Nursery

Summer 1 2025 - What's in the sky?

This half term we will be asking the question ‘What’s in the sky?’ As a starting point, we will be exploring sources of light, the clouds, the forces in the wind, shadows, colours, rainbows and the stars. We are certain the children's curiosity, imaginations and existing knowledge will lead us in many other directions.

Spring 2 2025 - What's growing in the garden?

As the weather gets warmer we are going to be extremely busy in the garden, learning about life cycles and the spring season. We will be sewing seeds and planting them out in the garden. We will also be looking for signs of life in the flower beds, under logs and rocks. To inspire us, we will be reading the following texts.

In the role play area, we have been pretending to work in a garden centre; planting and selling plants and making delicious lunches for each other in our Garden Centre Cafe.

Lots of our texts have supported our learning on life cycles. After reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, we made caterpillars of our very own, to decorate our classrooms. We also wanted to be butterflies, so we dressed up and fluttered around the garden, laying our eggs on leaves.

Our garden is going to be even more beautiful in the summer as we have been extremely busy planting seeds and preparing the vegetable patch for planting out.

Oliver's Fruit Salad was one of the tastiest books we have ever read! Look at our very own Nursery Fruit Salad!

Our book Frog has taught us all about the life cycle of a frog. We are now eagerly watching and waiting for frogspawn, tadpoles and frogs in our school pond!

. . .we haven't seen any yet but we have found some in our Nursery though!

Even though we have been very busy learning about 'what's in the garden', we have still found time for the things we love!

Spring 1 2025 - Where are all the animals?

This half term we have been asking 'Where Are All The Animals? We have been explore different animals all over the world and have been using our class map to find out where they live, discussing what temperatures they like to live in.

We have been reading the following texts; to find out more about animals, to enrich our vocabulary and to prompt our thinking and promote questioning. The books have also given us lots of opportunity to develop our listening skills, especially when listening for rhymes and animal noises!

One of our favourite texts had been 'We're going on a bear hunt' By Helen Oxenbury and Michael Rosen. Using our fabulous speaking and listening skills, we have been able to join in with the story using actions and expression. in the Nursery, we have role played going on a bus journey to search for the bear...we're not scared! Take a look at some of our beautiful bear artwork.

Even though we went on a brown bear hunt, we managed to find lots of other animals too, including polar bears! 'Polar bear, polar bear, what can you hear?' introduced us to many other animals and the different noises they make. We learnt that polar bears can be found in the arctic, and at Jimmy's Farm! As part of our discussions on hot and cold countries, we looked at images and videos of polar bears in the Arctic and decided to try to make the Nursery just as cold! Exploring and making ice was fun, especially when we made it fizz with vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. Have a look at some of our polar bear fun and our gallery of noising animals. We looked for shapes and patterns to help this observational artwork.

Using our map, we discovered that although penguins and polar bears both like the cold, they do not live together! Again, we used photographs and videos to learn how penguins lived in Antarctica. We then created our own penguins and penguin habitats, even making pretend snow.

Over the half term we have been making good use of all the school resources. In the small hall, we have been perfecting our gross motor skills, using the text 'We're going on a bear hunt' as a stimulus. All of the children are extremely proud of their personal achievements as the weeks progressed.

Although the weather has been a little wet and cold, at times, we have made the most of the gardens and playgrounds around the school and nursery. We are continuing to develop our cycling skills and we even found an outdoor bus that was going to Sainsbury's!

Finally, we finished the half term with the animal everyone was waiting for...DINOSAURS. After a long search for them on our class map, we learnt that dinosaurs are not alive anymore and they lived a long long long long long long long long time ago, even before our grown ups were babies!