The children have enjoyed another busy half-term in Nursery.

We have continued to focus on the theme ‘All About Me’, looking at the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.  The children enjoyed using their sight to play ‘Kim’s Game’, their hearing to play sound lotto games, their sense of smell to identify hidden foods and their sense of touch to explore and describe sensory boards and the contents of ‘feely’ bags.  Snack-time was even used to taste and describe the texture of a variety of fruit and vegetables.

We then spent a couple of weeks focusing on the story ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen. The children enjoyed listening to, then acting out, the story.  They also enjoyed exploring our ‘Bear Hunt’ small world tray and talking about or retelling the story in their own words. The children were taught about different breeds of bear.  After that, they made their own pair of binoculars and enjoyed their very own Bear Hunt, using their binoculars to search for hidden photos of different bears.

We have also focused on the changing seasons and winter.  The children have enjoyed a winter walk and have had fun cutting out snowflakes and using a variety of loose parts to create their own snowman transient art.  This has led us up to Christmas, which is always a very busy time. We have listened to the story of Christmas and Nursery joined with Reception learning songs for our Nativity performance.  They have also been busily engaged in a variety of Christmas-themed activities in class.  

During story-time, the children have enjoyed listening to a range of stories and information books linked to the above themes. 

We have continued with our short daily phonics session, focusing on Phase One phonics – lots of speaking and listening activities.  We are currently busy learning about ‘rhyme’ – listening to rhyming stories and playing lots of rhyming games.

In Maths, we have focused on carefully and accurately counting a variety of objects and actions using one-to-one correspondence.  The children are also learning to use their fingers to represent numbers and to subitise (identify a small number of up to 6 pictures or objects without the need for counting).

As you can see, it has been a very busy time in Nursery!  I would now like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support and to wish you all a very happy Christmas.

The children have settled very well into Nursery and have learnt our classroom routines well. They are already becoming independent learners and have enjoyed exploring the Nursery indoor environment and the shared outdoors area.

This half-term the children spent the first few weeks learning classroom routines and being taught how to use different areas of the classroom. They have done so well learning how to sit and listen carefully on the carpet, how to line up, how to wash their hands before snack and how to independently peel their own fruit.  In addition, they are learning to take pride in their classroom and are becoming very good at ‘tidying up’.  All the children are learning to ‘choose it, use it, put it away’.  They are also learning the valuable skills of sharing toys, taking turns and helping each other. 

Are an initial settling in period, we have focused on the theme ‘All About Me’.  The children have enjoyed learning about families, parts of the body (including bones, skeletons and x-rays), similarities and differences between people and how people change as they grow older. They have also drawn and painted some fantastic family portraits and self-portraits.  After half-term, we will begin to look at the five senses, exploring taste, hearing, sight, smell and touch.

During the past couple of weeks, we have also begun to focus on the season of autumn.  The children have enjoyed an autumn walk and have had fun creating leaf hedgehogs, exploring pumpkins and using colour-mixing to create handprints in red, yellow and orange for our class autumn tree.

During story-time, the children have enjoyed listening to a range of stories and information books linked to the above themes.  They have also enjoyed listening to, then acting out the Harvest story of ‘The Little Red Hen’.

We have now introduced a short daily phonics session, focusing on Phase One phonics – lots of speaking and listening activities, including listening walks, sound lotto, listening to musical instruments and talking about our favourite sounds.

In Maths, we have focused on colour recognition, matching and sorting objects.  The children have also enjoyed a variety of counting rhymes and we count the number of children in class on a daily basis.

As you can see, we have been very busy in Nursery!  We hope that you all enjoy the half-term break and look forward to another busy half-term leading up to Christmas.