We have been watching our caterpillars grow over the past few weeks; they began as tiny caterpillars and grew at an amazing rate, shedding their skin as they grew. Then they created their chrysalis’ and we watched closely for them to reappear as butterflies.  One day we noticed a butterfly and within the following 24 hours all the 33 butterflies emerged, some of us were lucky enough to see some of the butterflies actually come out of their chrysalis.  We kept the butterflies in their net enclosure with some food until the next sunny day and then we released them into the garden.

We brought our ‘Spring’ topic to an end last week.  Following on from our daffodil observational painting, we took our clipboards and paint pallets outside to paint the blossom trees at the bottom of the playground.  The children demonstrated great concentration and attention to detail; we now have a beautiful wall of paintings in the Nursery that the children are proud of.

We are now well underway with our ‘On Safari in Africa’ topic.  We have looked at Africa on the globe and we have been learning to identify lots of different safari animals.  The small world safari park is a big hit!  We have also watched some very interesting clips, watching how different animals move – we’ve focussed on giraffe’s, elephants and hippos so far.

Mrs McLatchie and the children have created a camouflaged safari jeep, with everybody’s faces inside ready to look for animals! We have also made collage lions and cheetahs and giraffes and zebras using our own footprints!

There have been some super towers being built with the foam blocks this week taking real concentration and team work which is lovely to see. There has also been some very delicate and careful work while making patterns with the peg boards.  We have been learning about sounds, particularly the initial sounds in words; playing alphabet lotto and with the alphabet boxes.

Some of the boys and girls baked banana cupcakes for our snack on Tuesday. We ate them altogether on the mat, like an indoor picnic, they were delicious!

Continuing with our Spring topic this week we learned all about the different parts of a plant; roots, stem, leaves and flower. We continued to look after our runner beans in our runner bean experiment but we are still waiting patiently for some growth!  We planted our seed potatoes in the garden which will be harvested by the boys and girls next Autumn.  Some of the children also created collage birds and insects using gummed paper and other materials with some fantastic results!

The mud kitchen has been back in action, there were some fantastic ‘cakes’ being rustled up! Potted sports practise also continued this week with the egg and spoon race.

Some of the boys and girls baked scones for our snack on Thursday. We ate them altogether on the mat, like an indoor picnic, they were delicious!

Continuing our ‘Spring’ context this week we planted our runner beans to grow in different conditions; light, dark, watered and dry. We made our predictions about which would grow and which wouldn’t and will monitor them for progress.  The children enjoyed digging into the compost and getting the watering can out.  We also emptied the flower tubs and re-filled them before planting some pansies to brighten up the garden.

There has been lots of fantastic play in the garden, it’s great to see the children making up their own games and role plays using different things they have found in the garden. One of the children asked if we could have a picnic so, on Friday, we all had snack together outside on the mats before singing some spring themed songs.

Mrs Carson began potted sports practise with the children this week; they were learning to hurdle with great success. The children will learn a new event each week in the run up to our potted sports day in June.

The children have been working together to plan our new topic this week in the Nursery. We are going to be learning all about Spring.  There were a variety of different learning suggestions from the children ranging from birdwatching to growing plants to getting some caterpillars.  We will cover all of this and more over the coming few weeks.

We began our topic by creating observational paintings of daffodils using water colours, the children produced beautiful work which is now displayed on the wall just inside the Nursery door. Some of the children also created daffodils using craft materials to great effect!

We all enjoyed getting back into the Nursery garden this week. The children dug and weeded the old potato plot – we even found a bucketful of potatoes that we had missed at harvest back in September – oops!  We discussed what we could plant this year and decided that we could have potatoes again.  We will also dig another plot and plant some kale which is quick growing and, all being well, will allow the children to see the whole process from plot preparation to planting to harvesting to their plates within the term.

A number of children recognised that plants need water to grow so before we begin our own planting we are undertaking an experiment to understand how plants use water. We have put daffodils in dyed water and predicted what will happen and are now keenly observing the daffodils for any changes.  Next week we will try growing beans in different conditions to understand what else plants require to grow.