Today Wellgate Farm came on a visit to our school.  We saw a pony, geese, rabbit, chickens, ducklings, lambs, kids, guinea pigs and a turkey.  Kevin told us all about the animals and how we should behave around them.  We stroked their fur and feathers and looked closely at their feet to see if they had claws, webbed feet or hoofs.  We all washed our hands thoroughly after the visit.  The children had a great time and we hope they enjoy telling you all about the day a farm came to the school playground.

This half term we are learning about how things grow and change.  Last week we read the story of “Titch” and all the children have planted a sunflower seed to take care of. 

This week our story is “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”.  This has given the children the opportunity to ‘read’ a predictable text using pictures and compare a story book with an information book about butterflies.  We have printed symmetrical patterns, made number lines with caterpillars, drawn caterpillars using circles on the computer and made butterfly cakes. 

We have also had great fun in the rain and mud, especially in the forest!  May I take this opportunity to remind parents that PM nursery need wellingtons in school on Tuesdays, clearly marked with their names and AM nursery need wellingtons on Thursdays.  These may be left on their pegs if this is more convenient.

As part of Sports Relief some of our children dressed up as sports personalities.  Friday is our PE day so we enjoyed playing with bats, balls, hoops, bean bags and quoits in the spring sunshine.  Throwing, catching, aiming and scoring we had a great time sharing and taking part with our friends.

Last week was World Book Day and the children had a great time coming to school dressed as their favourite book character.  Please read the details on the back of your £1 book voucher carefully as it can be swapped for a book in some stores.  Please continue to read, share and “make-up” stories with your children as it provides a solid foundation for future reading skills.

This week in nursery we have started our “Forest Explorers”!  The weather was very kind to us and it was great to enjoy the spring sunshine on our field and forest area.  We closed our eyes and listened to the sounds we could hear and talked about how we could keep ourselves safe.  We had lots of fun playing our version of “Hide and Seek” and had time to explore these exciting surroundings, measuring sticks to make a den, looking at leaves, searching for bugs, climbing and balancing.  Can’t wait until next week now! 

This week we have returned to focusing our work on Nursery Rhymes.  Humpty Dumpty has been our theme.  We have painted and drawn pictures of the rhyme to promote hand control and the ability to follow instructions.  We have made up silly rhymes to match our own names and made up a Humpty Dumpty story together with a happy ending.  We decorated biscuits to look like Humpty Dumpty and built walls for Humpty to sit on.  Alongside this we have thought about the sounds that Humpty’s names begin with and found other things that begin with the sound ‘h’ or ‘d’.

Last week we celebrated Chinese New Year.  We heard the Chinese New Year story and made Chinese lanterns to decorate our ‘Chinese Restaurant’.  We used chop sticks to taste noodles and made a dragon together.  With cymbols, drums and triangles we joined in with Chinese music as we took it in turns to perform a Chinese Dragon dance, supported by our ribbon dancers.

The next day the children used the instruments, dragon and ribbons in the outside area and worked together to perform the dance with limited adult support.  Great noisy fun was had by all!

This half term we have been learning Nursery Rhymes.  So far we have centred our activities around, ‘Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been?’, ‘Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake, Bakers man’ and ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’.  Learning rhymes helps the children develop a love of language and rhyme and helps with memory skills.  Can your children still remember these rhymes?

As an example of the activities your child has taken part in we built a landscape for ‘Jack and Jill’ and made up a story based on the rhyme.  The children made puppets and re-told the story and the rhyme.  We discussed new vocabulary, like ‘tumble’ and ‘pail’ and ‘crown’.  We made pictures and collages about the rhyme and recorded the children saying the rhymes on our video camera.  They love watching themselves.

We began the month of December by inviting parents and family to listen to our Christmas songs.  The children enjoyed dressing up to tell the Christmas story and loved singing songs about Santa!  We hope your wonderful children helped to put the “sparkle” into the Christmas season for you.

We also had a Christmas party where we danced, played party games and ate party food.  We even had a visit from Santa himself even though he is really busy at this time of year.  We hope you and your families have a fantastic Christmas and we would like to thank-you all for your cards, good wishes and gifts.

This week we went on an autumn walk to our school field.  The children loved the chance to run across the open space and explore amongst the trees.  We have been reading “We’re going on a bear hunt”.  We didn’t find any bears on our walk, but weaving our way through the trees and noticing the texture of the trees and the damp leaves under our feet, helped the children develop a real sense of the changes in nature at this time of the year.  We plan to use this outdoor space weekly in the new year.  Details to follow after Christmas.