Welcome to our Nursery Class page. Nursery is all about learning through play. The children are encouraged to find out new things by exploring the world around them and asking questions. Nursery is a safe, friendly place where children feel happy to take risks and engage in new experiences. All staff strive to build strong relationships with their key children so that they flourish in our setting; children are supported to become "confident communicators" so that they can express themselves effectively to others. We pride ourselves on providing an inviting and engaging learning environment that promotes the Characteristics of Effective Learning and support independent and collaborative learning across all 7 areas of the curriculum.

Please check our page each week to share in our achievements, find out what we have been learning about in school and get ideas for ways in which you can support learning at home.

Favourite Five

Each half term in Nursery we will be introducing children to our 'Favourite Five' stories. We will read these five stories lots of times throughout the half term (alongside lots of others as well) so that the children become really familiar with the language and pattern of the story. By reading these 5 stories regularly, children are exposed to lots of new vocabulary. Our 'Grandpa Fantastic' collects all of the new vocabulary that we have learnt from each story. We revisit this new vocabulary frequently to support children to absorb the language and explore it in a wider context.

Ian's Mobile Farm

This week we had a visit from Ian's mobile farm. The children were so excited and loved learning all about the animals and also stroking them and feeding them.

Capacity

We have been continuing our work on measures by learning about how much liquid is in different containers. We learned the vocabulary full, nearly full, half full, nearly empty and empty. It was so much fun filling the different containers!

World Book Day

Today we celebrated World book day. The children came to nursery dressed in pyjamas or as a book character. Our class is named after the author Eric Carle so we read the book, 'The Hungry Caterpillar' and enjoyed lots of activities related to the book. We painted caterpillars using different fruits, role played the story and dressed up as caterpillars, cocoons and butterflies. 

Lunar New Year

This week we are celebrating Chinese New Year in Nursery. Wai Ying has just returned from her family holiday to Hong Kong and shared lots of photographs and artefacts. She celebrated Lunar New Year whilst she was on holiday. It was wonderful to learn all about the different food, clothes, vehicles, culture, buildings, weather in Hong Kong. The children asked lots of questions and we compared it to life in Cross gates.

Number Day

All things mathematical on number day. The children had a wonderful, educational time as we raised money for NSPCC.

Where we live!

We have been learning all about our homes and our parents were ask to add a photo of our house to Tapestry. This led to lots of discussion about who lives with us and what our house looks like. We created a small world area with the photos, which the children have loved playing with. This has involved lots of role play as well as further discussion about our homes. Some of the children impressed us as they could remember their address! What fantastic young Geographers we are!

Happy New Year !

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas break with your families and wish you many happy times for the year ahead.

The children have settled well after the break and lots of wonderful learning has occurred. The weather is much cooler now which has inspired lots of discussion about the changing seasons. 

The icy conditions this week led to lots of excitement and provoked meaningful questions. Did the ice come from the Arctic? Is the ice in the clouds? Why does it look like glass? Will it cut us like glass? These questions were followed up and the children decided to try and make some more ice. We filled different tuff trays with water and left lots of things inside. One child wanted to put the dinosaurs feet inside and see if that trapped the dinosaurs. Another wanted to use leaves and some of our dying daffodils and place them in the water.

The next day the children wanted to go outside straight away to see what had happened! There was such a buzz of excitement as we discovered the changes in the water. 

This interest was continued in class as we made our own snow. In fact the children didn't want to make normal snow they asked if they could make 'Rainbow Snow!'

Helicopter Stories

This week we started the 'Helicopter Stories' project. This is designed to help children tell their our stories and then develop their confidence to act these out. 

When the children returned from lunch a stage had been created with a taped area. The children volunteered to be parts in the story and showed us their own interpretations on these characters. This is completely up to the child and everyone opinions are valued. The first stories were told by an adult to model examples. 

Once the children went into provision so many children couldn't wait to tell their stories. They also drew pictures to accompany their ideas. Being able to tell a story is the first stage in becoming a confident writer and these stories demonstrate that out children have a wonderful imagination!

Five Little Snowmen

We have been learning our number rhyme about snowmen. The children enjoyed dressing up as snowmen and counting how many snowmen melted away. We recreated this rhyme in our maths interactive area. The children used the five frame to learn about the composition of numbers to five. We looked at how many spaces there were left after 1 snowmen melted, using the stem sentence, 'one melted in the sun and ...... snowmen were left.' 

Mushrooms, Toadstools and Fairies

In the early years we follow the 'Wanderlust Child Nature Study' and have been learning all about Mushrooms. We explored different types of mushrooms, chopping them , studying them and printing with them. We also talked about the importance of not picking mushrooms in the outdoors and one of the children told us, "They can be poisonous." We then made our own 'Mould garden' using different food and have been observing the changes. After a few weeks we noticed the mould growing all over it. We were very careful not to touch it as we knew it would be dangerous.

One of the children told us, "Faires live in toadstools in the woods and are magic!" This led into a lot of excitement and all of the children were eager to tell us about fairies. To continue this interest by setting up a provocation of a Fairy door in our outdoor area. There was such a buzz of excitement when we also found a letter from the fairies. The children drew pictures and made marks to send to the fairies and they were particularly excited when they had lots of magic fairy glitter bottles left in our classroom to find.

Fire Engine visit

The children really enjoyed the visit form Killingbeck Fire Station. We had a super time dressing up in their uniforms, sitting in the Fire engine, looking at the equipment and learning all about the job of a Fire Fighter. Lots of the children now want to be Fire Fighters when they grow up!

Reading Cafes

It had been wonderful welcoming parents/grandparents into class this week for our first reading cafe. We really value the importance of Parental involvement in education at Cross gates Primary School and we were really pleased to see so many people attend. The children enjoyed sharing so many books.

Diwali

This week we learned about the Hindu and Sikh festival Diwali. This is such a wonderful festival to do with young children as there are so many sensory and creative activities they can be involved in. The children were invited to make clay Divas, Rangoli patterns and Mendhi art. We also enjoyed looking at Diwali cards, dance sticks, jewellery and Asian clothes. 

Remembrance Day

We spent some time learning about Remembrance day as it is on Sunday.  I showed the children the poppy I was wearing and Akeera told us, "It's for the soldiers." We watched the Video on Cbeebies about a Bunny rabbit during the war. The children commented on how sad the rabbit was during the war. A'maya said, "The poppies are for the soldiers." We then used loose parts to create our own poppies and also created our own representation using paint. The children carefully created their own impressions. 

Sensory Bottles

In our calm corner we have lots of different sensory bottles which the children have been really interested in. There has been so much discussion about the things inside and also the children wondered why one of the bottles wasn't full of water. The children thought someone must have opened the bottle and spilt the water. One of the children suggested that the lids were glued. What a fantastic idea!

This interest was extended by providing them with lots of resources to make their own bottles. So much Science and Maths was involved in this activity as the children were estimating, measuring, predicting and observing!

We hope you like their bottles. 

It was wonderful to welcome so many parent and grandparents to our Autumn stay and play.  The children particularly enjoyed showing their grown up around.

Apples

As part of our Wanderlust Nature Study, this week, we are learning about apples (linking with Harvest). We talked about where apple grow and looked at pictures of different varieties. Today in Nursery, we made some tasty apple flapjack. The children were really involved in making the flapjack, including: peeling the apples, chopping them into small pieces and measuring and mixing the ingredients. The children showed lots of resilience and managed risks, whilst using the child safe knives and peelers. They are very excited to take some home to try!

Phase one Phonics

In Nursery we concentrate on phase one phonics. This emphasises the importance of children developing their speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonics work which begins in phase two. The focus is on getting children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills. Phase one is divided into seven aspects and the first is environmental sounds.

The children this half term have been involved in lots of listening games and activities to help become aware of the sounds around them. 

We have been on listening walks, listened to hidden sounds, identified objects in socks. We have also listened, identified and described animal sounds, seaside sounds, Autumn sounds and listened and identified instrumental sounds.

Mark Making 

Mark making is not just about early writing; it is a sensory and physical experience. As well as early writing, mark making can develop into mathematical representation and creative expression. Mark making allows children to represent their thoughts and ideas, express their feelings, develop their understanding of the world and solve problems.

We value the mark--making in all forms and provide the children with lots of opportunities both inside and outside to develop this.

Talk 4 Writing

This half term we have begun Talk for Writing. It is an engaging framework developed by Pie Corbet. This is where children learn a text by heart and it helps with oracy and literacy. It is powerful because it is based on the principles of how children learn.

We are learning different Nursery rhymes this half term and our first rhymes was Incy Wincy Spider. We used the text map to tell the rhyme and then saw if we could remember the actions in a different order. Different pipes/tubes and plastic spiders were added to the provision for the children to investigate. The children explored them and tried to place different sized spiders down the tubes. This caused a bit of a problem as some of the spiders got stuck and the children had to think of ways to free them. Eventually Jenson suggested we undo the pipes and we were able to shake them free.

Sunflowers

As a provocation to inspire the children some old sunflower heads were placed in the outside area. The children were keen to explore and pull them apart. Some of the children commented on how easily the petals fell off and noticed the change in colour. We talked about how they change to brown when they are starting to dry and die. The children also explored the centre and scissors were provided for them to chop into them. We introduced the words petal and stem as they explored. Later on the children brought water and pans over to the table and quickly this turned into a soup and potion activity. 

Silly faces and Transient Art

Nursery have been enjoying doing silly faces and enjoying using the IPAD to take selfies of these faces. To develop this further Miss Jessop brought in lots of silly props for us to wear ! We all loved looking at our selves in the mirror and using the large inflatable frame. Some of us loved hiding under the silly wigs.

Settling in

It has been wonderful to welcome all our new children and our returning children to Nursery. The children have all been exploring our environment and learning from our continuous provision both inside and outside the classroom. We believe in following children's own interests and know that this is where children make more meaningful connections and have deeper learning. Hope you enjoy looking at some of our amazing children deeply engrossed in their learning.