{"id":729,"date":"2021-04-16T15:11:34","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T14:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/?p=729"},"modified":"2021-04-16T15:11:34","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T14:11:34","slug":"the-start-of-summer-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/2021\/04\/16\/the-start-of-summer-term\/","title":{"rendered":"The start of summer term :-)"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s lovely to be back and to see the sunshine for the start of our summer term! A lot of us chose to spend time outdoors this week playing ball games, balancing, running, climbing, making potions and maps, painting and taking part in group play.<\/p>\n

The lovely weather also meant we could enjoy some trips up to the Secondary to visit the pond and check if there was any frogspawn.<\/p>\n

Taking short trips to the Secondary is great for teaching the importance of listening and following instructions to stay safe. It also gives us an opportunity to apply our maths in context by finding a partner, getting into pairs and listening to directions such as left, right, forwards and backwards as we follow the pavements.<\/p>\n

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Walking around our local environment helps us to understand the world around us and to notice nature. On Wednesday we tried to listen for different animal sounds and heard birds chirping and a buzzy bee! Listening walks are a great way to develop our reading skills as hearing sounds is part of early reading.We stopped to watch the bee collect nectar and pollen from the bright yellow dandelion.<\/p>\n

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When we got to the pond we were great at being still and looking for the frogs eggs. Guess what…we found some!<\/p>\n

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Taking a little frogspawn back to nursery has stimulated a lot of discussion about life cycles and is helping us to learn about being kind to nature and to each other. Jackson used a book to find out how frogspawn becomes tadpoles and then frogs. Annie, Sophie, Maggie and Joanna discussed how many frogs might develop from the eggs. Annie wondered if they would hop all over the nursery chairs!<\/p>\n

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On Thursday we got a big surprise…Elsie found a frog outside!! Everyone got to have a look at what our frogspawn will turn out to be before Froggy was released safely back into the wild. Froggy gave us lots to talk about. We used words such as “long”, “spotty”, “jumpy”, “slimy” and “sticky” as well as counting how many fingers and toes the frog had.<\/p>\n

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Indoors we explored black wooden beads in a big tray. William noticed they were the same colour as the eggs we saw. These beads have been great for developing our learning in numeracy, literacy and health and wellbeing this week.<\/p>\n

Playing together in the big tray helps us to develop awareness of each other , to share and to work together. William, Freya, Ali, Sophia, Annie and Alfie shared containers, compared each other’s containers and discussed how many beads they might fit inside. Freya thought there might be millions.<\/p>\n

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Ali and Lottie worked together to fill the big container, taking turns to put handfuls of beads inside. Large grasping motions like these develop finger strength that is needed for writing and drawing.<\/p>\n

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David and Maisie used scoops to fill the container. They decided they were making berry juice because the beads looked like grapes.<\/p>\n

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Experimenting with filling and emptying containers develops our mathematical skills and knowledge as we learn about quantity, volume and shape.<\/p>\n

Sophia explored how to fill one cone with beads from another cone while Lucas was interested in filling one cone by grasping one bead at a time. Grasping small objects between fingers and thumb is and important skill to learn for writing. It was interesting to discuss how only one bead can fit at the bottom of the cone and more than one can\u00a0 fit at the top.<\/p>\n

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Annie filled a container with a small opening. She discovered that she had to shake it really hard and fast to get the beads out as they didn’t pour when she turned the container upside down.<\/p>\n

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Even though we have been away from nursery for a few weeks there are a lot of stories and books that continue to be favourites and have been re-visited in different ways by most children. These books have been great stimulus for us to create our own stories.<\/p>\n

Following a walk to the Secondary Freya found a book about pond creatures. She told her friends about the different insects and animals that they might find on their next visit. Ertie, James and Annie were inspired to create a big spider’s web after seeing some spiders near the frog pond.<\/p>\n

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After being outdoors digging in the sand, William remembered that there was a book about dinosaur bones. He found the book and spent time studying the different dinosaur skeletons.<\/p>\n

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Adults in the setting read to children every day. A popular book at lunch times this week has been “Don’t put your finger in the jelly Nelly.” After hearing it a few times a group of children confidently read the story together, helping each other to remember the rhyming words and using the pictures as cues.<\/p>\n

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Mr Men books continue to be very popular and are always sought after! Max and Jackson discussed which ones to read with each other by looking at the front of the books and checking the back to see if there might be another interesting one to add to their selection. Freddie, Henry, Max and James chose two books each to read to each other. They used picture cues to help them tell the stories while pointing to the words with their fingers.<\/p>\n

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Engaging with books, re-telling stories and making up our own is an important step towards formal reading later on.<\/p>\n

James, Joanna and Maisie built a house out of bricks, just like the little pigs did. After the house was built the big bad wolf came to blow it down! He huffed and he puffed and he huffed and he puffed…<\/p>\n

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Drawing and creating stories on paper using our own marks is also an important early step towards us becoming readers and writers in school.<\/p>\n

Micah and Maisie created a scary jungle story which included a lion with with very very sharp teeth.<\/p>\n

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Freya created her own Gruffalo book, adding in her own creative twists to the story. She spent a long time carefully drawing the snake.<\/p>\n

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Lewis created a story by drawing two towers, cutting them out and gluing them onto white paper so that they were “in the sky”. The people in the big tower lived very high up and we wondered if the big tower was even higher than Jack’s beanstalk.<\/p>\n

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We look forward to sharing some more snippets of our learning with you next week!<\/p>\n

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It’s lovely to be back and to see the sunshine for the start of our summer term! A lot of us chose to spend time outdoors this week playing ball games, balancing, running, climbing, making potions and maps, painting and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4905,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4905"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":790,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions\/790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.glowscotland.org.uk\/sh\/whalsayearlyyearsblog2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}