The Queens platinum jubilee 

We have had the best few days celebrating the Queens jubilee and 70 amazing years on the throne. She has made history by looking after our country for 70 years and she is still going. She took over from her father and no one thought she would be a successful queen. Look at her now, she has proved them all wrong and done a brilliant job. We celebrated by making lots of Union Jack bunting. We also made crowns and flags and decorated biscuits. They children loved getting involved and talking about who the Queen is and what a monarch is.

Farmyard Hullabaloo

This book invites us down to  the farmyard for a noisy animal adventure.  The book begins with the rooster who wakes up the farm with a ‘cock-a-doodle-doo!’.  Every page introduces us to a different exciting farm animal, a barking sheepdog, moo-ing cows, oink-ing pigs, sheep, donkeys, horses and more!

Look at all this mark making!!!!

We had been learning the names of the animals and their young.  We played a matching pairs game, finding the adult and young pictures and learning some new words.  For example a young goat is called a kid, a young horse  is a foal and a young cow is called a calf. 

We drew pictures of animals with their babies and some children were able to hear some of the sounds in the words and had a go at writing some of the letters, which is fabulous! 
 

The Little Red Hen

We are really enjoying the story of the little Red Hen and are doing a great job at joining in as we read together.  The children have enjoyed sitting in our new comfy chairs to look at the book and use pictures to help them to tell the story.   “who will help me Bake the bread?"     "Not I, said the cat, Not I said the pig. not I said the rat"

The children are doing really well with their maths and this week have been matching the numbers 1,2,3,4, and 5 to amounts.  It is great to see children instantly recognising smaller amounts, and saying when there are 1, 2 or 3 and developing their counting skills so that they can count a larger amount carefully, saying how many there are in total as they count the last item.  We have been sorting cards, matching to numerals and getting 5 when they see a number 5 etc.  

The little red hen had to carry the corn to the mill to be ground into flour. We have been using teaspoons and counting how many spoonfuls of corn we are putting onto the pots.  There was some great counting going on! 

Making and baking bread 

We listened to the story, ‘The little red hen’ which is all about being kind to others and helping others. The hen made some bread but did it all on her own. We made our own bread but did it altogether. We mixed all of the ingredients together and waited for our bread to cook. It was so much fun and tasted brilliant. 

Visit to the park

What a wonderful time we had when we went to the park. The weather was gorgeous and the children were all fabulous.  We looked at  the ducks on the lake and saw quite a few.  We talked about what they looked like and were really pleased to see a mummy with her ducklings - we counted 6!   We also saw a swan which was really big.  We then went for a walk  through the woods and saw some lovely bluebells and stood beneath some very very tall trees.  Before heading back to school the children enjoyed some time in the play area. They were all very well behaved and polite - well done Nursery. 

Nadia’s hands 

We were so lucky as a parent came in to show us lots of beautiful clothes that they wear for Eid. She also cooked us some delicious food which the children all enjoyed tasting. There was rice and rajita and spinach bhajis. They were all delicious! We then talked about mendhi patterns and the children had real henna painted on their hands. Then we talked about the jewellery they wear and tried on some of the bangles. It was so much fun. 

Mehndi patterns

Zimal, one of our children  in nursery came to school with mehndi flowers on her hands after celebrating the festival of Eid with her family.  She talked about the patterns and we all looked at photographs of some fabulous decorated hands. 

We had a go painting  hands as well as using pens to draw patterns on hand shapes.  

Making bracelets and necklaces

We have looked at photographs of people at weddings and the festival of Eid and have noticed that often they wear beautiful jewellery so we made our own by  painted pasta tubes and  then threading them onto string.

Farmer Duck

The children love to listen to stories and this week we are enjoying this story which is about a very special duck. Farmer duck cooks, cleans and cares for the other animals on the farm because the farm owner is too lazy to do the work himself.  Farmer Duck becomes exhausted, sleepy,  weepy and tired, so his great  farmyard friends come up with a plan to help him.

We have played with the farm animals and used wooden blocks to create pens for the different animals. 

We made paper plate ducks by painting them first and then folding them in half an attaching a head and feet. Well done nursery. 

We had the best time at the park today. We went to have a look at the ducks in the lake as we have been reading ‘farmer duck.’ We then had an explore through the woods and found lots of minibeasts. I asked the children if they could find something green. They were able to bring back a leaf or grass. I then asked if they could bring back a long stick and they all listened so well and knew exactly what to do. I was so proud of all of the children and loved taking them for a trip. The language they used to talk about the ducks and the wildlife we found was brilliant and they came out of themselves. I’ve never heard them talk so much!

The Scarecrows' Wedding

This half term we will start by taking a look at the Julia Donaldson's book, looking at the front cover, discussing the pictures, characters and taking about our favourite parts of the story. 

As the story is set on a farm, we will then explore other books, such as

Farmer Duck, The Little Red Hen, Goodnight Tractor and Farmyard Hullaballoo.

It is an exciting half term because amongst other things, we will be going on a trip to the park to see the ducks!

Mrs Gray brought a scarecrow that she had made at home, he was called Oliver. We looked at him and talked about what we needed to make our own scarecrows later in the week.  

We planted our seeds in the planter and then watered them. We made sure they got lots to drink and had sunlight to help them grow. We then added our scarecrow who we have named Ryan after a vote between Charlotte and Ryan. Everyone voted and Ryan was the winner. We hope Ryan protects the seeds and stops any birds eating them. 

We listened to the story, The scarecrows’ wedding and had a go at drawing Harry O’Hay and Betty Barley. We were able to hold our pencils correctly and write recognisable letters. 

We made some fabulous paper bag scarecrow puppets. We used glue to stick straw on to give our scarecrows hair and stuck on hats, eyes and a nose.  We also used felt pens to draw on a mouth. 

We have been using bats and balls and practising hitting the balls from the cones.  We then chased after the balls, stopping them with our racquets and putting them back on the cones.   We tried to balance balls on racquets, it's quite tricky but we kept on trying. 

We have made bird feeders this week, learning about what birds like to eat and what will keep them full. We first got a piece of wire then threaded on cereal hoops and then raisins. We made patterns using the different foods and enjoyed tying them to a tree. We cannot wait to see if the birds come and eat them. 

We have been making birds using play dough. We rolled the playdough into balls using the skills we have learnt from dough disco. We then added eyes, a beak and feathers for the wings. They look so good!

We went on a bird watching adventure. We talked about the different colours of the birds and what they looked like. We then searched for birds outside and found pictures of them in the playground. 

The children have been fascinated by the tadpoles that we got out of our pond before the Easter holidays. They were still frogspawn and tiny tadpoles when we broke up and we had a look today and they have grown so much. They have grown into huge tadpoles still with just a tail. We can’t wait to see what happens as they start to turn into frogs. 

We looked at and discussed the pictures of different birds and talked about the colours and size of them. We then tried to match the birds according to their different features. We said "I have a small grey bird with a yellow beak.”  We tried to find birds which had the same, a yellow beak. We realised that they didn't need to be exactly the same, just have different features in common. The children loved this activity and tried incredibly hard to find differences and similarities. 

We also showed different groups of birds to the children. We asked which group has more/less? We then asked are fewer/less birds in this tree than that tree. We played with the birds and encouraged the children to compare amounts and use the languauge of less/fewer/more appropriately. The children listened brilliantly and were really getting the hang of it towards the end.