sunflower grows and blooms. They have been investigating and exploring techniques using both paint and collage. The children have grappled with the effects that they could create using ready mixed paint and different brush strokes or manipulations of their paint brush. Some children chose either medium of paint or collage, whilst others chose to create with both. Here are some wonderful examples;

Upon completion of this beautiful artwork, the children worked collaboratively to first build their own sunflower for each nursery group, and then as a collective of Nursery as a whole merging both groups petals (later to be revealed on their final product at our celebrations of learning). Just look at the children’s beautiful work!

Morning Nursery’s Sunflower
Afternoon Nursery’s Sunflower

Oi Frogs!

8th February 2025Sarah Winkley

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!

Seed Packet Critique

3rd February 2025Laura Parsons

We have been busy in class five today looking at different seed packets. We thought about which we liked and why. We then thought carefully about which important features were on the packets that we would need to include if we were going to create our own. We came up with a list to help us with our writing this week.

Some amazing collaboration and kind critique – well done.

Mrs Parsons xx

“Egg-stremely” exciting visitors.

2nd February 2025Sarah Winkley

This week Nursery and EYFS had the most exciting expert visitors arrive at school in their shells! The children have been hooked into our latest text “How does an egg hatch?” By Eric Carle by watching real chicken eggs hatch courtesy of The Happy Chick Company. The children were so excited and completely in awe of seeing the eggs and observing the daily changes of how the eggs have changed and chicks have grown and hatched. A truly magnificent experience met with care, concern and compassion for the chicks from our youngest children.

On the first day the children observed the eggs and made predictions of what would happen and who might come out of the eggs if they were left inside the incubator. Some of the children’s ideas included; “a penguin”, “a caterpillar”, “a dinosaur”, “a chicken”, “a duck” and “a baby chick”. They drew the eggs inside the incubator in our message centre (below).

On the second day the chicks had began to hatch and the children were amazed to witness the hatchlings make their journey out of the eggs using their “Egg Tooth” one of the new words we learnt from our key vocabulary. To consolidate their understanding of the hatching process the children took part in a chick life cycle hunt in our outdoor area. When the children found photos of the key points of development, they brought them to our crew circle and we examined them and ordered them in the correct sequence using key words from our Maths learning; “First, next and then”.

As we investigated the life cycle further Nursery thought about the most important stage of the cycle. Our text explained that the hen makes a nest that is “warm and dry” (more of our key vocabulary) using sticks and straw. The children explored that the eggs we had in school didn’t have a nest or a mummy hen to sit on them to keep them warm, instead they had an incubator to replace those things. However in the wild or on the farm, there probably wouldn’t be any electricity for an incubator, so the children learnt that building the nest as a “warm and cosy” home for the eggs to be sat on, is the most important part of the process that allows the fertilised eggs to grow. The children had lots of fun making their own chocolate coated shredded wheat nests and filling them with chocolate eggs to show the nests significance.

The children observed the changes in the state of the chocolate as it was melted and then again as it was mixed with the shredded wheat and cooled in the fridge to harden again. They thought carefully of the order in which they were constructing the nests, again using our sequencing vocabulary; “First, then and next”.

In provision this week the children have learnt the song “Chick, Chick, Chick, Chick, Chicken”, painted chicks using yellow paint and a fork to mark on their fluffy feathers. They have sculpted eggs, nests and chickens from play dough, taken part in a cut and stick version of the life cycle of a chick practising their cutting skills. The children have also examined and matched mummy and baby animals together in pairs, learning the new vocabulary of the infant animals names eg; Horse and foal, Cow and calf, Duck and duckling and noticing the differences between the young and older animal as they grow and change.

Finally Nursery were super excited and eager to prepare their own chick box in preparation for us to host our own chicks in Nursery, now that they are all hatched and getting stronger and ready to be handled with care.

Truly beautiful work – well done everyone!