Nursery

After good summer weather, its time for an early apple Harvest from our school apple trees. We decided to make fruit kebabs. We peeled, shopped and skewered the fruits. It was  delicious.

Sept 2023

In the warm spring sunshine, we finally completed our Act of Service, by planting Dahlia bulbs. We watered them using the water butt and hope that our school and local community soon have some beautiful flowers to enjoy.

To celebrate the New Life of Easter, we had a visit from the Easter Bunny. We had to match our numerals to our eggs. We had so much fun and the chocolate eggs were delicious!

During Lent, we role played the Easter. We learnt about Jesus sharing bread and wine at the Last Supper and Jesus praying in the Garden of Olive before Judas' betrayal and Jesus' crucifixtion. We shared the Good News that Jesus is alive.

For British Science Week 2023 with the theme of Connections and linked to our topic about growing, we developed our knowledge and  understanding of how our food goes from the farm to the fork. The children experienced the connections of planting, harvesting, role play buying, preparation, cooking and eating. we also extended our vocabulary as we learnt about florets and steam. The healthy choice of broccoli is a firm favourite in our Nursery !

We enjoyed sharing tomatoes at snack time and then carefully took out the seeds. We dried the seeds for a few days After roling newspaper to make our eco-friendly plant plant pots we planted the seeds and talked about the life cycle of the tomato. we hope to have a good crop late in the summer term as we learn about growth over time.

We had a fantastic day as we celebrated World Book Day by dressing as our favourite book characters. We shared the books at storytime and talked about why we loved reading so much. It was fun seeing the stories come to life and sharing how important books are to us all. 

As part of the school value for the term Service,  the Nursery class' Act of Service for the community was to plant flowers outside the school. We found so many minibeasts. We enjoyed digging and weeding and will be back again after the  frosts to plant seeds and bulbs

After learning about how the Lenten period of 40 days is important to Christians, we collected ingredients to make pancakes. We carefully read  the recipe and enjoyed  mixing, measuring and whisking the ingredients.. The hot pancakes were delicious as they were topped  with the traditional lemon and sugar.

We have enjoyed celebrating and learning about the Chinese festival of the the New Year and the experiences of our peers. We began  by re-enacting the story and having a race and learning how the twelve animal years are sequenced. The children are mostly born in the year of the pig or a few of the dog and we welcomed in the year of the the rabbit through music, dancing, sharing  lucky red envelopes, fortune cookies, oranges  and cooking food. We made lanterns and even tried to write  Chinese numerals  We remembered that festivals are to be enjoyed by friends and family.

As we observed  the weather outside and saw the frost, snow, ice and  even frozen sand, we thought about what ice and snow is made of and how we could  find out how water changes to ice and back into water. We made orange juice ice lollies and put them into the freezer and some outside. We  waited  until the next day  for the ice to freeze and quickly  ate the lollies  before they melted in our warm classroom.. It is never too cold for ice lollies !

As part of  our topic 'It's cold outside' and linking  the Creation Story, we thought about how all of God's creatures survive in the winter. After bird watching and seeing the frost we thought about the food that the birds would need to help them during. the cold winter. We made bird feeders with ingredients such as  nuts, seeds, raisins and meal worms mixed in suet and lard. We thought about the best places to hang  the feeders We put them in the bushes, in the trees and in quiet places and we watched to see if any of the birds came. 

It is time for the RSPB winter bird watch. After learning that some bird migrate in the winter, some pass through and some stay, we decided to go on a bird spotting adventure to see which birds that we could find. We used all of all senses as we saw and  heard the crows, pigeons, magpies and even some thrush. We are excellent birdwatchers.  

We arrived at Nursery on a cold December morning and everything was covered in snow. We were so excited to explore the fresh snow. We dressed up warm and used all of our senses. It seemed very quiet as we crunched through the cold snow. We made footprints, had a snowball fight and also made a snowman. It was such amazing fun. We came back inside and read  'One Snowy Day ' by Ezra Jack Keats and drank hot chocolate.

Let's make a snowman.

Problem : We had run out of sand and we decided to visit our old Nursery site to get some more.

We thought about what would be the best containers to use ( not sieves) and how to transport it. Using lots of mathematical language about quantity and weight, we worked collaboratively to carry the sand back to finally fill our sand tray. We enjoyed problem solving as a team and particularly enjoyed our sand play.

With great awe and wonder we explored the environment on an autumn walk. We found leaves of different, colours and sizes as well as twigs and seeds. The sun shone through the autumnal trees as we used all of our senses to smell the air and touch the  dry leaves. What a beautiful day.

We went for a walk and what did we see?

We collected the things that fell from the tree.

We celebrated Nature in the images that we made.

The transient pictures that move and then fade.

We are learning about Autumnal harvest and it is time for us to return to see if the potato seedlings that we planted last term are ready .We read 'Oliver's Vegetables' and we knew that the potatoes would be under the soil. We dug and dug and were surprised how much roots we saw. We counted our Harvest, before washing and cooking them and  covering them in butter. The new potatoes that we had grown ourselves were absolutely delicious.

It was time for an early Harvest after the hot summer, so we decided to make Apple Gruffalo Crumble. We collected the apples from the playground apples trees in our baskets and prepared them to make the stewed apple. We used our maths skills to carefully weigh the ingredients before making the crumble. We ate it quickly before any other animals came strolling from the deep, dark wood !