Autumn 2

Celebrations

This half term we will be learning all about different celebrations from Birthdays to Weddings to Divali and Christmas. We will reading lots of different stories about celebrations and holding our own birthday parties and christmas parties. We can't wait to have a birthday party role play area and enhance our provision with counting candles, mark making birthday cards and making rangoli patterns.

Weeks 6 and 7

Christmas

It's party week!!!

Our parties were lots of fun, we did lots of dancing, what fabulous dancers in our nursery classes!

We played musical bumps, musical statues, christmas corners and pass the parcel. Then we sat down for our party food. We each had a christmas cracker to pull and a party hat to wear. Whilst we were eating, we think one of Santa's helpers must have crept in because later, we found a santa sack full of presents for us all!

We made Rudolph biscuits this morning on our last day before the Christmas holidays! They are so yummy!

We made salt dough decorations to take home to hang on our trees.

Some children looked at the silver tree and had a go at painting one themselves or made a snowflake printing picture.

We listened to the story 'The First Christmas' and had a go at drawing our favourite part of the story.

Christmas is coming!

In nursery we are having a go at lots of new activities and this week listened to the story 'The first Christmas.' We talked about Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus. We played with a wooden nativity set and completed a nativity scene jigsaw.

We also made Christmas cards to take home to our loved ones. We had our photos taken and then painted our hands in brown paint. We printed these onto paper and they looked like Rudolph's antlers. We then stuck a red pom pom on our noses and we turned into Rudolph! We then had a go at writing our names inside the card. We were all brilliant and had a really good try. Well done Nursery.

The singing christmas tree is a big hit with both our nursery children and the staff! We all like to do a little dance when he starts to sing!

Being creative is something we love to see the children doing. Our Christmas tray has had lots of interest, children have explored it and talked about what they found. We love Archie's Christmas tree, especially when he put the star on the top. Romy and Mia spent time decorating a tree and even tidied away when they had finished so that some one else could have a turn, thank you girls for being very thoughtful.

We practised our fine motor skills by threading red and white beads onto green pipe cleaners. They looked just like candy canes and we had lots of fun making them! They were a little but fiddly but everyone wanted to have a go. They look great on our Christmas tree.

We also practised our counting skills by counting the pom poms onto the christmas tree. We rolled the dice and counted the dots on the side it landed on. We then counted the correct amount of pom poms onto the tree. It was lots of fun and the children took it in turns.

Week 5

Dear Santa

We love to read the book 'Dear zoo' by Rod Campbell so we were sure to love 'Dear Santa' too. We had fun guessing which presents Santa had wrapped up to send to the children and then lifting the flaps to see if we were right. We all liked the present at the end of the story!

We had a go at wrapping up boxes to make pretend Christmas presents to go under our tree. It's a tricky job, folding the paper and using sticky tape but we did a great job and asked for help when we needed it.

We made a start decorating nursery for Christmas time. We found lots of sparkly tinsel and pretty baubles to decorate the tree.

After reading 'Dear Santa' we looked at some wrapped presents and guessed what could be inside. "a football", "some chocolates", "a Barbie house", "a doll" "a toy car" were some of the guesses. We then chose a present template and made marks and drew what present was inside. We also found our name cards to help us have a go to write our name.

We are learning a Christmas song called 'Christmas Pudding' and have been talking about what they look like. We scrunched up and stuck on tissue paper to decorate our own Christmas puddings.

We also made our own calenders to bring home with us. We talked about the different seasons and used our hand to print the tree trunk and our finger tips for the different coloured leaves depending on the season. We talked about the colours and really enjoyed using our hands to make our amazing calenders.

We had a go at counting and being able to count out from a larger group. We had some Santa sacks and some presents. We played different number games with the children and modelled counting to them. We counted out a number from a larger group. I asked for 4 presents and counted 1 at a time; 1 present, 2 presents, 3 presents, 4 presents to show the children clearly how to count correctly. I have 4 presents. Can you put 3 in this sack? We had lots of discussion about numbers and the children we very engrossed. Well done Nursery.

We had to decorate our tree on the tuff tray. The children loved it.

We dressed up as Santa and Christmas puddings!!

The children really loved exploring the water beads and making the shaving foam tree look festive with multi-coloured baubles.

Week 4

Kipper's Birthday

We started our week off by reading the story 'Kippers birthday' by Mick Inkpen.

The children talked about their own birthdays and parties, balloons, cakes and presents.

Surprise! What a fabulous birthday treat.

We all loved climbing inside our giant gift box and bursting out as a special surprise present!

Alfie Bear is celebrating his birthday in nursery this week. He sent the children an invitation , asking them to go to his birthday party!

We all said "yes please" and wrote him a reply so that he knew we would be there!

We celebrated Alfie Bear’s birthday.
we wore our party hats, played party games, sang ‘happy birthday’ and ate party food. He had a great time!

We have practised our fine motor skills by cutting out birthday cakes and it's candles and sticking them on top. We counted how many we put on top and we were able to add more if we needed to. We were able to say how old we were and enjoyed counting the candles one at a time to make sure we had not too many or not too few.