Autumn 2, Week 8, w/c 19th December 2023

A short week for us here in Nursery. We enjoyed finishing off our last bits of Christmas crafts and enjoyed a lovely Christmas dinner with our friends in Dragonfly class. We also had a very yummy cake for dessert which was the perfect way to end off our busy but lovely term. 

We have enjoyed watching a Christmas pantomime called The Night Before Christmas. The children have also enjoyed singing along to some Christmas carols and doing loads of Christmas dance breaks. 

Thank you to all the adults and children for such a wonderful Autumn term. Thank you for your patience and kindness - we have appreciated it very much as it has been very busy over here at Sires Hill. The children have been wonderful and it has been lovely to see them grow their confidence and develop their friendships.

Have a wonderful and restful Christmas break. We will see you all again in the new year, where we will also be starting our new topic; Winter Wonderland. 

Autumn 2, Week 7, w/c 11th December 2023

With Christmas fast approaching, it has been another exciting week in Nursery with lots of festive events, crafts, and activities to keep us busy. The children have enjoyed all about Christmas and have thoroughly enjoyed these last couple of weeks!

During our group times we have been discussing the celebration of Christmas. We read the Christmas story which explained p that Christmas is a Christian celebration that celebrates the birth of Jesus. We explored the ways that the children celebrate Christmas, and it was wonderful to hear the different events, activities, foods, and family traditions that are part of Christmas for them. 

We have also enjoyed watching a video to explore how Christmas is celebrated around the world. The children discussed the similarities and differences from different cultures and used this opportunity to reflect on their own experiences of different celebrations. 

We have been very lucky to have an exciting visit from Santa on Friday! He brought all the children a chocolate treat and confirmed he has seen us all being kind and brilliant. The children were happy to share their excitement, discussing with him their Christmas plans and celebrations. We were also lucky enough to see Santa in his helicopter this week and got a chance to see him waving at us. The children were so excited to see him high up in the sky!

This week, we also explored the different images of the childrens' celebrations. The children were so excited to see theirs and their loved ones' faces up on the screen and were so eager to talk about what was happening in their photos. The children loved sharing with the class about their loved ones and shared wat they were celebrating in each picture. They shared if they wore something special in the picture, whether they had any special food and who they were celebrating with. We had stories about birthdays, Christmases, a Chinese New Year and the Kings Coronation. 

Thank you to all the adults who were able to come and watch our nativity on Thursday! Unfortunately, I was not able to be there and see how well they all did but I know they made us all proud. Lots of hard work from staff and especially the children went into all of it, and I am so proud of them!

Next week we look forward to a festive two days before we break up for Christmas break. The children are looking forward to finishing their special Christmas craft bags that they have been working hard on over the past few weeks and bringing them home on Tuesday to share their festive creations.

Autumn 2, Week 6, w/c 04th December 2023

We have had another exciting week here in Nursery. This week we moved into our brand new forever classroom. We are very excited about our new space and have enjoyed exploring it too. This week we have started to focus on Christmas, and have been doing a lot of Christmas activities! The children have loved getting into the Christmas spirit and decorating our class Christmas tree together. 

This week the children wrote their letters to Santa and we learnt what happens when we post our mail through a big red postbox. We explored why we would use a postbox and also why we would send someone a letter. We also explored who delivers the mail. The children shared who they think delivers the letters to Santa and what Santa is going to do with their letters. 

In Maths this week we have been busy with sorting. During our group time, we made use of resources and manipulatives on the carpet. We sorted items based on their color, size and also the type of toys they were. The children explored why certain objects were sorted together and shared their ideas with one another.  

We had a wonderful surprise visit from Father Christmas in the helicopter this morning! The children were so excited and they loved seeing Santa wave back at them. 

Our makaton sign this week was ‘daddy’, see if you can encourage your child to use this sign over the weekend. 

Thank you to all the parents for sending in their photos of the children celebrating. We will be talking and sharing about those next week during our group time. 

We have been busy decorating the classroom and practicing our Christmas songs ready for our special event next Thursday.

Here are some pictures from our week in class. We hope you have a wonderful and warm weekend, and we will see you on Monday!

Autumn 2, Week 5, w/c 27th November 2023

We have had another exciting week in Nursery learning about Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses. The children have been busy designing and making their own crowns using a range of colourful materials. We have enjoyed wearing the crowns around the classroom.

We have created our own magic wands using glitter, gold card, pens, tissue paper and shiny ribbon. On Friday, during our PE lesson we used our wands to move in time with magical music, making large sweeping motions, circle and zigzag shapes. The children were then challenged to make letter shapes or write their name in the air with their ‘wand’. 

In Maths this week we have been busy matching objects and counting ‘treasure’. It has been fantastic to observe the children matching objects to number cards to extend their learning. Next week we will focus on sorting objects by size, colour and shape.

Our makaton sign this week was ‘mummy’, see if you can encourage your child to use this sign over the weekend. 

We have been busy practicing our Christmas songs ready for our special event coming up soon! Next week, we will start decorating our class in time for Christmas!

Next week we look forward to sharing photos and discussing a range of celebrations. Please send a photo of your child celebrating an event to the school office so they can share this with their friends. 

Autumn 2, Week 4, w/c 20th November  2023

We have had another exciting week in Nursery jam packed with lots of great learning. We have been practicing a lot for our Nativity that is happening soon. See if your child can teach you some of the songs we have been working on. 

This week we have enjoyed reading the story The Three Little Pigs. By the end of the week the children have really enjoyed joining in with the repeated refrains such as ‘not by the hairs on my chinny chin chin’ and ‘Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!’. The children loved building their own houses for the little pigs and tested each one to see whether it could be blown over by the big bad wolf. We also have enjoyed recreating the story using the puppets and resources during our exploring time. The children also had a visit from Mrs Butterworth in class this week to read the children some stories. This was very exciting for the children and they want this to become a weekly occurrence! 

During group time, we looked at different fairytale castles and houses and magical buildings. We spoke about who the children thought might live in those buildings, what materials they think were used to build the houses. They also shared with their friends which once they liked best and why they liked it the most. The children have really enjoyed our topic this term. 

In Maths this week we have been continuing exploring patterns. We focused this week on fixing mistakes in a repeating pattern. The children have been searching for different patterns around the classroom and outside area. We have been busy creating repeating patterns using our counting cubes. We have been making our own snake repeating patterns. During our maths lesson, the children loved correcting all the mistakes I would make in my pattern. They loved making their own cube patterns on the carpet during our group time and during their exploring time, they would make their own incorrect pattern so that their friend could fix it for them. We also explored pattern making through some art this week by doing some finger painting repeating snake patterns. The children love doing art so it was great to see them combine maths and art. 

We were very lucky to have a visit from the team at Didcot library on Friday. We enjoyed a selection of books and even had one about emergency vehicles read to us! We also had an Old Macdonald song bag and used the props to help us sing the song. 

Our makaton sign this week was ‘home’, see if you can encourage your child to use this sign over the weekend. 

Next week we look forward to learning more about Kingdoms and Castles. 

Autumn 2, Week 3, w/c 13th October 2023

We have had another exciting week in Nursery. We have shared our thoughts and ideas about how we can be a good friend and what a good friend looks like.

This week we have enjoyed reading the story The Three Billy Goats Gruff. By the end of the week the children have really enjoyed joining in with the repeated refrains such as ‘trip, trap, trip trap’ and ‘Who’s that trip-trapping over my bridge?’. 

During a group time we discussed how the troll was feeling, and why he got angry with the goats. Our discussion encouraged the children to reflect on their own experiences of feeling sad, upset, or grumpy. We then shared what action was taken by themselves or others to help them feel happier. We also have enjoyed recreating the story using our small world Billy Goats Gruff tuff tray. 

In maths this week we have been exploring patterns. The children have been searching for different patterns around the classroom and outside area. It was fantastic to hear the children comparing their towers with their friends, discussing whose tower was the tallest or shortest and counting to see who had used the most blocks. We also explored some number block patterns, where the children made some number block towers in a repeated pattern. See if you can encourage your child to create a repeated pattern for you this weekend.

Our Makaton sign this week was ‘food’, see if you can encourage your child to use this sign over the weekend. 

Next week Friday we have a very exciting visit from the Didcot Library. 

Next week we look forward to continuing our exploration of pattern and our new story, The Three Little Pigs.

Here are some pictures from our week in class. We hope you have a wonderful and warm weekend, and we will see you on Monday!

 Autumn 2, Week 2, w/c 6th November 2023

It has been another busy week in Nursery! 

We continued with our new topic this term of ‘Once Upon a Time’. During our group times this week, we read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and created our own story sack from different props from the story. The children had a go at taking the items out of the story sack and shared what they think it might be and who it might belong to. The children loved the story!

We have had our Goldilocks small word tuff tray out in class this week and the children have loved being able to explore the story using the characters and the book. They have been able to make their own porridge for the 3 bears. They also had a go at exploring their amazing art skills this week by making a bowl just for Goldilocks.

Following our Goldilocks theme, we have been playing around with some oats in class, talking about how it feels, how we could cook it and who we could make some porridge for. This week we made some masks of our favourite fairytale characters. The children shared the special features of their masks and what materials would be best. The children have also been using our story bags, props, masks, and small world characters to retell the story using their own words and introduced vocabulary.

In Maths, we have continued learning about the number two. This week we focused on counting and being able to count 2 objects. The children were able to recall what we learnt about the number 2 last week. The children shared what they thought counting was, and during our continuous provision, the children were encouraged to find 2 objects, count 2 objects, tidy 2 objects. We have been encouraging the children to search for and count 2 in everyday scenarios. This has included putting on 2 welly boots, tidying up 2 toys, showing 2 using our fingers. 

This week, the children also learnt why we celebrate Remembrance Day. We spent the week learning about why we see Poppies around Remembrance Day and the importance of them. We did some Poppy arts and crafts and we remembered why it's so important to think about those who fought in the war. We also learnt about Diwali this week. The children learnt all about why it is also called the Festival of Lights and what people who celebrate Diwali do over the 5 days of celebrations. The children shared their brilliant art skills by making their own Rangoli patterns and made their own Diya lamps. 

Our Makaton sign this week was ‘No’. See if your child can show you this sign over the weekend. 

Next week we look forward to introducing a new story, The Three Billy Goats Gruff. 

We have put a letter in each child’s bag regarding the Christmas Production in December this year. This is in regards to the outfits they have to wear.

Here are some pictures from our week in class. We hope you have a wonderful and warm weekend, and we will see you on Monday!

Autumn 2, Week 1: w/c 30th October 2023

In Maths this week we have been learning all about the number 2 and have been practicing our counting skills. The children could show us 2 fingers and clap when they saw 2 objects. This week we started our exciting new topic, Once Upon a Time. The first story we explored in class was Little Red Riding Hood. We had a Little Red Riding Hood themed small world area in our class where the children could act out the story and explore the different story characters. In class, we spoke about different characters from different fairytales. The children described what they looked like and what they did in the stories.

Our Jigsaw lesson this week focused on us sometimes being good at the same things, and that it is okay if some of us are good at the same things. The children also talked about how we might feel proud about being good at something and each chose something in the classroom that was special to them, or something they were good at playing with and they got a chance to share their thoughts with the class. We enjoyed our outside provision, although it has been really chilly!

We also explored Bonfire Night, and the children shared their experiences of Bonfire Night. We watched a video about it, and we spoke about what they could hear, what they already know about fireworks, and we also talked about why fireworks are used to celebrate Bonfire Night. We also did some firework art activities this week!

On Friday, we also had a very exciting visit from the Fire Department. We got to see the big fire engines up close. We had a chance to hold the hose pipes and spray water as if we were real firefighters. The most exciting part was having a turn at sitting inside the fire truck. We really had fun and appreciate the firefighters coming to visit!

Our Makaton sign this week was ‘yes’, see if your child can show you this sign over the weekend. 

We have had a great week back here in Duckling class and are ready for the term ahead. We have also started practising for our Nativity coming up in December!

Here are some pictures from our week in class. We hope you have a wonderful and warm weekend, and we will see you on Monday!