A hectic week at nursery. We have been talking about Advent and what is means; the first season of the Church year, leading up to Christmas and including the four preceding Sundays. We have therefore been making room for our Christmas tree, organising our Worship area, preparing festive activities and everything Christmassy. We even have Christmas sparkly sand and on Monday we are going to make snow!!! We are all very excited!
All our families have said how much everyone at home has enjoyed taking home the Travelling Nativity. If you haven’t had your turn yet don’t worry we havent forgotten you! Here are this week photos
Fred Talk
This week some of our children had a go at ‘Fred Talk’ using only the sounds that we have learnt. We had such fun and made lots of words, such as p-a-t, s-a-t, m-a-t. Here’s a short video to explain Fred Talk. Click here
The children found out that the more sounds we learn (more after Christmas, we mustn’t run before we can walk!) the more words we can Fred Talk!
Maths Mastery
We continue to explore the ‘fourness’ of four. 4 is a small number and counting to 4 provides lots of practice in developing skills of counting such as one-one correspondence and saying numbers in the right order.
Four appears in lots of contexts, such as four legs on a table. We encourage the children to become ‘4 detectives’ Four has the special property of being a square number and the children’s attention has been drawn to this through the arrangement of 4 blocks or squares. Have a go at home at making 4!
We have also been identifying similarities between shapes:
At this stage, children show increasing intentionality in their selection of shapes, for example using cylinders to represent wheels because they can roll. Draw children’s attention to specific properties by using specific language in everyday situations, while children may use informal language. Properties may include:
curvedness
numbers of sides and corners (2D) or edges, faces and vertices (3D)
equal sides
parallel sides
angle size, including right angles
2D shapes as faces of 3D shapes.
In their play the children show that they are utilising this knowledge by gathering specific items that are needed for their construction, e.g. making a bed for a teddy and gathering blocks of equal length to make the rectangle; taking time with constructing corners so the shapes fit together to make a right angle.
Here’s a great Shape Song. Click here
Michelle’s Blog
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog. We have had another fabulous week of fantastic brain growing. Our focus this week has been learning about shapes. We have learnt the names of lots of different shapes as well as looking at similarities and differences. We are able to say whether a shape has three or more sides and how many corners the shape has too. We went on a shape hunt around nursery, finding lots of shapes in different places. We also had a go at drawing the different shapes on the interactive board, as well as cutting them out to make a collage. Why don’t you try to find as many different shapes on a shape hunt at home or when you are out and about.
We also used the shapes to explore different prepositions and had to describe whether the shapes were under, on, behind, in front of or next to the chair. This is something you could also do at home. Set your child a challenge so they have to find an object only by the clues you give them, e.g “ It’s behind or in front of etc”.
Here is a fun game to reinforce the shapes we have learnt this week. Click here
We have also had lots of activities this week to develop the muscles in our hands. This is all good practice before we start Reception. These hand strengthening activities also help us to have strong hands to put our shoes and socks on and to do up our zips. WE are practising our zips every day and more and more of us are now able to do this independently.
Here are some more ideas to try at home. Click here
Finally, we have started our Christmas crafts and we are as busy as elves. All top secret now though!
We are really looking forward to welcoming you all next week for our Nativity performances. We have been practising really hard!
Have a lovely weekend everyone and we will see you next week.
Michelle
Emma’s blog
Hello everyone,
We have had a fantastic week of fun and learning.
Firstly, I just want to say that we have really enjoyed seeing the children's pictures of the Travelling Nativity. The children have loved telling us about their experiences with it and we can't wait to see more photos as it continues to travel around.
We have been getting very creative with making Christmas cards this week and have been looking at how different Christmas trees are in shape, size and colour. We made a mood board filled with different Christmas trees to help inspire the children with their ideas. The children have come up with some wonderful creations, not only with paint, but on the computer also. We can't wait for you to see what your child has created.
As we have been looking at the different shapes of trees, we have linked it to our more general leaning about shapes. We are looking at what they are called, working out how many sides the shapes have and how they are all so different, we also had an ago at drawing shapes on the screen. We played a shape game on the screen and here is the link. The children found it to be really fun. Click here
To continue practising our fine motor skills, we played a game where the children had to stretch hair bands over a large tube. The activity also helps the children to learn a way of putting on their socks, socks can be tricky. It will also help to strengthen their hand muscles, and great for problem solving and resilience.
We had a special visit from year 3 in nursery. They joined in with our activity, dough disco. Year 3 LOVED it, and the nursery children enjoyed being with the older children, as they showed them how to do dough disco. Thank you year 3 for visiting us.
We are all very excited for next weeks Nativity performance. The children have been playing, drawing, and reading stories all about the Nativity. When reading Nativity stories they have been relating the animals and characters back to their friends who will be playing those parts in the play.
Have a big rest this weekend as we are going to be working really hard again next week. I hope you all have a nice weekend and see you all next week.
Emma
Your final reminder for the Nativity
This year the Foundation Stage Nativity is as follows.
Dress rehearsal for the whole school 5th December. If you would like your child to be on the DVD you MUST attend this performance.
Parents performances will be on the 6th and 7th December. These are a ticket only events, with an allocation of 4 tickets per family over the two performances. Letters to purchase your tickets have gone out this week…check your child’s bag.
All children should be in nursery no later than 8.45 am on each performance day. If it is not your child’s usual session could you please collect them promptly at the end of the play (at the nursery gate).
If your child requires a costume for their part in the play you will have received an email from the office this week, otherwise you can assume that there is an outfit available here.
We will need all additional costumes in as soon as possible please. If you are struggling to find any item just drop me an email.
If I can just mention two small things; after many decades of Nativity experience I find that sometimes three performances are a big ask for nursery children. It may be an idea to attend the dress rehearsal and one other performance (if possible, I understand that it will not be possible for all our children). Also another top tip, it is wise to sit where you can see your child but they cannot see you, as this often unsettle them and then they will not take part.
Sharing in the Nativity
Next week, we will see the first of our nativity performances taking place. Across the school, each class team and key stage have been working hard to bring the most amazing story to life through song, prayer and performance. For our children, this will be a special moment in time. We know that for parents and families too, there is no greater joy than seeing your child perform the Christmas story; it will bring back memories of your own time in school. For us, the nativity is central to our prayer and liturgy. When the children tell the story, we are praying to God for the gift of his son. The children who will initially be taking to the stage are our smallest children; for which this can be very daunting.
When you arrive in school for the nativity, can I ask that you just bring yourselves ready to be present in the story. There will be enough seats for all tickets that have been sold, to avoid the need for any standing. Often we can get tempted to stand to watch, or stand to wave so that our children know we are there. This isn’t needed; they know you are there and they need you to be as still as you can so that they can perform like they have been practising. It is always nice to sit somewhere where you can see your child, but they cannot see you. You can both then enjoy the liturgy as intended. I would be really grateful if you can pass this message to whoever is coming to watch the performances. If you know of someone coming who will need additional support or seating, please do let us know and we would be happy to help in any way.
N.Gregan
Lastly, as we start Advent I would just like to share this mostly lovely story which I feel tells the how Christmas is about being kind, thoughtful and caring to everyone we meet. It is a heartwarming Christmas story, I hope you enjoy it as much as we have at nursery. Click here for ‘Room for a Little One’.
Have a lovely weekend and I will see you all on Monday.
God Bless
Barbara