Welcome to Nursery!
Nursery New Starters 2022
Nursery
In Nursery, we are focused on learning through play and exploring the world around us, we have a well resourced classroom and an extensive outdoor space to explore and discover many learning opportunities.
We post regular updates and observations on Tapestry so please keep checking your child's Tapestry account to stay up-to-date.
Miss Jones Class teacher Miss Bonner Teaching Assistant Miss Gill Teaching Assistant
Our Nursery Classroom
Autumn 1- Week 4
Our nature table this week had apples on it so we had a look at where apples grow and what's inside them. We used the apples growing on a tree in school to make our own apple crumble.
We also looked at colours and matched colours of objects in the classroom to colour spots.
In our PSHE sessions we began to discuss feelings and showed our happy and sad faces.
Autumn 1- Week 3
We have begun some carpet sessions this week and the children have been talking about colours and finding red, blue and yellow things in the classroom and sorting them during circle times. We have had a focus of owls on our nature table and the class went on a nature walk to find different feathers and listen out for different bird songs.
We also talked about our families and the children drew some wonderful pictures of their families.
Autumn 1
Our new Nursery starters have settled in fantastically and loved exploring all the areas inside and out.
This half term we will be looking at the changes Autumn brings as well as talking about ourselves. We have already enjoyed an Autumn walk to find some exciting natural items in the forest.
Summer 2- bees
We have been enjoying our minibeasts topic and this week we have been looking at bees.
We used the beebots to program a path for the beebot to follow. We also tried different types of honey with our snack and planted some bright and colourful flowers to attract the bees to our nursery garden.
Summer 2- Minibeasts
We have enjoyed exploring lots of different types of minibeasts this half term. We have made a wormery, been on a bug hunt, made paper snails and raced them and shared lots of stories about different insects and minibeasts.
Summer 1- Jubilee Celebrations
We had a wonderful time preparing for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations. We made crown shaped biscuits, created bunting, decorated flags, made crowns and castles and even painted a portrait of the Queen using watercolours.
We ended the week with some Jubilee games and scones with jam and cream.
Summer 1- Real Bears
We have moved onto looking at real bears this week and on Monday we found lots of pictures of real bears in the outdoor area. We quickly set about matching the bears on the pictures to the ones on our list. We explored what real bears eat and even tried some of the foods ourselves-honey, seeds, berries and fish.
We used our observation skills to paint pictures of some different types of bear. For our snack time we made some bear toast and used fruit creatively to make the bear's face.
Summer 1- Goldilocks and the Three Bears
We found the home corner in a real mess and wondered who had made the mess. We found some clues- a ribbon, some blonde hair and some porridge. We used our imagination to think who had made the mess- we then revealed it was Goldilocks who had done it!
We had fun joining in with the story this week and exploring lots of elements of the story- making porridge and trying different toppings, choosing the best material for a bed and sorting lots of items into small, medium and big.
Summer 1- Going on a Bear Hunt
The first two weeks of the new term we have been focusing on the story "Going on a bear hunt".
We found some footprints outside and decided to follow them around the Nursery outdoor space until we found the bear.
The class have enjoyed joining in with the story and even making their own sensory bear hunt pictures.
In P.E. we have begun looking at ball skills, and the children worked well together to pass the ball.
We have also welcomed some new Nursery starters who have been enjoying exploring the Nursery classroom and outdoor space.
Spring 2- WEEK 6
As we prepare for our Easter break we have been looking at Easter celebrations this week. We've made Easter chocolate nests, sung Easter songs, created bunny headbands, rolled eggs and even had an Easter egg hunt.
We also went on a visit to Tullie House for their trains workshop. The class had a great morning looking round the museum and deepening their knowledge of trains.
Spring 2- WEEK 5
We discussed People Who Help Us this week and made some junk model emergency vehicles. We also learned a song about 5 little firefighters and learned some Makaton signs to go with it.
This week we also explored Maths Day and went on a number hunt and created some of our own nature numbers.
Spring 2- WEEK 4
It was science week this week and we have been exploring all about growth and growing.
We planted cress heads on Monday and looked at pictures of us as babies to think about how we had changed.
We also did some lovely observational paintings of some daffodils and planted some sunflowers.
We also had an exciting visit from Silverband Falconry who brought along a peregrine falcon and 2 owls for us to see... some of us even got to have a hold.
Spring 2- WEEK 3
This week we enjoyed reading the story The Naughty Bus and thinking about where the bus might go on his next adventure. We also looked at transport around the world and had a go at making our own versions out of lego.
In maths we introduced number 4 and review number formation for numbers 1-3. We understood that in our 5s frame we would have one space left to make 4.
Spring 2- WEEK 2
This week we have talked about a lot of different things. Our transport focus for the week was trains and the children enjoyed listening to The Magic Train Ride story and talking about where they would go if they had a magic train ticket.
We also celebrated pancake day and the children had a great time carefully following instructions to make the pancakes.
We also celebrated World Book Day this week and had a visit from an author which the children really enjoyed. We read lots of our favourite stories and painted pictures of some of our favourite storybook characters.
In our Jigsaw session we made an obstacle course and timed ourselves to complete it as fast as possible before discussing healthy bodies and exercise.
Spring 2- WEEK 1
This half term's topic is Transport.
We started the week talking about and sorting different transport we know. We looked at road safety and created some of our own road signs.
We made some traffic light biscuits using smarties and really enjoyed eating these!
We also had a visit from a community police officer who brought along her police car... the siren was so loud!
Spring 1- WEEKS 2 & 3
We have continued our space focus and enjoyed talking more about aliens. We read Aliens Love Underpants and designed a new pair of pants for the aliens and did an experiment to find the best material for their new pants. We made some tasty alien biscuits and worked together to make some alien friends called Bob and Sam.
This week we have been talking about the moon. We looked at the different moon phases and used oreos to show the different phases of the moon we see. We also made our own astronaut food using powdered milk and pudding mix. During forest school we pretended we had landed on the moon and set about collecting moon rocks and avoiding aliens!
Spring 1- WEEK 1
We have had a lovely week welcoming back the children after a relaxing Christmas break.
We were surprised to find an alien spaceship had crash landed into our Nursery playground and the aliens were nowhere to be found. We thought about what the aliens might look like and drew pictures. We also used instruments to create noises the aliens may make. In our forest school session we received a letter from the aliens telling us that part of their "turbo blaster" had broken as they landed and it was broken in the forest. We had to find 10 pieces to help rebuild it so their rocket could launch and return home.
Autumn 2- WEEK 6
This week we have officially Stepped into Christmas!
We have made mince pies, practised and filmed our Nativity, made decorations, sang Christmas songs and read LOTS of Christmas stories.
We are excited for our Christmas party next week!
Autumn 2- WEEK 5
On Monday we had a lovely day exploring the snow that had fallen over the weekend and made some lovely snowcastles.
On Wednesday we had our school trip to Whinlatter to visit the Gruffalo Trail, we found all the characters from the story and were very brave as we faced the Gruffalo! On Friday we even made Gruffalo crumble- yum yum!
Autumn 2- WEEK 4
Carrying on from our focus on animal homes, this week we started looking at our own homes and how they are the same and different. We looked at pictures of houses from around the world and thought about who might live in different types of house.
We created our own cardboard box houses thinking carefully about what our own homes have.
We also began thinking about Christmas and made some lovely nature inspired decorations during our forest school session.
Autumn 2- WEEK 3
Linked to our Gruffalo topic, we have started to look at different animal homes. We also talked about hibernation and thought about how we could keep our hedgehog warm through winter.
In maths we made log piles houses for the snake, carefully counting how many sticks he would need.
Friday was Children in Need and we made Pudsey headbands, Pudsey biscuits and brought our own teddies in to share the day with.
Autumn 2- WEEK 2
This week we begun our focus story- The Gruffalo. The children have enjoyed listening to and joining in with the story this week.
We have compared lots of sizes from the story and even drawn our own Gruffalo footprints. We also worked together to create our own Gruffalo picture for our display. In forest school we created our own scary monster faces on the trees.
Remembrance Day was this week and the children sat so sensibly during the 2 minutes silence enjoying the Cbeebies "Poppies" video.
Autumn 2- WEEK 1
We hope everyone had a lovely half term break. We have been so lucky over half term and we have had fantastic new climbing equipment build (courtesy of Cool Canvas). All the school have loved having a go on the equipment this week.
This week we talked about the changes we've noticed as Autumn progresses as well as finding out about Bonfire night and doing some fun firework craft.
We compared items in maths and used some fantastic size language in our discussions.
The children also were interested in the different coloured torches and we used these to make some simple shadow games using our puppet theatre and small world toys.
Autumn 1- WEEK 5
Our story focus this week was "The Dot" and we explored lots of dotty artworks including Kandinsky's circles and tried to create our own. We also explored patterns and looked at another artist- Andy Goldsworthy- and created patterns made from natural items.
We also baked, making some dotty cupcakes which were delicious.
We explored colour mixing more and watched what happens when we add water to skittles, we also made patterns and dots on filter paper and watched what happened when we added drops of water.
In P.E. we used some equipment to move in different ways.
Autumn 1- WEEK 4
We read our favourite story Pete the Cat- I love my white shoes, this week and introduced another Pete the Cat story- Pete the Cat and his four groovy buttons.
This week we sorted buttons and shoes in maths. We also made our own different coloured prints using our feet in paint.
We experimented what colour different foods would turn our shoes and we made some fantastic predictions. We also enjoyed filming us reciting the story, we remembered the words brilliantly.
Autumn 1- WEEK 3
Our story focus this week was "The Colour Monster", we talked about the different emotions in the story and thought about things that make us happy, sad, angry, scared or calm. We made our own Colour Monster jars using recycled milk bottles.
We also looked at "Mix it Up" and explored colour mixing using paints and playdough.
In forest school we used mud and powder paint to make some muddy masterpieces.
Autumn 1- WEEK 2
This week, as part of our colour topic, we have been looking at rainbows. We have made a beautiful collaborative rainbow picture for our classroom display, as well as exploring "walking rainbows" by adding different coloured water to paper towels and seeing how the colours mix together. We used our colour knowledge to find items in the classroom of different colours and we even ate a rainbow by making tasty fruit skewers with all the colours of the rainbow.
We have also begun P.E. sessions, where the class will be developing their gross motor skills throughout the year, as well as starting our forest school sessions which the children loved.
Autumn 1- WEEK 1
We have had a lovely week getting settled into Nursery routines. Our new starters have settled quickly, and our existing Nursery children have enjoyed exploring our new provision. Particular favourites this week have been the HUGE sandpit, our mud kitchen and our new outdoor classroom.
We have been so impressed with their sensible behaviour at lunchtimes and story times and we're excited for the rest of the year.
This half term our topic is "Colours" so we will be sharing lots of stories about colour, investigating rainbows and mixing colours.
Our forest school will be on Thursdays, but we will have plenty of opportunities to visit the woods next to Nursery on other days so do not worry if your child does not attend on Thursday, they will still get plenty of outdoor learning opportunities.
Our new starter booklet is full of useful information on what to expect in Nursery.
Summer 2-WEEK 1 & 2 (7th -18th June 2021)
This half term we are focusing on Under the Sea and these past two weeks we have had a pirate focus. The children have been using positional language to find pirate treasure, using junk items and lego to make their own pirate ships, learning lots of Pirate terminology through a range of stories and even completing some Pirate maths.
We had a message in a bottle from a Pirate who promised us treasure if we completed lots of pirate tasks. At the end of the week we searched for the treasure following clues and found some lovely treats.
Summer 1-WEEK 3 & 4 (4th -14th May 2021)
We have continued to look at different Superhero stories and we have enjoyed reading "Superworm" and exploring everything to do with worms. We looked closely at worms we found outside and made some wormeries, as well as using spaghetti to pretend it was wiggly worms.
The next week we started to think about Real life superheroes who might help us in our community. We have loved dressing up as police officers, fire fighters and doctors and role playing lots of scenarios. We talked about lots of different people who help us and how they help us, we even had a go at keeping some teeth clean and finding out more about different emergency vehicles.
Summer 1-WEEK 1 & 2 (19th -30th April 2021)
Our topic this half term is SUPERHEROES! The children have enjoyed discussing different superhero powers, exploring the best material to make a cape and creating their own capes. We have also been visited by Supertato and the Evil Pea and created traps to catch the pea. We also had fun making our own supertato and exploring different peas in our tuff tray.
Spring 2- 8th -19th March 2021
It has been fantastic welcoming back all our Nursery children these past two weeks. We have been so impressed with how well they have settled back into Nursery routines, learning and play.
We have been looking at growth and planted our own bean plants after reading Jack and the Beanstalk. We also tried some Talk4Writing techniques and followed a story map to retell the story of Jack and the beanstalk.
We have also had some fantastic forest school sessions- climbing trees, swinging in hammocks, weaving sticks and hunting for minibeasts.
Autumn 2-WEEK 5 & 6 (30th November-11th December 2020)
This fortnight we've focused on Christmas! We have lots of very excited children in Nursery and we have loved hearing about their decorations, present wish lists and Elf on the shelves.
During these weeks we have listened to the Nativity story and recalled characters and key events from the story, we also talked about what gift we might bring the Baby Jesus.
We also made lots of Christmas crafts and many children used a range of resources to create some original pieces of work.
We have looked at wrapping paper patterns and had a go at making our own designs and used salt dough to make some beautiful tree decorations. Mrs Gatherer has also been helping us make some tasty Christmas treats.
Next week we are looking forward to our Christmas party and more glittery Christmas craft activities.
Autumn 2-WEEK 4 (23rd-27th November 2020)
Light and Dark was our topic this week. We read "Owl Babies" and "Wow! said the owl at night time" and discussed animals that come out at night and learnt a new word- "nocturnal".
We re-enacted the Owl babies story using our outdoor tuff tray and during our forest school session we made our own owl baby nests using sticks and leaves.
We had great fun using torches and glow sticks in our dark den and explored shadows on Friday, with some of the class making some fabulous shadow puppets for our theatre.
Next week we will be beginning our Christmas focus and having lots of craft opportunities throughout the week.
Autumn 2-WEEK 3 (16th-20th November 2020)
World Nursery Rhyme was our focus this week with a different nursery rhyme focus each day!
On Monday we sang Wheels on the Bus and created a bus to help us with our counting, as well as making our own junk model buses. We even did some Wheels on the Bus movement and yoga!
Tuesday our focus song was 5 Little Speckled Frogs and we talked about the lifecycle of a frog and made a story map to act out- the children remembered the facts super quickly!
Wednesday we had Hickory Dickory Dock as our song and we sorted activities we did in the morning and at night as well as making some of our craft clocks.
On Thursday Miss Polly Had a Dolly was the Nursery Rhyme of choice and we role played doctors and talked about different items we may find in a doctor's bag and what they are used for.
Finally, on Friday we focused on Old McDonald Had a Farm and talked about what different animals give us (such as milk, eggs and wool) and played with farm animals in small world and also washed some muddy animals in the water tray.
We also had our first Wednesday afternoon forest school/ welly walk and we went puddle jumping and got very wet and muddy but had a lot of fun!
Autumn 2-WEEK 2 (9th-13th November 2020)
This week we celebrated the Hindu festival of lights- Diwali. We read the story of Rama and Sita and some children created their own pictures from the story. We also made diya lamps, explored rangoli patterns and created mehendi patterns using cotton buds and paint. On Thursday some children tried some poppadums and traditional Indian dips.
This week we also marked Remembrance day, the children impressed us by sitting quietly for a minute and listened carefully to Mrs Gatherer tell us about her husband's experiences in the army. Our windows have been decorated with lots of poppies and the class also practised their cutting skills to cut petals on a paper poppy.
On Friday we talked about Children in Need and we also made bird and squirrel feeders during our forest school session.
Our welly walks/ forest school sessions will now take place on Wednesday afternoons so please ensure wellies are in school that day.
Next week is World Nursery Rhyme Week and we will be exploring a different Nursery Rhyme each day!
Autumn 2-WEEK 1 (2nd-6th November 2020)
It was lovely to see all the children back this week after a restful half term. We spent this week talking about bonfire night and fireworks. We also looked at hedgehogs and learnt about 'hibernation', as well as how to ensure hedgehogs are kept safe.
We made pinecone hedgehogs hedgehog bread and clay hedgehogs and the class loved using a range of media.
We also explored colours linked to fireworks in the creative areas making chalk firework pictures, getting messy in the tuff tray with paint and painting our own firework pictures.
We have also introduced our "Number of the week" and this week it was number 1.
Next week we will be celebrating Diwali and Remembrance Day and have lots of fun activities planned.
Reminder: Next week we have our first parent evenings so please ensure you return your form to let us know if you want your meeting this week or next.
WEEK 8 (19th-23rd October 2020)
With Halloween just around the corner, this week in Nursery we had lots of spooky Halloween activities. We read Room on the Broom and used our maths skills to count in items for a magic potion. We explored gloop in the tuff tray which was a big hit with the children... just a little bit messy!
We dressed up in our best spooky costumes for our Halloween party. We made chocolate witches hats, skeleton pictures, explored items in the jelly and even had time for some dancing and party games. Miss Jones made our snack Halloween themed too with ghostly bananas and pumpkin tangerines.
For our welly walk we made our own broomsticks out of sticks and leaves.
Have a happy half term break!
WEEK 7 (12th-16th October 2020)
Pumpkins were the main focus of our learning this week. It was fantastic to see how engaged the children were throughout the week with this topic, developing lots of skills just with the help of pumpkins.
We explored what was inside the pumpkins, went on a pumpkin hunt and sorted the pumpkins we found by size. The class also enjoyed setting up our own pumpkin shop, allowing them to clean, weigh and sell them to their friends. On Wednesday we picked our own pumpkin and made some delicious pumpkin soup which most of the class really enjoyed tasting.
On our welly walk this week we made our own pumpkin volcanos and learnt the word "eruption".
A very busy and fun filled week!
Reminder:
Wednesday is our Halloween party! If your child attends on Wednesdays they can come to Nursery in fancy dress. If your child does not attend on Wednesdays, we will be doing other Halloween activities during the week so they won't miss out on all the fun.
WEEK 6 (5th-9th October 2020)
Our story this week was "Leaf Man" so our activities this week were based around leaves and also the Autumn changes.
We made some leaf pictures, as well as going on a leaf hunt to see what different types of leaf we could find and try and sort them. The class enjoyed printing with leaves and making leaf crowns.
On Thursday, the class made sandwiches for their snack helping them to understand how to follow instructions and to make a healthy meal.
Reminder:
We have had a few jumpers misplaced, can we please remind parents to put names in all items of clothing coming into school so we can ensure the correct items come home. Thank you :)
WEEK 5 (28th September-2nd October 2020)
We were lucky on Monday to have use of the forest school all morning, and we even enjoyed our morning snack there. Mrs McGregor came over to show us lots of things we could do in the forest. The class listened and joined in brilliantly.
We read a book called "Colour Monster" this week and we talked about our emotions and what makes us happy, sad, angry and scared. We created some of our own emotion jars to represent our feelings.
The children also impressed us this week as we looked at shapes and went to look for some shapes in the classroom, they found circles, squares, rectangles and triangles all over the Nursery!
WEEK 4 (21st-25th September 2020)
This week we have continued finding out more about the children in class. We talked about who was in our family and drew pictures of them for our display. We have been singing lots of Nursery Rhymes this week and it has been fantastic seeing the children grow in confidence and begin to join in more and more with these.
Many children showed an interest in making necklaces, so we set about painting pasta for threading onto necklaces next week.
We also had a welly rack delivered but it had no poles in it, so the children helped put these in carefully using a mallet and following safety instructions brilliantly.
We have begun some early phonics sessions with our preschool children, and they have really impressed us with their excellent listening skills- we have been on a listening walk and explored sounds we can make indoors and outdoors by drumming on different items.
On Friday, we received a letter from the woodland fairies saying they'd left some pictures in the woods and asking for the children to make some pictures of themselves to say "hello". The creativity that the children displayed was fantastic.
WEEK 3 (14th-18th September 2020)
This week we began our key person "chatty times" where we shared our "all about me" bags, it was lovely hearing all about the children's favourite things.
Some children had a go at making a picture of their face, looking carefully at eye and hair colour.
Outside we set up a car garage and the children enjoyed pretending to fix the cars using real tools, as well as trying to create our own obstacle courses.
On our welly walk this week, we used the children's interest in creating potions and went to the woods to collect some exciting ingredients to make our magic potions, we added some herbs and spices and lemons and limes and talked about what our potions would do- we had everything from turning people into frogs, to making people happy.
We now have access to tapestry and will be beginning to upload observations over the next week so keep checking the Tapestry app.
WEEK 2 (7th-11th September 2020)
We have had a fantastic week in Nursery and the children are settling well and enjoying exploring the classroom.
This week we have explored colour mixing with handprint painting, made our own playdough, written some stories together, played in our HUGE play tunnel and spotted minibeasts on our (very wet) welly walk!
Next week we will be spending our key person time talking about our "All about me" bags and getting to know the class and their interests a little better.
We are looking forward to a fun packed year as part of Wigton Infant School.
The Nursery classroom is ready and we are excited to be welcoming children back this week.
Here is a sneak peak of the new layout...
Our new starters will have received our "Welcome to Nursery" booklet. This includes information on what to bring to Nursery, Nursery hours, what learning might look like in Nursery and lots of other important information.