Over the Easter holidays, our wonderful caretaker Mr Sharp was hard at work in our Nursery garden. He has built us a new wendy house, a stage AND a set of planters that we are using for small world play- and all just in time for us to enjoy in the beautiful weather! Today we made a card for Mr Sharp and invited him down to Nursery to say an enormous, 'thank you!' 

In Nursery our topic this half term is 'The Great Outdoors' and last week we started our topic by planting some cress seeds. Today we were so excited to discover that they have started to grow! The children have been carefully watering them using pipettes and are looking forward to see how tall they grow- we might even have a taste one day soon!

In Nursery we have been learning about tadpoles. Mrs Glindon brought in some frogspawn from her family's pond before the holidays and we were so excited to watch them turn into tadpoles. We looked closely and drew some brilliant observational drawings, as well as playing with toy tadpoles and frogs in the classroom and reading lots of information books. This week we are using our knowledge to sequence pictures of the lifecycle of a frog, we would love you to ask us about it at home!

Today in Nursery we went for a spring time walk to see what we could see in our school grounds. We took cardboard frames with us to help us focus our attention on one small area. On the field we noticed...

• Lots of daisies! We used our subitising skills to talk about how many we could see, e.g. three at one side of the frame and three at the other.
• Some daisies have pink parts on their white petals.
• That if you look really closely you could see yellow spots of pollen on the white petals. We talked about how this sticks to bees and other pollinators when they visit the flowers and that when they take the pollen to other flowers it helps more to grow!
• Not all the flowers on our field were daisies, we also spotted buttercups, dandelions and ribwort plantain (which was one we had to google!)
• A tiny little conker tree, we wondered about how it had got there- maybe a cheeky squirrel buried a conker on the grass?
• Lots of minibeasts- we saw butterflies, flies, a bee and a shiny green beetle.

The children use Easter eggs to add different amounts to their five frames. The children used their subitising skills to say how many eggs were on the five frame, without counting them first. This is a fantastic way to master numbers to five! 
on Wednesday 9th May we are hosting our maths workshop, will you be joining us?

The children in Nursery have had a wonderful first day back. The children shared how egg-cited they were to take part part in lots of Easter activities during the holidays, so we created our own egg hunt in the Nursery garden! 

Before the sunshine came out this week we had a wonderful time in the rain in the big playground. We used our whole bodies to explore some scientific questions, for example... 

We wondered why some areas of the playground had deep puddles and realised that it is because there were dips in the concrete. We also explored trying to dam the flow of water down to the drain.

Next, we experimented with who could make the biggest splashes. We found out that the best way to make a huge splash was to jump with two feet together and, much to the children's surprise, the big, heavy grown ups could make the biggest splashes of everyone!

The week before half term we enjoyed lots of sensory play and stories related to Valentine's Day. We talked about who we love and made cards for them by practising using the pva glue to stick hearts onto our cards. We also greatly enjoyed exploring some coloured spaghetti, we scooped it into bowls and pots and used vocabulary such as long and short, slippery and slimey!

This half term in Nursery, we have introduced ‘Mystery Motor skills’ as part of our morning routine. The children have enjoyed jumping, balancing along beams, climbing through tunnels and throwing and catching beanbags!

Last week we was Children's Mental Health Week. In Nursery, we focused on feelings and the children were brilliant at identifying their own feelings and beginning to work out how others might be feeling from their expressions or behaviour.

We thought about things that can help us to calm our bodies down if we are feeling very excited, cross or worried. We learned how to do a big breath in and then a loooong breath out, for example by pretending we were holding a bowl of hot dinner and blowing on it to cool it down. In our small group sessions we made glitter bottles and practised breathing while we watched the glitter settle again. 

We also read lots of stories with a focus on feelings, mental health and being proud to be yourself!