Spring Update 2011
After settling back in to routines and before we learnt all about Jack and the Beanstalk we enjoyed the snow and learnt about winter.
The role-play play area was set up to be the giant's castle; we heard several versions of the story; and acted it out as the characters and with puppets. We talked and painted about our favourite parts of the story. Mrs Morris's computer went wrong so we had a funny story called Sack and the Bean Pork where we had to find the words that were wrong and replace them with the correct rhyming words. We pretended to be the giant and wrote signs with giant pencils like 'No boys and girls allowed'.
The teachers performed a fantastic pantomime even if they do say so themselves. We watched a musical pantomime and learnt all about how sound changes then we used the sounds in our P.E. Lessons. We used different gestures, skipped, walked, tiptoed and stomped to different rhythms, moved at different speeds and moved to high and low positions to the scale of the xylophone. We listened and danced to harp music. Then we made harps, shakers and castles. We decorated bean stalk leaves all by ourselves and cut out cow jigsaws.
We planted beans and watched them grow. Our Mums and Dads helped us keep a bean diary so that we really looked at how they grew. We watered them and when they were ready put them into pots with compost and supports so that they can grow even taller. We are hoping to plant them outside and see them grow flowers and beans later in the year.
We made tall and short beanstalks and measured ourselves to find out who was the tallest and shortest child at nursery. The teachers drew round us, cut out our silhouettes and displayed them in order of height around the nursery. The teachers wrote down all the things we said about our size in speech bubbles.
We made castle pictures from shapes and played with the beans from a giant tin of baked beans and used the number language such as more, less and lots. We matched, counted and ordered golden eggs to the numbers that we are familiar with.
We learnt about cows and hens. We found out where milk that we drink comes from: cows, goats and soya beans. Then we made delicious milk shakes for snack time. We revisited how to use split pins to make cow and hen mobiles.
We explored raw and cooked eggs, thinking about how they were the same and different and especially noted that raw eggs were runny and liquid and cooked eggs were hard and solid. We named the shell, white and yolk. Holly Tots made everyone egg sandwiches and one Mum reported that her little boy started to eat egg sandwiches since tasting them at school.
We made some beautiful marks with feathers and small plastic eggs on egg shaped paper with ink and paint.
Finally we talked about the feelings of the giant, Jack and Jack's Mum at different parts of the story and thought about when we have felt the same. We thought about some ways to stop ourselves feeling sad, angry, worried and bored.
After learning about hens and cows we thought about rabbits which led us to the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit.
Lots of people came to visit us. Mrs civil, Harry's Mum, brought in a giant rabbit called Amber. We learnt all about how to look after a rabbit and the correct way to stroke one.
Rebecca and Jamie came to talk about how the Chinese celebrate Chinese New Year. Rebecca works at The Superb Chinese Takeaway in Princess Street and both of the ladies' children used to come to Holly Grove. Mr and Mrs Ferguson dropped into Nursery to say hello. They came to England from Hong Kong and they showed us where China was on the globe.
Rebecca and Jamie told us all about the story about how the Chinese New Year came to be named after the twelve animals. They showed us 'ang pow': special red wallets that the Chinese Mums and Dads give their children on the morning of New Year. They told us about the greetings they say to each other. They told us about how they celebrate with special dragon dances, fireworks, cards, clothes. The best part was tasting and smelling the Chinese sweets.
Jamie and Rebecca wrote our names in Chinese writing and showed us how to write numbers in Chinese. Rebecca told us that Chinese people write from the top to the bottom of the page and Mrs Ashton was relieved that she had put up some Chinese writing the correct way. We performed a dragon dance and a Chinese poem for them to which they applauded. They also stayed to eat dinner with us and we heard them speak Chinese.
We played in the role-play Chinese restaurant, writing orders and using chopsticks. We used semi-circles to decorate a Chinese dragon. We investigated lots of Chinese artefacts, cut out and made Chinese lanterns, made New Year cards and made ang pow. We had lots of stories about Chinese New Year and Chinese children.
On the last Friday of Half-Term we celebrated Chinese New Year with Chinese with ribbon dancing, by making Chinese music and having a feast of Chinese food. The best part was performing our dragon dance with the dragon that we made to the rest of the school.
After World Book Day and some lovely play and stay sessions when teachers and parents discussed our progress, learning and next steps, this term we are looking forward to learning about more animals, creating a vets in the role-play area and celebrating Mother's Day with a special tea after school and enjoying Easter by celebrating with a rabbits and chicks party.
Christmas and January Update 2011
We had a great time at Christmas. We performed our play called Toys' Party. It was all about the party that the toys have before they are delivered to all the children on Christmas Eve. We dressed up as Santa, Barbies, teddy bears, robots, soldiers, cars and Bob the Builders. All the grown ups had to join in too.
Uncle Steve the entertainer came to show us his magic tricks. We had a great party where we did the best ever party dancing. The teacher's taught us the classics Agadoo, the conga, Music Man and many more. We played party games and then we ate lots of party food wearing the party hats that we had made alongside Christmas cards earlier in the week. Santa came. He brought us a new girl's bike and a new boy's bike. Thank you PTA!
Happy New Year everyone. Everyone was pleased to be back at nursery. We were amazed at how busy Santa had been. The teacher's asked the children what they had had for Christmas. The replies came thick and fast Ben Ten, dolls, Scalectrix and beef.
We welcomed the new Holly Tots children. Some of them feel like they have been with us always and a few still need to settle in. In the first few weeks we were reminded about how we play in all the exciting areas of our Nursery. We learnt about winter and snow and finished playing in Santa's workshop.
Then we all had a big think about all the things we want to learn about and Mrs Morris wrote them down for us. The teachers put all our ideas under topic headings. So far the topics that we want to cover are stories, animals, transport and water. We thought about doing activities such as playing Jack and the Beanstalk, learning about dogs, going to Thomas Land and dressing up as pirates and mermaids.
Children in Need
For children in need the children dressed in spots and iced biscuits to look like teddy bears and sold them at the end of their session. Altogether Nursery and Holly Tots raised £80.02. Thank you every one.
November Update 2010
The children are enjoying learning all about toys. We have played with moving toys, robots and teddy bears. We have looked at a very old bear and read lots of stories about toys and teddies. We've made teddy tree decorations. The children have had fun playing with Kipper's Toy Box. Thank you for all the toys and stories sent in. We know that we have to take care of our and other children's toys if we want to play with them for a long time.
Along side the topic of toys we have been learning about shapes. We have made robots from squares and rectangles, talking about corners and sides. We have touched circles of lots of different textures and tried to use words such as smooth, rough, scratchy, bumpy, soft and squashy. We still need lots of practise at these.
We are now learning songs and rhymes for our play. It is about the toys having a party before being delivered to the boys and girls by Father Christmas. Please help the children to learn the words and actions (click here for the words). Mums, dads and grandparents are expected to join in too! (click here for our Bob the Builder song).
We can't wait for Tuesday 7th December: Morning children's play at 10.30 and afternoon children's play 2.00. Holly Tots children will be performing too. However they may have chosen to play a different role from their nursery performance. Just turn up with friends and family but please accept that because there are no restrictions on numbers that some people may have to stand. There will be a collection to go towards a school play area.
Fireworks
This week the children have learnt about a very naughty man named Guy Fawkes (click here for the story).
We have been creative by making sparklers and Play-dough fireworks. We have learnt about shapes and made rockets (click here for shape song).
We have been physical by using tapping and flicking motions to create firework pictures with different paints and
water. Also we have used big arm movements with giant chalks to make firework trails on black paper that looked like the dark sky.
We have learnt and made up firework poems (click here for fire work rhymes). We used the 'to paint' program
'splash' to make colourful firework shapes. We could change colour easily and we practised clearing the screen and printing.
We have pretended to be fireworks using sound words such as bang, fizz, zoom and crackle with matching movements. We have waved firework trails to some firework music. Popping bubble wrap has sounded just like popping and crackling fireworks. We had a Bonfire party. We had to make sure our cat and dog were safely inside. After building our pretend fire we checked it for hedgehogs. We pretended to be the fireworks. We talked about the special foods that people eat at Bonfire parties: toffee apples, hot dogs and jacket potatoes cooked in the fire. Finally we rounded up the party by eating hot dogs with ketchup, roasting marsh mallows on the fire and drinking a cup of warm chocolate.
All the time we thought about keeping safe. (click here for Welephant's firework safety story). Please look at our work displayed on the wall under the canopy of which we are very proud.
Nursery and Holly Tots - Autum Update 2010
The new children settled very well into nursery. One child did wear his coat inside for a few days before feeling entirely comfortable that he was going home at some point during the afternoon and not staying at nursery forever. The children learnt where areas of learning are stationed and where equipment is kept. Most children have taken on board the conventions and expectations of the routines and rules although we are getting the occasional dinosaur in the farm box. Recently we have had a few late comers to add to our numbers. We now only have about eight places left in the afternoon. More parents are using the Holly-Tots wrap around care and special Christmas shopping deals are planned.
Story Sacks, Top Tots and take home book programmes were instigated early on in the term. Take home books are working very well. Story Sacks are quite popular but only a few parents have taken advantage of Top Tots. To manage the programmes Mrs Morris kindly devised a rota for morning and afternoon children giving them six weeks each term to take advantage of the schemes. The morning children have the opportunity at the moment; after half-term the afternoon children will take their turn. Full details can be found here.
This term the children harvested the apples from the tree and the vegetables that the previous nursery and Holly Tots children had planted in the summer. We washed, tasted and printed with these. We have explored and sorted lots of vegetables and fruit according to type, size, shape and colour. The Role-play area became a farmhouse kitchen where lots of pretend vegetable stew has been made. After sorting the real vegetables some children took them to the kitchen to chop up with the plastic knives for the pretend stew. One child was heard congratulating himself on making a very good recipe.
We have read lots of farm and scarecrow stories. We can now sing 'Dingle Dangle Scarecrow' changing the volume
of the song in the right places. We have been learning to count and recognise some numbers by singing a cockerel song that wakes
everybody up when the children sing 'cock-a-doodle-doo'.
Nannies and Grandads enjoyed these rhymes when they visited school as part of our history focus. They and their grand children made pictures of the grand-parents. We talked about grandparents and the children brought in photographs. The work is now displayed in Nursery please take a look. Feedback has been positive from all involved. It is something to consider doing again. One child's Nanny lives in Spain. She counts in Spanish so we have all had a go. Instead of saying thank you at snack time we have said 'gracias'.
To celebrate our work and enjoy the carrot cakes that we made earlier in the term then froze, after we tried some
of course, we had a scarecrow party. We are all dressed up as scarecrows, played the rhymes and games that we have learnt and tried
some delicious food.
Next half term starts with Bon Fire celebrations and activities. Now the children have become adept at putting on their own coats they are ready to begin free flow (choosing whether to play inside or outside.) Soon we will be thinking about the Christmas play and the learning that arises from it. Mr Hammond is setting up Santa's Grotto in the Nursery role-play area. We plan to make Christmas come to Nursery the Night before the Christmas fair.
Mother's Day Celebration Lunch 2010
The Nursery and Holly Tots children celebrated Mother's Day by eating lunch with their Mums at Nursery. Mums and children ate and talked together. There was lots of reminiscing about school dinners of old and funny stories from home.
After the meal the children took their Mums to play for a while before presenting them with a Mother's Day surprise: a rose. This was a special moment that brought a tear to the eye of everyone. The bond between mother and child shone through.
Thank you very much to Mrs Heap, the school cook, and her staff for a lovely meal. Also a big thank you to Miss Taylor for organising this special time.
Spring Update 2010
Nursery and Holly Tots took full advantage of the snowy weather. The children
investigated the snow, sledded down the nursery hill, made snow angels and built snow men. Inside
the children found out that snow melted when it became warm. The snowy theme continued in the
role-play corner: the children enjoyed an igloo tent with cuddly polar bears and an arctic tuff spot
with pretend snow.
The children decided that they would like to start their learning journey with
a topic about houses. This led on to The Three Little Pigs. The children enjoyed sorting materials,
building with sticks and boxes made to look like bails of straw or bricks and performing puppet shows
to their friends.
This traditional story made the children think about other stories that they know:
fairy tales. Thanks to Mr. Hammond a castle was erected and the Nursery was full of princesses and
knights. Lots of children visited castles with their Mums and Dads. They brought in rubbings, guides
and photographs to show their friends. Some new words were learnt like drawbridge and dungeon.
To end the castle topic we celebrated with a banquet. The children decided that
they wanted to cook honey cakes and gingerbread rather than roasted peacock (an old castle favourite).
After the banquet we danced to old castle music and played there was a princess long ago, but this
didn’t stop the children thinking about dragons.
It was Chinese New Year. The children loved dragon dancing and making dragon music
which was appreciated by the whole school. There was more feasting; this time on Chinese food prepared
by Mrs Woolley and Mrs Jones. This year was the year of the tiger. The children engaged in the story
about the first Chinese New Year and made tiger masks.
This second part of the spring term the children have decided that they want to find out about people who help us starting with our Mums because it’s Mother’s day soon. The staff are looking forward to visiting the fire station!
Mums and Dads have visited Nursery and Holly Tots all week including Thursday: World
Book Day. The children and staff have really enjoyed seeing them. We like to think that they have enjoyed
it too.
Nursery Autumn Term 2009
Nursery and Holly Tots have been enjoying the topic Autumn. We have been learning about healthy foods (fruits and vegetables) and the changes to the environment that occur during this season. The fruit and vegetables have been sorted by colour, shape, size and texture and even painted or printed. The children have extended their knowledge gained in the role play Fruit and Vegetable shop set up in the play house outside.
A wonderful time was had by all in the clay including the staff. Sculptures were created from autumn finds collected by the children at home
The book corner has been turned into a hibernating house where the children can tell a story to a cuddly hedgehog, squirrel or fox inside a decorated tent.
Outside the children have enjoyed exploring leaves by throwing them, walking in them and sweeping them up into the wheelbarrows. The children have used magnifying glasses to look at the leaves in greater detail.
Many topic based books have been read and the children have learnt lots of new songs such as Five little peas in a pea pod pressed, I’ve got a basket of apples and This is the way we sweep the leaves. We must not forget our Dingle dangle scarecrow party where the children celebrate their first half term by tasting a variety of fruit and vegetables, singing songs and playing party games such as musical scarecrows. This day is a way of recapturing all knowledge gained throughout the last 7 weeks.
Christmas
Nursery and Holly Tots Day care performed their Christmas play Winter Numberland for parents and family members. The children dressed up as various winter and woodland characters. They sang number songs and rhymes during the performance. The snowflakes danced a twirling dance and the robins shook their tail feathers.
During the last week of term the children enjoyed a Christmas party and were visited by Santa Claus who gave the nursery lots of presents.
Autumn Term 2007
Hello from the Nursery Staff: Mrs Morris and Mrs Bryant.
We welcome our new intake through the topics of Autumn and Winter. Once settled, the children embark on a journey through all areas of learning.
Learning is celebrated next half-term with a harvest scarecrow party.