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Nursery

Hello and welcome to Nursery!

Summer 2 2024

It has been lovely finding out about the children’s memories of being a baby. We talked about what they could do now, compared to when they were a baby. We had a special visitor, Mrs Dodson, who visited with her daughter Daisy. She talked about babies, what they need, and what they can do. The children thought of some brilliant questions including how fast can she crawl and how much milk does she drink.

Nursery enjoyed reading The Hungry Caterpillar and learned about the life cycle of a butterfly. The children made their own life cycle using different types of materials including pasta.

They also made a model mini-beast recreating it out of play dough or other materials.

On a lovely sunny day, the children enjoyed water play learning about the term capacity using the words full, half full and empty.

A science investigation around how materials change allowed the children to see how bread changes when heated. They were set a challenge to make a tent from both bread and then as toast.

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Summer 1 2024

Nursery read the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and enjoyed recreating it in PE with Mr Drake.

Each group then planted a bean and estimated how tall it would be using multi-link cubes.

Nursery had a visit from Mrs Jelfs who came to play the harp, just like the one in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. The children all had a go at playing it.

After looking at a painting by Vincent Van Gogh called Sunflowers, the children used their colour mixing skills and their fingertips to make their own Sunflower painting.

Nursery had another musical visitor – Mr McCabe, a musician, who brought his guitar. He sang songs and they danced to 'You’ve Got a Friend in Me' from Toy Story and 'I Wanna Be Like You' from Jungle Book. They all had a go at strumming on his guitar.

On a lovely sunny day, the children learnt all about different forces. Outside, they pushed, rolled, and bounced balls then explored how to make them go faster and slower.

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Spring 2 2024

Nursery went ‘Around the World’, complete with a passport, and visited four countries. Whilst in Mexico, they tasted tortilla chips and guacamole and did some Hojalata tin art.

In Italy, they made fresh tagliatelle/spaghetti pasta. In Australia, they enjoyed Aboriginal dot painting and in Turkey they built Ephesus using different construction blocks. They presented their learning in a whole school sharing assembly and were very brave.

Our new Talk for Writing text is The Enormous Turnip. First, they acted out the story and joined in with the repetitive refrain. The children innovated the story, imagining different characters pulling up different vegetables. They drew some amazing pictures of their ideas.

During Science week, there were a number of exciting activities including dinosaur excavation, dinosaur salt dough footprints, an environmental walk around Beech Hyde School and making a collage of the Scientist Carl Linnaeus.

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Spring 1 2024

We are very excited to say that our letters to Santa did reach Lapland delivered by Mr Jones and the Easyjet crew. This is a picture of the aeroplane in Lapland!

The children are enjoying the Talk for Writing Text We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and have made sensory story maps to help retell the story, along with the different actions. We are now busy innovating the story making our own version – We’re Going on a Treasure Hunt.

Each week, Nursery enjoy a PE lesson with Mr Drake in the school hall. Recently they explored going over, under and through the different apparatus.

     

This term, we have started learning the phase 2 sounds and graphemes, following the Little Wandle phonics programme. Nursery love bringing in objects for the sound box as well as practising the graphemes in different ways, such as on the interactive whiteboard.

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Autumn 2 2023

It has been wonderful to see how the children have fully immersed themselves into life at Beech Hyde Nursery.

Our new Talk for Writing Text, Kipper’s Birthday. was enjoyed by all. The children planned their own party for Kipper, wrapping presents, making cup-cakes, decorating bunting and enjoying party games and dancing.

                               

There has been a variety of activities linked to our overarching topic – All About Me. Nursery made their own Picasso style ‘wonky’ portraits. Then they worked in groups to make an abstract collage of Picasso’s ‘Woman in a Hat and Fur Collar’ using a range of different materials such as wool, straw plastic and paper.

To help the children learn about different occupations, we had visits from two parents who came to talk about their jobs. Mr Dodson, a former GB gymnast and now an elite coach entertained the nursery children. He showed them TV footage of the GB Women’s double mini trampoline team who recently won gold at the World Championships in Birmingham. They were joined by the Year 6 Sport’s Ambassadors who asked some fantastic questions. Mr Jones, a pilot with Easy Jet, dressed in his uniform, talked about how he became a pilot and where he flies too. We are hoping he will take our letters to Santa all the way to Lapland!

Fun French Friday is a hit and the children have been learning classroom commands, instructions and weather phrases and recently presented their learning in their very first whole school sharing assembly. Bravo!

The build up to Christmas is underway and Nursery have made tree decorations, Christmas cards and are preparing for their first Nativity with Reception class – Baarmy Bethlehem.  

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Autumn 1 2023

The Nursery children have settled in beautifully to their new surroundings and have been busy playing and exploring, learning, making new friends and becoming more independent each day.

They have met the first one of the Beech Hyde positive mind animals – independent rhino. All the children have a self-care target and are working towards them.

The children have enjoyed their Talk for Writing text – Rosie’s Walk. They have been learning about routes and positional language and have recreated the story in PE with Mr Drake. They thoroughly enjoyed making the windmill from the story, by following a set of instructions, using a cup, tissue paper and lolly sticks.

  

There are lots of opportunities for the children to choose their own activity inside or out, during Child Initiated Learning. The role play area has been very popular set up as a home, but has just changed to a doctor’s surgery. The lovely space outside has some play equipment which supports the children’s gross motor skills. We have just planted some daffodils so will look forward to watching them grow in the spring.

    

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This half term our topic is ‘Changes’ and so we have been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar story in both French and English. We sequenced the story including the days of the week and learnt some of the foods in French.

We made caterpillar life cycles and designed and made our own mini beasts models using junk modelling materials. We also went on a mini beast hunt in the nursery garden.

     

In Science we looked how materials change and made toast (from bread) and oobleck (cornflour and water).

In PSHE we have been looking at ourselves as babies and seeing how much we have changed. We had a visit from Ms Hutchinson, who works at Beech Hyde School and her baby – Louie. The children couldn’t believe how small a new baby was.

We have started our transition to Reception class and have talked about any worries (of which there were hardly any) and our excitement too. The children have been visiting their new schools and teachers.

Finally, the children said goodbye and good luck to Mrs Stafford, who is leaving to have her baby. The children decorated a chocolate tree with their thoughts and feelings about her.

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In Nursery we have been reading the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. We predicted how tall our own beanstalks would grow, using multi-link cubes. Next, we looked at the life cycle of plants and planted our own sunflowers.

The Coronation was celebrated in a variety of ways including designing crowns, having a tea party and making a collage of King Charles.

   

In our maths learning we have been looking at shapes in the environment, naming and describing them. We went on a shape hunt and found lots of examples in our nursery including a cone (ice cream cone) a sphere (an orange) a cylinder (tin) and a cube (dice).

In phonics, the children enjoy forming the different graphemes using a variety of materials such as rainbow crayons, paint dabbers as well making the shapes in sand.

        

In child initiated learning, we are seeing some great imagination in their own play such as writing and posting letters and building traps.

            

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In Nursery we went around the world visiting different countries. We visited Canada, The USA, France and Italy. We made bear masks, flags, The Eiffel Tower, using straws, ate American style food at a ‘Drive In’ and made our own fresh pasta.

  

We read the story of The Gingerbread Man and had fun making our own gingerbread lady, which we decorated and gave to our Mummies for Mother’s Day.

During Science week, we did an investigation using the gingerbread to see what might happen to it, when placed in different liquids such as water, oil, milk and vinegar.

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This term we have started our Little Wandle phonics. We love bringing in objects for our sound box and practising the graphemes in different ways.

We read We're Going on a Bear Hunt and all helped make a bear cave role play area. We created sensory maps to help us tell the story.

We learned all about Antarctica and how penguins can live there because they have waxy, waterproof feathers. We carried out an investigation covering a paper penguin with wax crayon and spraying water on it.The water droplets ran off the penguin's tummy so it stayed dry. 

We listened to the story of The Hare and the Tortoise and talked about the word resilient. We decorated our own resilient tortoise.

In maths, we built our own bridges using lolly sticks, foam shapes and cups. We had to think about making them strong enough for our bears to balance on.

 

We love our new mud kitchen in the nursery garden.

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The police came to visit Nursery and Reception and told them all about their job and the things they need to do their job.

The Nursery children have enjoyed doing French with Mrs Vaile.  They have been finding words to describe the weather.

The Nursery children have created bonfire pictures.

Mr Drake was helping to train the Nursery children to be elves, just in case Santa needs some help.  They had to balance, deliver presents, jump down a chimney and travel over and under.

    

Christmas is coming to the Nursery - our tree is decorated with the children's hand made decorations.

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The nursery children had to pick a different colour for each letter of their name.  They are very proud of themselves!

We read Rosie's Walk and made masks of the characters.  We also created the route with 2D creations of the objects they pass.

As part of Superhero Week we made superhero hand prints.

We enjoy making soup in the mud kitchen.

We played the bean game.  In the picture below we are doing the baked bean where we go onto the floor.  We also do runner bean, jumping bean and string bean!