Nursery Work

Nursery work for 2019 - 2020

We love books!

We have had a fantastic time celebrating world book day and also promoting a love of reading. Our nursery room was transformed in to a Roald Dahl kingdom, full of activities to promote discussion and exploration around a selection of his books.  We had to save insects like James in James and the Giant Peach, we made beautiful, glittering dream jars like we saw in the BFG and we also tried our best to make a home for the Enormous Crocodile (without getting gobbled up for lunch!)  We had the opportunity to watch clips of different Roald Dahl adaptations, which gave us a great opportunity to imagine what was happening in the books. We finished the first week with a very successful ‘come and read’ session which was held on World Book Day.  Thank you to everyone that attended!  The children really enjoyed sharing their stories with you.  During week 2 of our we love books theme we worked hard to retell the stories that we learnt about the previous week and we could remember so many details and could even tell the stories in the right order using: beginning, middle and end to structure what we were saying.

Where we live

This week we have been learning about where we live. We have looked at Cambridge on a map and have spoken about where our homes and school is.  We even saw our homes on Google Earth!  We used the story ‘The Three Little Pigs’ to learn about types of homes and the materials they are made from. We learnt that straw and sticks are not very strong and the best material to use is bricks.  We learnt about detached, terraced and semi-detached houses and we also looked at different types of homes such as castles, lighthouses and caravans.  We decorated front doors and acted out the story of the three little pigs.

Ways to say ‘I love you!’

This week we learnt all about feelings and emotions. We learnt how it is important to talk to our friends and family about how we are feeling and what is making us feel like that.  We made special Valentines cakes, wrote cards to our family and we even recorded messages to our family using the iPads. In the maths lab we made necklaces and bracelets for someone special, threading beads carefully and looking at the patterns we could make. One of our favourite activities was using cup and strong telephones to talk to our friends. We leant about symmetry in the art lab and made some beautiful symmetrical, painted hearts.

Art and Artists 

We have been learning all about art and artists. We had a great time experimenting with colour mixing and even made our own colours in shaving foam! We also learnt about an artist called Kandinsky.  We tried to recreate his artwork using paints and multicoloured paper. During our second week learning about art and artists we took our colour mixing one step further and made our own amazing, coloured carnations. In the maths lab we learnt about 2D shapes and we were challenged to find them in pieces of abstract art.  One of the most popular activities was singing the rainbow song!

Christmas

We had a great time learning how people celebrate Christmas. We had our own Christmas tree that we decorated each day, thinking about the coloured baubles we wanted to use.  We decorated our own baubles which looked amazing.  We also posted letters to Father Christmas in our writing lab.  Our role-play lab was Santa’s workshop, where we helped the elves wrap all of the presents and we even rode on our own special reindeer!  In the maths lab we had the challenge of filling boxes with presents but they wouldn’t all fit!  We developed our language of size and our ability to compare two different objects.   We also had own Christmas singing performance, which the children worked so hard to prepare for and we all enjoyed some hot chocolate and a mince pie at the end!

Making Music 

Last week we had a great time exploring all sorts of musical instruments. We went on a journey through the jungle and explored the different instruments we would use to represent the animals we saw.  We learnt what a beat was and we practised keeping a rhythm in our music session. In the art lab we were making shakers and testing a variety of materials to see what sound they made. Outside we performed some of our favourite nursery rhymes and tried to use our big, clear voices to perform to our friends.  

Winter

Brrrr! It’s getting cold outside and just in time for our theme about winter. We used the well-known story ‘Stick Man’ to help us explore the changes that occur during winter and what we can see.  We explored what happens to ice when it is left outside of the freezer.  We tried writing our own labels for the characters in Stick Man.  We also ordered Stick Men from smallest to biggest.  We were lucky to have our own winter grotto, when there were so many snowballs!  We also discovered lots of Stick Men hiding in there!  We even had our own snowball fight!

Being safe (the pants rule) 

This week we have been learning all about the pants rule. We used the story ‘Aliens Love Underpants’ to explore the topic in more detail. We listened to a great song sung by Pantosaurus, which taught us all about the pants rule. We also discussed what trust means and we spoke about who we can talk to if we are worried about anything, either at school or at home.

My body

We turned in to superheroes this week! We learnt what our super bodies can do.  We spoke about the different moves that superheroes do and we tried doing them ourselves.  Our role play area turned in to a superheroes headquarters which we had so much fun playing in.  We also went on a superhero hunt outside and worked together to see how many superheroes we could find.    

Transport 

We have been learning all about vehicles this week. We knew lots of names of different vehicles and thought about ones which would be suitable to travel to school in.   We decided that whilst it would be fun to travel in a rocket, we wouldn’t use them for everyday travel!  We learnt all about traffic lights and what each of the colours mean.  We then made our own traffic light biscuits.  Outside, we had a bike wash where everyone worked very hard to keep all of our bikes squeaky clean.  Back in the classroom we sorted vehicles according to whether or not they had wheels.  We also explored vehicles that travelled in the air, on the road and on the water.

Being Healthy

This week we learnt how to keep our bodies healthy. We learnt the difference between healthy and unhealthy food and helped Curiosity make a healthy lunchbox to bring to school.  We also learnt how to clean our teeth and tried to brush all of the marks off of our pretend teeth.  We learnt that exercise is a good way to keep our bodies healthy.   We made healthy dinner plates with some of our favourite healthy foods on.  

Apples and Pumpkins 

We had so many pumpkins in our classroom! We played music on pumpkins, we scooped out all of the gooey pulp and seeds and we weighed and ordered the pumpkins from the smallest to the biggest.  We also learnt about the lifecycle of a pumpkin.

Then we investigated apples and found that if you cut an apple in half it has a star inside! We rolled apples down ramps to see which one went the furthest.  To finish our theme we tried lots of different apples.  We even tried an apple that was pink inside!

Autumn Antics

This week we have been learning all about autumn. We have looked at the changes that are happening outside. We have read the story ‘The Gruffalo’ and made masks to help us act out the story.  We have also done leaf rubbings with wax crayons and autumnal colours.

Fun with Friends

This week we learnt how to share with our friends and how important it is to be polite and kind to our friends. We also learnt how it is important to say please and thank you when talking to our friends. We read the story Lost and Found and made penguins in the art lab.  We also made friendship biscuits!

How do you feel?

This week we explored our feelings. We practiced showing different feelings on our face and looked at how our faces change depending on how we are feeling.  We made feelings puppets, focusing on being happy and sad. We discussed what makes us feeling different things, for example, playing with our friends makes us feeling happy and seeing spiders made us feel scared.  Curiosity helped us think about how we can change person’s feelings.  We used a lot of mirrors during the week to compare our feelings to different feelings we saw around the classroom.

Marvellous me 

This week we learnt all about the different parts of our bodies. We sang ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’.  We also made pictures of our faces, trying to think about the colour of our skin and hair.  During cooking, we made biscuit faces and tried to make sure that we added in all of the different facial features. We also brought in ‘all about me’ bags and shared our favourite objects and photographs of ourselves with our friends.

Welcome to nursery!

This week we have been settling in to nursery. We explored the different labs inside and helped Curiosity to learn how we tidy up our classroom.  We have enjoyed making new friends and we have managed to learn everyone’s name.  We also had time to explore the outside area and the courtyard.  We started to think about our class rules and are now very good at telling people in our class what we need to do to keep our classroom safe and fun.