Welcome to Nursery! 

The first few weeks have been very exciting and the children have all settled well into their new classes. Here are some of the fun and exciting things we have been up to in Ladybird and Butterfly Class.

Communication and Language 

The children have had lots of exciting opportunities in our provision to develop their communication and language skills. Our home corner allows the children to practise their speaking skills by talking on the old telephones and sharing experiences from their own home life such as making each other meals and sharing the dressing up costumes. 

We have also been learning lots of nursery rhymes and songs including Old McDonald had a Farm, 5 Green Bottles and 5 Currant Buns and the children have loved using props during choosing time to sing along independently as well. This half term we have been learning about ourselves and our families and the children sent in pictures of their families so they could talk about them with the class. We made a family tree with all of the family pictures which the children have been very excited about. They love calling their friends over and talking to them about their families. 

We have also had an amazing opportunity to invite the police, a dentist and a midwife into Nursery to talk to the children about their job roles. The children enjoyed asking the guests questions and roleplaying with the equipment and tools the guest bought with them.

We have read some of our core books such as Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell, Oi Frog by Kes Gray and Jim Field, We're Going to find the Monster by Malorie Blackman and Peace and Last by Jill Murphy and the children have enjoyed using the story bags and the different story characters to act out the stories. 

The children have also really enjoyed learning nursery rhymes such as 5 currant buns, Incy Wincy Spider and 5 green bottles. They have been exploring the props and singing along to the rhymes during their play.  

Every Monday and Tuesday, the children are very fortunate to have music lessons with Duncan who teaches them new songs such as Alice the Camel and the children really enjoy joining in with the songs and moving their bodies to the beat. 

During Celebration Day, children made their own musical instruments and enjoyed playing along to reggae music for our Jamaican theme.

Physical Development

This half term, the children have really enjoyed balancing along the trim trails and exploring the obstacle courses made up of stepping stones, tyres, A- Frames and balancing benches. This has allowed the children to also develop their turn taking skills by waiting patiently for their turn and making sure everyone can safely move across the equipment.

The children have also taken part in lots of fine motor activities which allows the children to strengthen their finger muscles ready for writing activities later in the year. The children love manipulating playdough and have enjoyed rolling, pinching, cutting and patting the playdough to make cakes for each other as well as marshmallows for hot chocolates. For our all about me topic, the children used the playdough to make faces and also teeth for our guest dentist to check. 

For Celebration Day, we had lots of opportunities for children to develop their fine motor skills by threading string to make bracelets, pushing fruit onto sticks to make fruit kebabs and also ripping paper to make a collage of the Jamaican flag.

Personal, Social and Emotional DevelopmenT

The first few weeks in Nursery has involved the children getting to know unfamiliar faces and feeling safe and secure in a new setting. We have been using the visual timetable for children to become familiar with the daily routine and we have played name games to get to know each other in fun ways. We have also learnt some classroom rules which allow us to have positive environment to learn and grow in. 

During play, children are starting to initiate play with others by making food in the mud kitchen, washing toy babies in the water area and even making cups of tea in the home corner.

Reading 

The children have enjoyed listening to high quality texts each day and discussing their favourite parts with their class. Everyday children vote for the stories they want to listen to at the end of the day and become very enthusiastic when joining in with key phrases and actions from the stories. 

The children have also enjoyed sitting in our cosy reading corner to listen to stories and look at pictures of books during their play. We also display our story sacks and puppets in our reading corner to allow the children the opportunity to act out the books they hear which really helps to develop their speaking skills.

Every Thursday we send home two choosing books for the children to read at home. We ask for parents to read these books daily  to encourage a love for reading and listening to stories in preparation for when they begin to read the books themselves in Reception.