The drawing table continues to be a very popular area within nursery.  Many children are showing an interest in letters and are becoming increasingly confident in writing their own names.

The children, as I am sure are all aware, were extremely excited to find snow in their gardens last week.  This has prompted a mini science topic on ice.  The children have been experiementing with large blocks of ice, many of which have toys hidden deep within the ice.  The children have been trying out a variety of strategies, mainly smashing, to get the toys out.  They have been using words like ‘melting, freezing, cold’.

You could develop this new interest at home by involving your child in the freezing or defrosting of food,  or  by looking for ice and frost in the garden or on the car.  Please send in any photographs of your child doing this for our ‘Look at me learning at home’ wall.

We have been doing lots of cooking recently.  We made homemade soup last week.  It was delicious.  The children enjoyed becoming involved in the chopping, blending and mixing of the ingredients.

We are hoping to create our own healthy recipe book containing lots of child friendly soup recipes.  Please send in any recipes that your child likes.  We hope to sell the recipe books in the future to raise some additional nursery funds.

We enjoyed baking our no added sugar carrot cake muffins in nursery.  Most children enjoyed the taste of them too.  Please send in any healthy easy to bake recipes that we could try for our snack.

The nursery boys and girls decided they would like to turn the role-play area into Santa’s Grotto. They suggested fantastic ideas of resources that we could use in the grotto. You can see these ideas in our nursery big book. It sits below the nursery planning board. Photos to follow.

The children were involved in decorating the real nursery Christmas tree. Many of them are now desperate to get their tree up at home  – apologies for this! 🙂

They have been working extremely hard to learn the words to all the songs for their Christmas performance  and continue to enjoy exploring musical instruments  in the music area in nursery.

Please remember that the key areas/topics we are focussing in nursery are displayed on the interactive planning board. We are delighted to see that some parents have added some comments to the parent section of the board. Thank you.

The boys in the afternoon nursery enjoyed looking at recipe books to get ideas for their play dough cakes. They shared the resources and their ideas.

We watch a toothbrushing song and animation to encourage us to brush our teeth for two minutes.  Click here to see the red boys and girls in action! 

You can use the video we use at home too. Click here to access it.

Thank you to all of those who returned their completed questionnaires on ‘Communication of General Nursery matters.’

We received 27/80 responses and are currently collating these responses and suggestions. We will display the feedback in nursery soon.

We use these audits/questionnaires to create action points for nursery and to establish which areas are working well.  If you have not already done so, please return your completed audits as soon as possible.  Your feedback is extremely valuable. Many thanks.

We continue to enjoy our twice weekly free-flow outdoor play sessions and our almost daily trips to the garden or playground.

We are learning to move our bodies with increasing skill and control as we jump, balance, climb, pedal and run.

Click here to watch an adorable video of us showing that team work and perseverance can help with physical tasks.

Outdoor play is a key focus of the nursery development plan.  Take a look next time you drop off/collect.  It is situated in the corridor in a folder.  Feel free to leave a comment.

We continue to demonstrate an interest in castles.  You will see evidence of this in the big book in nursery.  This is the big blue book next to the planning wall.  It is full of our drawings, comments and ideas.

We have been learning to use some castle resources to extend our play.  Many of us are beginning to notice how castles are different from our own homes through the use of the role-play castle.

Please click here to see a video of the castle role-play in action.  

You can clearly see how much learning takes place in just one context within nursery! The children are turn-taking, problem solving, collaborating, listening and talking, writing and developing their imaginations.

Many of us expressed a desire to make crowns at the art table to extend our castle role-play.  We have also been using small world castle role-play toys and sharing fairytale stories that take place in castles.

Notice the fantastic transfer of resources in the photographs: a digital camera in the  castle! 🙂