Welcome to Nursery 2018-19

Our Year in Nursery

 When we all started back in September we spent the first few weeks getting to know each other and learning all about our new teachers and friends. Since then we’ve had lots of fun with each other learning about lots of different things. Here goes…

   Each term we have themed our learning around a new book. In Autumn we learnt about the story ‘The       Gingerbread Man’, the children made their own Gingerbread and had lots of fun acting out the story in the hall as they chanted, “Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread Man.” In Spring, our story was ‘The Three Little Pigs’, we enjoyed pretending to be builders when we built a house of straw, a house of sticks and a house of bricks. Finally, in the Summer term we read ‘The Gruffalo’, we had lots of fun on our Gruffalo hunt. The children enjoyed making playdough Gruffalos and writing letters to him.

   As the year has passed we have learnt about the four seasons. Each time a new season began we went out on a nature walk to look at all the changes. Autumn time was our favourite season where the children enjoyed collecting conkers and jumping in the crunchy Autumn leaves. We also learnt about harvest time and we made some delicious bread like the Little Red Hen. Then it was time for Winter, we were lucky enough to get some snow. We explored ice and made some icy collages. Next, Spring came and we watched as the leaves and flowers started to grow back. In our outdoor area we planted some beautiful flowers and we made some wonderful Spring flower pictures for our display. Finally, Summer was here and the sun came out. This was a special time for us as we had to look after our baby caterpillars. We watched for a few weeks as they slowly transformed into beautiful butterflies. We also went on a bug hunt and found spiders, worms, beetles and snails.

   At our school we have a beautiful woodland area. During our bears theme in September our children all brought in their favourite teddy bear and we had a teddy bears picnic. We had fun eating our picnic with our teddy bears and singing the Teddy Bears picnic song, I wonder who can remember it?

   This year we have learnt about cultures and celebrations from around the world. We learnt about Bonfire Night and we made some fantastic firework pictures. We celebrated Christmas with a trip to Imagine That! to see Santa and a sing along show for our parents. We had a visitor called Buddy the elf who played lots of tricks on us! We also made cards, decorations and calendars for our homes. At Chinese New Year we made lucky, red envelopes and lanterns, acted out the traditional animal race story and we had a Chinese banquet, it was yummy.

  Throughout the year we have had lots of visitors come to our nursery. During our people who help us theme we had a visit from our local community police officers. The children asked them lots of questions and enjoyed trying their hats, radios and handcuffs. During our pets theme, we had lots of different visits from our own pets; we saw budgies, a bearded dragon, a rabbit, guinea pigs and lots of dogs.

  In the Summer term one of our themes was all about the farm. In nursery we learnt about the farmer’s jobs, the food that grows on the farm and farm animals. We went on a trip to Croxteth Hall Farm and the children had lots of fun feeding the animals, grooming the animals, playing on the park and a yummy picnic.

Summer 1 Learning Journey

As we began the Summer term, we welcomed 6 new children into Nursery. The rest of the children were so kind and helpful which helped our new children to settle in quickly to our Nursery routine. 

As the weather grew warmer, we began to spend lots more time outside in our wonderful forest area. The children love exploring and using the natural resources they find to support their imaginative play. We have seen a big development in the children’s gross motor skills as the forest enables them to climb, balance and move around in so many more ways. The children have enjoyed exploring in the mud kitchen and having frequent visits from the horses on the farm next door. We really are so lucky to have such an amazing outdoor learning environment.

The children quickly developed an interest in mini beasts and enjoyed hunting for them under stones, logs and inside our bug house. Miss Daniels ordered some caterpillars for the children to explore their life cycle. We kept them in our discovery area to keep a close on eye on the with magnifying books, and this increased the children inquisitive natures as they always wanted to know what would happen next. We introduced more non-fiction books to the children to develop their language and knowledge further, were we learnt that a cocoon is also known as a chrysalis. Unfortunately, the caterpillars did not hatch in time for the end of term. However, Miss Daniels took them home and caught the experience of them hatching on video and posted it on Class Dojo during the holidays for the children to see.

Next, we developed the children’s interest of transport further. We learnt that transport is used for lots of different journeys and that there are lots of different forms of transport. The children understand that we have transport in the air, on land and in the sea. Lots of us could recognise different forms of transport, and we recalled using taxi’s when we were on our way to the airport for our holidays, and big aeroplanes take us on long journeys to different countries. Lots of the children were going on holiday around this time, and it made them even more excited. The children had the great idea of creating their own car wash on the playground, which was so much fun.

Spring 2 Learning Journey

We began our term with a big focus on story telling. Over the half term break, the children created their own story boxes to develop their language, vocabulary and story telling skills. Each of the children created a story scene and used them each day to tell a story to their friends. This lead to our story of the term being Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We enjoyed acting out the story together and we even made our own porridge using tools carefully to chop up strawberries and bananas to add as our toppings. We also used the microwave independently, and lots of children tasted porridge for the first time, it was a great success!  The following week, we celebrated World Book Day with a Big Booky Breakfast, and a Dad's & Grandad's Reading Workshop in Nursery. It was lovely to see so many of our children enjoying reading and listening to stories with their families. 

As the children had enjoyed the yummy porridge so much, we had a Healthy Living Week, were we tasted a variety of different healthy foods. Helen from Talking Teeth came in to talk to us about how to look after our teeth. We learnt that food with lots of sugar in are not good for our teeth and that we need to brush them twice a day. Helen brought lots of different Dentist equipment for us to learn and explore with and develop our understanding further. The children also learnt that being healthy also means keeping ourselves clean, we practiced with our dolls in the water tray, we cleaned them with the soapy water to get rid of all the mud. 

Lots of our children in Nursery have an interest in Police and bad guys. We turned our role play area into a police station, were the children enjoyed writing crime reports and arresting the bad guys. Miss Hopkins made us our very own police car! It was so much fun. Natalie and Emma came in to see us and tell us all about their jobs. They told they children how they help to keep us safe, and that we shouldn't be scared of them. We had chance to wear their police hats and look at their handcuffs. The children were so excited. 

Our last week of term, we enjoyed learning about Easter and Spring. We made Easter cards and baskets for our families, and yummy chocolate cornflakes cakes. Lots of our children came to the Easter Bingo and won lots of Easter eggs! We also had a visit from the Easter Bunny!! 

Spring 1 Learning Journey

When we returned to Nursery in January, we welcomed 3 new children starting with us. They settled in very quickly and all of the other children helped to show them our nursery rules. As the winter season arrived we went out on a winter walk around the school grounds to explore the changes that happen outside. It was a very cold and frosty day. Back in nursery we made some beautiful winter themed collages and we explored with ice. We learnt that winter time can be very difficult for some wild animals to find food. The children wanted to help by making some bird feeder balls, using seeds, peanut butter and lard. We kept a close eye on them, and they had all been eaten the very next day! 

Our winter theme, lead to an interest in Arctic animals with our children. We explored a world map and looked at where the Arctic is and how far away it is. We also learnt lots of new animal names such as a walrus and a beluga whale. During this week the children looked at different non-fiction books, we discussed that they give us information. We also became scientists as we investigated how to melt ice quickly. The children explored with their senses as they rubbed ice cubes in their warm hands, licked them and even placed them by the radiator as it was a warm place. How clever!

Our traditional tale for the half term was the Three Little Pigs. We read the story and set about making our own houses built out of straw and sticks. The children enjoyed pretending to be the big bad wolf and they blew down all the houses! Ask them to show you their big, bad wolf voice, I am sure it will give you a fright! During this week, the children used 2D shapes to create their own houses. Lots of us can now name a square, triangle, rectangle and a circle. We had lots of little builders in Nursery that week, our construction area was very busy with children creating their own houses just like the little pigs in the story. The children took such an interest in the houses, we walked up the lane to look at the different houses we could see. In just a short walk we could see, houses, apartments and bungalows, the children we all intrigued that bungalows don't have stairs.

At the beginning of February we celebrated Chinese New Year. Our role play area was transformed into a Chinese restaurant and we had lots of traditional Chinese objects and clothes for the children to engage with. We read a story that explained a long time ago, the Jade Emperor made some animals have a race across the river and the winner would have the year named after them. There were some sneaky animal characters in the story that the children enjoyed discussing and acting out with their friends. We learnt that 2019 is the year of the pig and our children were either born in the year of the goat or the monkey. We enjoyed some delicious Chinese food, which was everyone's favourite day! The children ate noodles, spring rolls, won tons, prawn toast and prawn crackers, we even tried really hard to use chopsticks as we ate.

The first half of the spring term flew by, and we enjoyed spending the last week holding stay and play sessions for parents and grandparents. It was so lovely to share the childrens' learning journey's with you and discuss how much progress they are making with their learning and personal development.

I wonder what great things we will achieve in the second half of the spring term? 

Autumn 2 Learning Journey 

What a busy half term we have had in Nursery! The children have settled into their busy Nursery routine with ease and we are so proud of the progress they have made over the last 8 weeks, particularly with their Communication & Language and Managing Feelings and Behaviour. 

We started off the new Nursery term, learning all about spooky things and Halloween. The children carved their own pumpkins and learnt the names of 2D shapes and how to create their own pictures with them. We also searched for objects in our environment that look like different 2D shapes. The children also created their own potions, thinking of rhyming words and lots of disgusting objects to go into them. We made them bubble up by blowing into straws. Our next theme was Bonfire Night, we learnt all about Guy Fawkes and how to stay safe near fire. We learnt to ring 999 if their is an emergency. Our favourtie part was making delicious chocolate apples to enjoy as we watched the fireworks at home. 

Next, the children learnt all about space. They all really enjoyed this topic and were fascinated by the moon and different planets. In our Literacy sessions we enjoyed looking at non-fiction books to find out more information about space rockets and stars. In the creative area we made our own planets as we explored with mixing colours and we used our imaginations to think of different names for them, such as; Planet Jelly Bean and Roller Coaster Planet. Our favourtie story during this theme was Aliens Love Underpants. We developed our language as we described the different underpants in the story and the aliens too.

Our next theme was Pets, which was a very busy and exciting week for us in Nursery. The role play area turned into a vets and the children were so excited to use their imaginations and get into character as they tried to help all of the animal teddies in our Nursery. We also had lots of our parents bring in their pets from home. We had visits from lots of doggies, rabbits, guinea pigs, budgies and a bearded dragon. The children we so kind and caring towards the animals, and they developed their questioning skills to find out more about each of the pets. 

The following week, we read The Gingerbread Man. We had lots of lovely activities during this week, including making our own gingerbread biscuits in our role play bakery. The children used their senses to explore with the different ingredients, such as; flour, sugar, ginger and butter. The children practiced counting the gems on the gingerbread men and used number lines to recognise our numbers and practice writing them. 

Before we knew it, Christmas was upon us and we were busy decorating our Nursery and our Christmas tree and making all of our Christmas craft. The children enjoyed decorating their Christmas cards exactly how they wanted to, they were all so unique and different, we loved them all. The children were encouraged to select the resources themselves and discuss how they were decorating them. We also made beautiful star decorations that were sent to St Marks Church to decorate their Christmas trees. One of our highlights was definitely our Christmas Singalong in the big school hall. The children sang beautifully and were all so brave to stand up in front of so many faces. Their teachers were so proud of them, and we know that parents and grandparents were too. The following week, we went on our Christmas trip to Imagine That in Liverpool. What a fantastic day! The children explored with so many scientific concepts such as bubbles, wind machines and erupting volcano's! 

We are so proud of the progress the children have made in the last half term. We cannot wait to see what they achieve in 2019.

Autumn 1 Learning Journey

This year, 21 children returned back to our Nursery from last year, and we welcomed 26 new children from other nurseries and provisions. We spent the first couple of weeks getting to know the children’s individual personalities and learning all about their families. The children enjoyed sharing their interests with all of their new friends.

In our first group time we introduced our key group build a bears and the children helped bring them to life. Our key group bears Mikey, Buzz, Honey and Rainbow Bear are very special and they get to go home with one of our children at the weekend. Following this our children each brought in their special teddy bear from home and we took them on a teddy bears picnic in our beautiful woodland area. The children thoroughly enjoyed their trip out in the school grounds and they enjoyed exploring in the trees, they were a little disappointed that no real bears joined us for their lunch

The following week we decided it would be a good idea to go on a real bear hunt. The children enjoyed joining in with the repeating story words when reading Miss Daniels’ favourite story ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. In the Small World Area the children engaged with all of the different scenes from the story and they used their senses to explore as they walked through all of the different scenes in their bare feet.  

Something incredibly exciting happened at Grange Valley this term as a mysterious egg appeared on our playground. The Nursery children were so excited and couldn’t wait to see who had left it. This sparked a real interest in dinosaurs for the majority of the children, so we continued with this theme for the following week. We learnt the dames of lots of dinosaurs, explored with frozen dinosaur eggs and developed our imaginations with a dinosaur swamp in the small world area.

After a few weeks we took the children into the school hall for the first time. Our children love to go into the big school hall and sometimes they get to see their big brothers and sisters. Every Friday we go and spend time exploring large scale movements, ball skills, dancing and we’ve even been practicing our balancing on the big apparatus.

As autumn arrived the sunny weather disappeared. We went out for an autumn walk and observed all the changes that were starting to happen outside. The children collected lots of autumn leaves, conkers and acorns 

We are so proud of how well all of the children have settled into Nursery and we are looking forward to another exciting half term when we return.

Have a lovely half term break from all of the Nursery team. x

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