This week Nursery have been reading “We’re Going On an Egg Hunt” by Laura Hughes. In the story the bunnies find 10 eggs and some problematic characters along their hunt. Nursery role played the story as part of their maths work this week, as they have been exploring how to describe a familiar route.
The children used the repeated story language from the text to describe how they moved around their route and through the springtime characters. When we arrived back at Nursery, closing out the “Big, Bad Wolf”, the children attempted to simply explain their route around the outdoor area, using familiar landmarks as markers of their journey. We drew large scale maps to help consolidate their understanding. The children used words such as “behind”, “inside”, “past”, “next to” and “through”.
On Monday we created artwork inspired by the story The Leaf Man written by Lois Ehlert. The children used natural resources found in our outdoor area to create the own leaf men, creatures or animals. Look at their beautiful work!
As part of our on-going expedition of “What do stories Tell us about Autumn?” Nursery have continued to learn about autumn life and animals, as well as celebrations that happen in late autumn. This week through our story “It Was a Cold, Dark Night” by Tim Hopgood, Nursery have explored how Hedgehog’s hibernate through the winter. Ned, the Hedgehog in our story was looking for somewhere to live and hibernate. Check out our story via this link…
Nursery were encouraged to explore and investigate how safe the place Ned finds to live, really is? We were thinking about the traditions and celebrations that happen around Bonfire Night. Many people or organisations build bonfires in open spaces, which Hedgehogs might think are a good place to hide and hibernate under the bonfire wood piles. It is our job as a community to check for the Hedgehogs before lighting fires to save the creatures who are just trying to stay warm and cosy.
This led to further thinking about what bonfire night is. Nursery learned all about Guy Fawkes and that that we celebrate the 5th of November to remember the foiling of the Gunpowder plot. Words the children used to explain this were “naughty Guy tried to blow up houses”, “Guy was going to explode” and “Guy got caught by police, put him jail”. To bring the historical figure to life the children made Guy sock puppets. We stuffed socks with straw, glued on goggly eyes, drew on his moustache, face and hat. They did a great job!
As part of our Wise Wednesday Crew Nursery investigated ways in which we can keep ourselves safe during bonfire night by watching a short video of Blippi and exploring a feely bag of protective clothing. They learnt the catch phrase “Fireworks are great, stand back and give them space”.
As part of our Thoughtful Thursday Crew the children passed around and investigated an unused Sparkler. They described it as “Pointy”, “Rough”, “smooth”, “hard” and “bendy”. The teachers then modelled how to safely hold and dispose of a lit sparkler outdoors. There were quite a few of Nursery children who had never seen a sparkler before. It was an exciting experience for them.
Next we all tried a traditional bonfire night food “Parkin”. The children used these words to describe how the parkin tasted…. “Too salty”, “Too Sour”, “Sticky”, “Chocolatey”, “Like Gingerbread men” . Everyone tried it, which was great as it is always nice to try new things.
The children’s homework was to take home a Sparkler to enjoy and experience with their parents and to send in a photo along with any words the children had used to describe their what they saw, heard or felt. Here are the results…..
Words used to describe their experience were; “golden”, “yellow”, “cool”, “sparkling”, “sparkly”, “bright”, “like fire”, “like stars”, “fizzy”, “pshhh!”(when it extinguished in the bucket), “white”, “dangerous”, “burny” and glittery”. Awesome learning Nursery and everyone was very Fire safety conscious too – Well Done!
Today is World Mental Health Day, so in our crew sessions we discussed why it is important to talk about how we are feeling and what we can do to help ourselves feel good.
We decided to take our crew session outside as the sunshine and fresh air can help to us to feel happy. We listened to one another share how we were feeling this morning and then took part in some fun activities together. The children enjoyed collecting leaves and creating their own leaf rubbings using paper and wax crayons or using hole punches to cut out different shapes. What a lovely start to the day!
Today we went for a walk around our beautiful grounds. We looked at the changes that are happening around us now it is Autumn. What a great way to start the day.
Last week the Nursery children were learning about the different kinds of animals that live in woodlands, through our story “The Brave Little Owl” written by Penny Little and Sean Jullian. We are very fortunate to have a beautiful wooded area within our school grounds, just behind Nursery. So we went to explore the woods and see if we could spot any autumnal animals on a woodland animal hunt.
Children checked off the animals from their list and named them. We also found some natural treasures within the woodland such as feathers and dandelions which sparked some curiosity and interesting questions. Well Done Nursery.
We have a guiding question this week – does Crew stop at the school gate? We decided that it definitely didn’t and we wanted to spread kindness far and wide! We have designed and painted wood cookies in class and then this morning we headed out into Norton to hide them hoping our local community will smile when they see them or take one and hide it somewhere else for someone to find and make them smile.
Awesome job Class Five – you have definitely shown kindness today 💕
We started our crew circle with a funny check in this morning – how are you feeling?
Then we took our crew circle outside for a walk in the sunshine whilst we shared our news from over half term. When we circled back up we shared something we had found out from someone else in our crew – we even had a squirrel want to join our crew!!
