Your Class Teacher is Mrs. Ramshaw

Helpful Websites To Support At Home

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com

https://www.topmarks.co.uk

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk

http://www.ictgames.com

http://www.hacw.nhs.uk/our-services/speech-language-therapy/childrens/resources/

http://www.ican.org.uk/

Week Beginning 14th November

This week we have been learning about friendship. We talked about what makes a good friend. Everyone made a friendship heart for our whole school Friendship Tree. On each heart we wrote what we thought made us a good friend. We read Rainbow Fish and Something Else, then discussed how we were similar and also how we were all different. As a whole Early Years we made a large display for our cloakroom. Everyone made a fish and decorated it in a different way. Our motto for the display is "In Early Years we are all very different, but we all swim together."  At the Funky Fingers table we made friendship bracelets by threading wooden beads onto large pipe cleaners and we decorated rainbow fish with jewels in the play dough.

As it was Children in Need on Friday, this week we made Pudsey buns. We decorated them with icing and a Pudsey topper and enjoyed them as a treat with our milk on Friday. We talked about Children in Need and discussed how we could help children who are not as fortunate as others.

We have all written a secret letter home this week and on Friday we walked to the local post box to post our letters. So look out for your lovely message through the post!

We have started to practise our songs for the EYFS Christmas performance so you might hear lovely snippets as you come into Nursery in the morning and afternoon.

Following the interests of children, this week we are going to be reading Stickman and will be doing lots of activities related to the story. This book is very popular and the children will really enjoy taking part in Stickman activities.

NOTICES:

• The letters have gone out now to inform you what your child will be in the Christmas performance. Please see a member of staff if you are unsure of your child's costume.
• If you have any spare or old Christmas related items we could use in our Santa's workshop role play area or in Nursery we would be very grateful. 

Week Beginning 7th November:

This week we talked about Bonfire Night and fireworks as the children were very interested in discussing their Bonfire Night experiences from the weekend. We talked about the sounds the children heard from fireworks and they came up with some great describing words. We also chatted about the different kinds of food we might eat on Bonfire Night. The children decided to make firework pictures and there were some fabulous firework creations. We also made 3D rocket fireworks. We added a triangle top and streamers for the flames. On Tuesday we had a slightly different cookery day. Mrs Jennings cooked sausages and jacket potatoes. We listened to them sizzling in the pan and sang 'Ten Fat Sausages'. Once they were cooked we watched an interactive firework display and ate our bangers and jackets. They were very tasty!

In the outdoor area we made a big bonfire with junk modelling, leaves and colourful ribbons. Once we had built our bonfire some children sat next to it and pretended to toast marsh mallows, whilst warming their hands.

We have introduced a selection of post boxes around Nursery to add to our Post Office theme. The children are really enjoying posting letters to the three bears, the wolf, Stickman and the three little pigs. Thank you to everyone who provided their child with a stamp last week. This week we will write a secret letter home and walk to the post box to post our letters.

On Remembrance Day we watched a short clip on CBeebies all about a rabbit in a field of poppies.

www.cbeebies/watch/poppies. It was a lovely clip which helped us to think about the importance of Remembrance Day. We held a two minutes silence in Nursery and all of the children were very respectful. Each child made a poppy creation and this will be added to a whole school poppy display.

Next week is Friendship Week and we will be taking part in lots of activities that remind us how important friendship is and what makes a good friend. On Friday we will support Children In Need.

Notices:

We now have lots of junk modelling and do not require any more at the moment thank you.

On Friday your child can come to Nursery in non school uniform and make a donation to support Children in Need

It's not too late to send a stamp into Nursery if you would like to receive a secret letter this week. Just hand a stamp into a member of staff with your child's name on. Thursday is the deadline as we will post our letters on Friday.

Please return your permission slip for our EYFS visit to Whitehouse Farm as soon as possible. Each Nursery child needs a parent or carer to take them (only 1 adult per child please as the group leaders at Whitehouse Farm are unable to cater for too many in their group size. Thank you for your support) 

If you have any stationary items (cards/old stamps/envelopes) to support our post office role play please see a member of staff.

Week Beginning 31st October

This week we followed interests around Halloween and Autumn. In Indigo Class we read Room on The Broom, Meg and Mog and Winnie The Witch. We tried very hard to spot the rhyming words within each story. On Tuesday we made chocolate nests for the green bird on the witch's broom and we made potions in the outdoor area.

We enjoyed mixing colours with the pump action bottles and experimented with sponges and rollers when decorating witch hats. On the interactive whiteboard we drew pumpkin faces that were happy, sad and grumpy. 

On Wednesday we noticed the Autumn leaves had fallen from the trees and made a large pile so we went out and had lots of fun collecting them. You can watch us collecting them below.

We read Funnybones then drew around someone in Nursery and added bones. We counted all the bones carefully and matched them to the numbers on our board. We loved making our mini skeletons and singing 'Them Bones Them Bones'

Our Post Office is building with resources and we have been busy weighing parcels, writing letters and cards and also writing the address onto parcels for the post person to deliver.

We are adding to our outdoor area and this week we have installed a stage with a colourful backdrop. If you have any outfits the children can dress up in to perform or plastic microphones that we could use, could you please speak to a member of staff. Thank you.

Next week we will be continuing with our Bonfire Night theme as all the children were very excited about attending firework displays. We will also be discussing Remembrance Day on Friday and making poppies to display as a whole school. 

NOTICES:

• As the weather is changing could you please bring a pair of wellies and an all in one outdoor waterproof in a carrier bag to Nursery for your child. These items need to be named and can be left on your child's peg. We are outdoors everyday whatever the weather and if the children have suitable outfits they can access this area of the Nursery at any point
• Could we also ask each child to bring a stamp into Nursery by Friday 11th Novemebr as we are going to write a 'secret letter' home and post it in the local post box.

Week Beginning 17th October

This week we have been having lots of fun in Indigo Class learning about Autumn and woodland creatures. We brought in so many Autumn objects they nearly filled Nursery!  There were lots of interesting things to look at, including Chestnuts, Horse Chestnuts, Beech nuts, reeds, Hawthorn berries and lots more. We spread them onto natural Hessian and made an Autumn collage to chat about. We came up with lots of exciting words like spiky, smooth, prickly, fluffy and bumpy.

We used leaves from our Autumn walks to make leaf prints. We decided to mix yellow and red paint and also red and green paint. We found that they made new colours. I wonder what colours they made? We needed to remember to press and pull the leaf straight off to make a print on the paper.

A group of children made very tasty hedgehog biscuits for us on Tuesday. They had to mix,roll, nip and press. They also added two eyes and a hedgehog snout. The biscuits were covered in melted chocolate to make the spikes.

On Wednesday we had Woodland Creature Day. It was very exciting! Everyone came into Nursery dressed as a woodland creature and we all brought in a teddy or cuddly toy. We sang When Goldilocks Went To The House of The Bears and we went on a teddy bears picnic outside in the morning. We had teddy bear shaped crisps, juice, biscuits and hedgehog biscuits. We sang songs and then we put all of the teddies on the parachute and played parachute games with them. In the afternoon it rained so we had a teddy bears picnic in the hall with our picnic blankets. 

Over the rest of the week we had a bear den in the classroom where you could go to have a chat with your friend or read a book. We also had pumpkins in the tuff spot. We used push pins to make patterns in the pumpkins and we hammered golf tees into the pumpkins too. The children always remembered to wear the safety goggles at the tuff spot when hammering to protect their eyes.

We have given sad number hedgehogs the correct number of spikes back and we have also been removing sunflower seeds from sunflower heads with tweezers ready to keep in a special place and plant in the Spring.

Outdoors we made a huge Autumn tree with our Autumn objects. We also made owls and hedgehogs with natural resources after we read Owl Babies,The Prickly Hedgehog and The Happy Hedgehog band.

Thank you to all the grown ups who came to see us sing our Harvest songs. It's a little bit scary to sing in front of lots of grown ups but we managed really well and Mrs Jennings was very proud of us.

Have a happy and safe half term and when we come back we have a new Post Office area in Nursery following the children's interests.

Week beginning 10th October:

This week we have been busy linking our activities to the story of Little Rabbit Foo Foo.  We made two wormeries and filled them with wiggly worms. The children have been looking at them each day to see how the worms have moved the layers of compost, soil and sand around. The children enjoyed threading wiggly worms through the cutlery drainers at the Funky Fingers table. It was quite tricky to push the fat pipe cleaners through! At the cut and stick table we made lots of Goonies and Good Fairy wands to turn Little Rabbit Foo Foo into a Goonie!

The children also enjoyed drawing their favourite part of the story on the floor paper with pens and chalks.

We made apple crumble on Tuesday. The children enjoyed chopping the apples to add to the bowl. They were also very good at rubbing the flour and butter together. It was very tasty and some of the children said it tasted just like Grufallo crumble so we read The Grufallo's Child at story time.  

 We have been very busy in our outdoor area making music, balancing and building very complex structures for the balls to run along. Next week we will be enjoying activities all about Autumn. We hope to use the Autumn collecting bags that have been sent home  to create lots of exciting things. We will be hoping to bake hedgehog biscuits on Tuesday and decorate them on Wednesday.

Week beginning 3rd October:

This week we have been making vegetable soup to link in with Harvest. We talked about the different kinds of vegetables we used and our favourite vegetables. We have been reading Oliver's Vegetables and I Will Not Ever Eat A Tomato, The Enormous Turnip and Pumpkin Soup. At home you could share some unusual vegetables.

In phonics we have been making lots of silly soup! We have also been listening to the sounds around us. On Wednesday we used a variety of drums to make different sounds. Some of the drums were very big!

Linking with shapes, we have been finding shapes in the sand, drawing pictures from shapes and swapping shapes at carpet time. We also sang our square song:

Find four corners,

find four corners,

sides the same,

sides the same,

put them all together,

put them all together

square's my name,

square's my name.

We have talked about the difference between rectangles and squares.

We are talking about who and what is special to us and also what we were like as babies.

We have added a Perspex sheet outside to allow the children to practise gross motor movements with shaving foam. It's great fun and we do wear aprons but might still have foam on our coats.  We have also added a music area to the outdoor area, with pans of various sizes along the fence and musical instruments to play with. Our small outdoor area has a new cosy pop up reading tent in where the children can sit on the carpet and share a book or have a chat with a friend.

Following on from the interests of the children we will be taking part in activities linked to the story of Little Rabbit Foo Foo. This is the most popular book in Nursery at the moment!  Watch this space to find out the exciting things we get up to.

Thank you to all the parents who attended the Phonics Workshop this week. I hope the workshop and the information pack that everyone received is helpful. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask.  Could you please return the feedback sheet as soon as possible. I Have uploaded the Powerpoint presentation and also the Information pack from the workshop onto our Nursery web page.

Thank you.

Nursery Prayer:

We close our eyes,

and gently say,

thank you for a lovely day.

Thank you for your support

Mrs Jennings