Crew Goodyer have had a lovely week taking crew outdoors and enjoying some early Spring sunshine!☀️ Mrs Jackson led our crew on Tuesday when we made some wonderful clay animals and this morning we walked around our grounds looking for signs of spring. Being out in the fresh air and sunshine is a great way to start each day.
To hook Nursery back into our current expedition “How do things grow and change?” Today we took a nature walk as part of our second case study “What happens as a plant grows” to see if the children could spot any signs of growth in our environment. The children donned their finest pair of imaginary magnifying goggles and used all of their senses to investigate the signs of spring around our campus. Here is the evidence that we found…
The children found a variety of springtime flowers beginning to grow including daffodils, crocus, daisies and snowdrops. They also heard the sound of “birds tweeting” and felt the “warm sunshine” on our faces “making us feel hot”. The children also found some mini beasts waking up to start their springtime journey.
Also the children payed tribute to a past member of staff whilst examining her memory garden, by laying daisies that they’d picked, on the special pebbles. A beautiful thought and act of kindness. A wonderful and purposeful Mindful Monday.
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!
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!
We have had lots of excitement in EYFS this week with the delivery of some eggs from the Happy Chick Company. We have observed the eggs as the chicks have hatched. We have been mesmerised by them…..
We have learnt how to look after the eggs and also the chicks as they have hatched:
We can’t wait to hold them when they get a little bit stronger!
This week Nursery have become Scientists by observing the changes that happen in animals as part of our first case study, through our key text The Very Hungry Caterpillar for a second week. The children have closely examined the pictures within our story to work out what the physical changes in the caterpillar are. An egg, a tiny caterpillar, a cocoon or chrysalis and then a butterfly. Some of the words used to describe the above were as follows;
Egg – “Circle”, “Tiny”, “Bubble”, “White”, “Spot” and “Dot”.
Caterpillar – “Tiny”, “Big, fat caterpillar”, “Wriggly”, “Green” and “Bumpy”.
Cocoon – “Like a sleeping bag”, “shell”, “like a stick”, “Wood” and “egg”.
Butterfly – “Rainbow”, “Beautiful”, “Wings” and “Flappy”.
Nursery read another text which focused more on the life cycle and explained how the changes take place called Little Caterpillar by Autumn Publishing. I then modelled to the children how to draw a life cycle to help embed the cycle in their minds and demonstrate it was a loop (cycle) that started over and over again.
In our provision the children had the opportunity to explore and examine toys representing the life cycle.
We consolidated the events that helped make the life cycle process possible by playing the fruit game. The caterpillar ate lots of fruit to be able to make him grow. The children had to listen and run to a fruit called out by their grown up as part of activating our brains, it was lots of fun!
The children also revisited their previous learning from the week before when they painted beautiful pictures of the fruit. They each looked closely at their pictures and chose at least one piece of fruit and (with support and modelling) began to write the first letter sound for that item using their phonetic knowledge. Eg; Banana – b, Apple – a or Strawberry – s.
In provision the children independently used collage to create beautiful pictures of fruit and the caterpillar at various stages. They also created beautiful butterflies in the play dough and on the painting easel.
As the week progressed the children each worked with an adult and explained the process of the butterfly life cycle using the toys as physical props to help organise and consolidate their understanding of the life cycle. They were each recorded and were able to recall key vocabulary and other significant events within the story. Such beautiful work!
This week Nursery have been storytellers, learning to retell the classic story of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle. The children became active learners by using physical literacy actions to embed key vocabulary and events from the story. They used the prompts to help them recall and retell the story.
The children have examined the key character, the Very Hungry Caterpillar and have looked at how he develops and changes throughout the story. The children have used models to paint and sculpt their own caterpillars. They have used loose parts to represent the variations of the character as both a caterpillar and a butterfly.
During their Tranquil Tuesday Crew, Nursery sequenced the story events and talked about the kinds and amounts of food the caterpillar was eating. They thought about the emotions the caterpillar experienced in the story looking a picture cues and their own experiences. They modelled these faces to each other.
After gaining a good understanding of the key character the children followed an online tutorial to help them draw the Very Hungry Caterpillar.
In provision we have also painted fruits from the story using toy fruits as inspiration.
During our Maths inputs the children have been learning to count using “careful counting”. This is touching and using number names for each object they are counting. The children became problem solvers as they began to investigate how they could find out; “How many of each fruit were in a basket?”
First it was demonstrated to the children how to carefully count using touch and number names for each piece of fruit and then they modelled to their peers, leading their own learning.
In our Thoughtful Thursday Crew the children thought about the cocoon that the caterpillar wrapped himself in and we likened it to being inside a sleeping bag or wrapping ourselves in our coats. The children practised the life skill of zipping their own coats using their fine motor skills.
Finally the children finished the week by thinking about the Very Hungry Caterpillar at the beginning of the story and comparing him to the end of the story. They used some of the physical literacy prompts to help them recall the stages of the caterpillar and key sentences from the text. They drew the caterpillar at the start of the story as either an “egg on a leaf” or a “Teeny, tiny caterpillar” and then as he appeared at the end of the story as “A big, fat caterpillar” or a “Beautiful, colourful butterfly” as they began to further understand the changes which the caterpillar goes through in preparation for when they become Scientists next week.
What a great way to end our week, we added our first vegetable to our keyrings. After a week of learning all about spinach, critiquing and redrafting our outwork we were finally ready to transfer our final drafts onto the shrinky dink paper. It was so exciting watching them shrink in the oven and adding them to our keyrings.
We had a visit from the school nurse this morning who came to help us answer our guiding question ‘How will I be the healthiest version of me?’ We enjoyed listening to the story ‘Peace at Last’ and talked about the importance of sleep to make sure we have lots of energy and give our brains and bodies time to grow. We got some great top tips for good bedtime routines and shared some of our own, it was lovely to hear how many children enjoy a bedtime story. Before we said goodbye to our visitor we made a pledge that we would all try and make sure that we turn our screens off at least half an hour before we go to sleep and remember that we all get a better night’s sleep in our own beds!
We had fun during our family learning session this afternoon when our grown ups joined us in class to find out the title of our new expedition ‘Ready, Steady, Grow! How will I be the healthiest version on me?’ We planted cress heads and peas and can’t wait to watch them grow.
