This week...

After a sombre start to the week we have slowly managed to get back into our routine. The weather has been a bit hit and miss and on Thursday we realised that we haven’t seen ‘real’ rain at nursery for such a long time! The children kept saying “it’s raining!”.

We are slowly working our way through our monthly plans but keep getting side tracked by things that keep happening in nursery. For example, on Friday during worship we had been talking about Gods creation of our wonderful earth when all of a sudden we remembered it is going to be Harvest in a couple of weeks. This led to a conversation about if God hadn’t made the sun, rain, land…how could be grow food for the farmers to harvest and for us to eat.

Seizing the moment we went into the garden to harvest the potatoes we had grown. The children dug them up and then washed them. We have sent a potato home for you to cook for tea!!!

Have a look at these fabulous photos!

Next week we will talk more about the seasons and harvest. The children are wanting to make bread!!!! Watch this space, Paul Hollywood better watch out!

Colette’s Blog

Hello everyone! Just because it has been a shorter week doesn’t mean that we haven’t done as much!

As always, there have been lots and lots of storytelling, some by the Nursery ladies and some by the children. They all seem to have such hungry appetites for books….they just love stories!!! The children have been so inspired by the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’ that they decided to make their own brick houses in the garden. Even the ‘Big Bad Wolf’ appeared to try and blow it down!!! Click here to watch. We are continuing to enjoy ‘Little Rabbit Foo Foo’ (making his bad choices!) and also ‘Lima’s Red Hot Chilli’!

The fine weather earlier in the week allowed us to spend lots of time in the garden and we made some wonderful finds. There were lots and lots of conkers…I think we counted 23 at one point! The cases were really spikey as well! We also discovered quite a few ladybirds….even some baby ones too. Some of us were lucky enough to go on a little walk through the ‘Environmental Garden’ behind the school field. It was so lovely and we even found a bench for a sneaky little sit down!!

Inside nursery there have been lots of water and sand play, puzzles, large construction (don’t worry…we did wear our builder’s hats) and we made some wonderful flower gardens.

I told you we had been very busy! We had better have a good rest this weekend.

Kind regards

Colette

Michelle’s Blog

What a fantastic busy week we have had this week.

We have continued learning about how God created us all to be individual and unique. We have explored our similarities and differences and discovered all about our families. Click here for Along Came a Different

Hopefully you will have received your log in details for Purple Mash and will have seen the activity for your child’s self portrait.

We then explored houses and homes in different stories, going with Goldilocks for a walk in the woods and hiding from the Big Bad Wolf in our houses we had built in the garden. Click here for another lovely version you can share.

We have explored further afield this week, gong on an adventure to the Environmental Garden, where we discovered a rainbow bench. We took the wibbly wobbly path around the school field and visited the chapel before we discovered some stars and a boat.

Thank you to everyone who has sent in snack in your child’s blue bag, this really does help them to be more independent at snack time and is a good practise for school. Please remember that snack should be a piece of fruit or veg, please, and grapes should be sliced lengthways for safety. Click here

Please keep a look out for a letter in your child’s blue bag with a template for a leaf for our Wishing Tree display. Please write your wishes for your child’s time at nursery and we will display them on our Wishing Tree- hopefully we can make your wishes come true.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and see you all next week!

Michelle

Stephanie’s Blog

Hello everyone! We have had another lovely week in Nursery. Our friendships have continued to grow and I have seen some very happy faces this week!

We have continued to look at Number 1 this week – we are great at choosing 1 object to add or take from a group and a favourite activity this week has been working together to build a tower. We all added 1 block each to see how tall we could make it. We also checked if it was smaller or taller than us! Some children wanted to add a second block to make it even higher which will lead us into looking at Number 2 next week.

We worked hard this week to practise our listening skills. These skills can help with learning new things and with developing friendships and engaging with the world. We have been listening to what we can hear in the garden and inside – we’ve worked hard to work out which sounds are which when it is very noisy. We’ve enjoyed playing a game with the instruments – I showed the children 5 instruments and played them so they knew what they sounded like. I then covered them and played one to see if they could work out which one it was. You could play this at home with things you have around the house – make it tricky if they find it too easy!

We have been ‘Have a go Tommy Turtle’ again this week – we have worked hard on challenges in the garden. Some of us have tried hard with the stilts and kept going until we could do it. We also found a broom and worked together to ride it – it was tricky to get more than one friend on at a time but we managed it!

We have been developing our body awareness. We named different parts of our body and looked at ways we are the same and ways we are different. We have made different faces on the big screen, making them look different each time. ‘Simon Says’ was a bit tricky but lots of fun! We spoke about who lives in our house and drew pictures of our family. The children really enjoyed telling us about who is special to them. You could draw pictures at home and ask your child to tell you about the new friends and nursery ladies they have met in school.

Have a lovely weekend and I’ll see you on Monday!

Steph

Fundamental Movement Skills

Fundamental movement skills are a specific set of skills that involve different body parts such as feet, legs, trunk, head, arms and hands. These skills are the “building blocks” for more complex and specialised skills that children will need throughout their lives to competently participate in different games, sports and recreational activities.

This months challenge is for the children to practise balancing on one leg  and then the other for five seconds without wobbling or putting the other foot down! Good luck ‘have a go’ Tommy Turtles

 Children’s Dental Health

Information For Parents

BRUSHING TEETH

• Brush children’s teeth twice a day with a small headed toothbrush with medium-textured bristles and a family fluoride toothpaste.

• Brush last thing at night, just before bedtime and only have water to drink afterwards.

• Brush one other time of day

• Children younger than 3 years old should only have a small smear of toothpaste on their brush.

• Children aged 3 years and older should use a pea sized amount of toothpaste on their brush.

• You should encourage your child to spit out the toothpaste and not to rinse afterwards.

 St. Annes Library

The library is holding a Fun Palace at St. Annes Library on Saturday 1st October, 10am to 4pm. Click on the button below to find out more.

I feel it’s a rather long blog this week, sorry. It’s just we have so much that we like to share with you all. Don’t forget to check Purple Mash and here’s a little game for you to play at home! Click here and happy counting!

Have the most wonderful weekend and we will see you on Monday for an even busier week at nursery!

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Another wonderful week! The children have all been so happy and I’m so impressed as to how they have been coming into nursery independently.

As always a busy week. By Friday we are really tired and some of our friends sometimes fall asleep!

School Admissions 2023 -24

Click on the buttons below if your child is due to start school in September 2023.

Here is what we have been up to this week.

Worship

This week we have been finding out how God created our wonderful earth. The story of Creation. If you click on the button below you will find the slides that have helped us to understand. We have made the slides into a book for our worship area. Perhaps you could make a book at home?

Next week we will be learning a song to help us remember the story of ‘creation’. Here it is for you to have a sing song at home!

Barbara’s Blog

Here’s a surprise! I bet you were expecting Michelle. Sadly, Michelle has been poorly this week so has not been in nursery every day. Don’t panic though I have taken over her key group for the week and have had the most wonderful time...I do hope the children have too….

We have started the week by meeting ONE. A little block fell from the sky, meets her numberling and discovers one wonderful world, singing and counting to one. It’s all about the oneness of one! Click here to watch https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08bzzns/numberblocks-series-1-one.  We then made a number collecting bucket to find lots of one objects, one car, one banana, one pencil….you get the idea. Click here to watch ‘one’

Our one wonderful world fits well with this weeks worship….more about that later…

We have had such fun in the garden….building tall towers, cars, tricky balancing and climbing. We also made dinosaur world and ramps and tunnels for the cars…..wheeeeee!! All great fun.

I suspect the children have been telling you all about Little Rabbit Foo Foo… it has quickly become one of our favourites. The children tell me that he makes ‘bad choices’. Click here to watch at home.

Some of you have been asking about criss cross legs. We have been practising really hard not to get our legs in a tangle! We have also been trying to put coats on all by ourselves. We put the coat on the floor, stand by the hood then bend down to put our arms in the sleeves We can then flip it over our heads….have a try at home. The children are very proud.

This week we have  met ‘Have a go’ Tommy Turtle. When anyone says ‘I can’t do it’ we say be like Tommy Turtle and ‘have a go’. Maybe this is something you could try at home. We read the story at story time and the children have been ready for a challenge.

Watch out in your child’s book bag for their Purple Mash log in details and how to access the webpage. I have pinned a parent video for you to watch. On other weeks keep checking to see if any work has been set. Please let me know if you have any trouble.

Lastly Michelle will be contacting next week to arrange a quick catch up meeting to discuss learning and how everyone is settling into nursery. In the meanwhile I am here for you, feel free to drop me a quick email. I always like to hear from you.

Under such sad circumstances try and have a lovely weekend and I will see you on Tuesday. I have great things planned!

Barbara

 Colette’s blog

Hello everyone. I would like to begin this week’s blog by saying thank you to you all for continuing to allow us to support your child as they come to Nursery in the morning. We do appreciate how difficult it can be, especially when your child is upset, but you have all been fantastic. Also, putting your child’s snack in to their blue bag does help your child to become familiar with the routine and to find their own tray!

This week we have been looking at the Number one. We watched the story of Numberblock one where a little block falls out of the sky and discovers one wonderful world!

This week some of the children have been asking for the story ‘Lima’s Red Hot Chilli’ and they have been enjoying joining in too. Click here to watch.

After reading ‘The Colour Monster’ last week we are continuing to look at our emotions and practise finding our ‘calm’. With this in mind we have had a go at some ‘Rainbow relaxation’ where we pretended that our arms were paintbrushes then we could paint a rainbow. Click here to have a go yourselves!  

In addition to all of this we have played a teddy bear counting game, completed jigsaw puzzles on the big screen, played with a dinosaur world, sang the magpie song (a good listening game), found some conkers in the garden and painted a portrait of ourselves!!

I think we will definitely need a good rest this weekend.

As you are aware Nursery is closed on Monday for the Bank Holiday so the week will begin on Tuesday. I will also be contacting you to arrange a convenient time for us to have a parent’s meeting.

Kind regards.

Colette

Stephanie’s blog

Hello everyone! What a great week we have had. It has been lovely to see how settled the children are after just one week, even if they are a little upset when you drop them off they are settling quickly and having a wonderful time. I’ve loved seeing all their happy faces this week.

Our focus this term is ‘All about me’ - this week we have worked hard to paint a self – portrait. We looked at our faces in the mirror and worked hard to work out what features we needed to paint and what colour they needed to be. This resulted in smiles and giggles – especially when we were looking at our lips. They all look great on the wall in the classroom, you will be able to see them when you come for your catch up meeting (I will send you all an email to arrange this – hope you can all make it).

We have learnt about number one this week – the children have enjoyed watching the story of Numberblock one and finding things to put in our number bucket e.g. 1 shell, 1 brick, 1 gem. You could try this at home with objects around the house or garden. We have also been doing this outside – 1 jump, 1 hop, 1 ball etc.

We have continued to look at the Colour Monster – it is a great way for children to become aware of, and talk about their emotions when it can be difficult to put them into words. We have made a display in the classroom – if anyone has had a go at colouring the monster we sent home last week please send it in and we can add it to the display. We have practised ways to calm down and relax and have enjoyed ‘rainbow yoga’ this week – here is the link to have a go at home.

Our friendships have continued to grow and it has been lovely listening to the children talking to each other and working together in their play – we worked together to build a car in the garden complete with seats and wheels and we’ve also enjoyed singing songs together in the tree house. Making potions in the water was also a favourite activity this week! We have been proud of ourselves for ‘having a go’. A few of us found it tricky to jump off crates or walk over the bridge but with a bit of practise we managed it! We were so proud of ourselves!

I can’t wait to see you all again next week, as you are aware Nursery is closed on Monday so I will see you on Tuesday.

Have a lovely weekend.

Steph

Remember…

To look out for your Purple Mash log in details and instructions so you can have an explore over the weekend. Check to see if your child’s key person has set any work!

Check on all the key person blogs, there may be some different work to explore.

Look out for your child’s key person inviting you to a catch up time.

Lastly and most importantly have some lovely family time this weekend. I realise that recent events may have been overwhelming but we can hold each others hand until the darkness passes.

God bless and I will see you all on Tuesday.

Barbara

Such a fabulous start to nursery!

It has been such a fabulous start to our year at nursery. I understanding that as parents you can be quite anxious when your child starts nursery. So a massive thank you for being brave!

As in previous years we would love you to get involved in our learning by supporting us at home. I know this can also be tricky but don’t worry do what you can

If you click on the button below it will tell you everything we are hoping to do this month…fingers crossed! You will notice that what we do not manage to get through will roll over into the next month. Also some skills will be present for the whole year!! Practise makes perfect so they say! If there is anything you want to ask about either catch me at the gate, drop me and email or speak to your child’s key person!

I’m not sure if you have managed to dip into the documents I sent home during the summer term so I will attach them again for you. Click here for the EYFS Development Matters and on the button below for What to Expect When. They are a good start to understand your childs development.

This year we are doing things in nursery differently. Monthly newsletters will not be sent out. Instead we are putting everything in this webpage. I usually write it on a Friday, it will have your child’s key person blog and images of their learning for the week.

You will also find parent information and home learning activities! Pencil it in your diary it would awful for you to miss any important information or special events!

Anyway here is what you have all be waiting for….your childs key person blogs.

Stephanie’s Blog

Hello everyone! What a wonderful first week in Nursery we have had. I have loved meeting you all and getting to know you. This first week has been about you getting to know all the nursery ladies and our new friends. We have learnt lots of new names already!

The children have begun to learn our nursery routine – they have been practising listening at Carpet Kingdom times and washing hands for snack and lunch – they have been great! ! We have snack time in the morning and afternoon – it would be great if you could put their healthy snack in their blue bag rather than their lunchbox then it can go straight into their tray in the morning. They have enjoyed independently going to their tray at snack time and seeing what is there to eat.

You will see from the photos that we have had lots of fun exploring nursery and playing with all the new things. We’ve loved playing in the garden and there has been lots of mark making and crafts taking place too. We have also read the Colour Monster and spoken about our feelings – the children may come home saying they are feeling ‘yellow’ or ‘blue’. Here is a link to the story so you can watch it at home. Click here to watch! We are sending home a colouring sheet so you can talk about feelings at home. Check your blue bags.

We can’t wait to see you all next week – we have lots planned and it’s going to be fun!

We are also going to make a display with all our family photographs on, so we would love it if you could bring a photograph of your family for us to add to it – you can email this too if it is easier.

Have a lovely weekend!

Steph

Michelle’s Blog

What a wonderful first week we have had! It has been really exciting meeting all our new starters. The children have had so much fun exploring all the toys and activities on offer.

This week has been all about getting to know each other and getting to know the routines of nursery.

We are all learning everyone’s name and the children have started to develop friendships already. Snack time has been very enjoyable with lots of chatting and laughing. We have snack time in the morning and in the afternoon, so don’t forget your child will need a healthy snack for these times, e.g. fruit or vegetables. It is easier for the children if this are separate to their lunch box- they can be placed in their book bag and go straight in their tray at the beginning of the day.

Story time has been great fun this week. We read Owl Babies and Shark in the Park. Watch Owl Babies here

We have also practiced our counting and subtracting by singing 5 Sticky Lollipops. Click here if you would like to sing along.

The children have all amazed me with how well they have all settled and they all tell me they are coming back next week!

Next week the children will be starting to paint their self portraits and to talk about their families. It would be wonderful if you could send in a photo of your family for our display. This can be emailed if you prefer.

Have a lovely weekend.

Michelle

Colette’s Blog

Welcome everyone! What a wonderful beginning it has been to our autumn term at Nursery. The children have amazed the Nursery staff by allowing us to guide them along the path and in to Nursery where their new adventures can begin.

We have been meeting new friends and saying hello to some existing friends too. We have found our trays and had a look at which picture we have (mine is a cat!) We have also found the toilets, water machine, the place we hang our coats, where we put our lunch boxes (if we have one) and our bags and most importantly where the toys and books can be found. What an achievement!

Thank you for the lovely family photos that have been coming in. We can’t wait to put them up on our display. Don’t worry if you haven’t sent one in yet, there is still time. Also just a quick reminder that we have two snack times a day so if you could send your child’s snack in their blue bag that would be a big help!

Finally, remember to keep your eye on the website for any important information that you might need.

Have a lovely weekend together.

Colette

Worship this month

Created and loved by God

Created and Loved by God explores the individual. Rooted in the teaching that we are created by God out of love and for love, it helps children to develop an understanding of the importance of valuing themselves as the basis for personal relationships.

Next week we will introduce the children to the story of creation, where God created the earth, sea, stars, plants, animals and humans. A five-story sessions will encourage children to creatively explore this topic and help them to deeply know that they are created by God out of love and for love.

We have also started to visit our chapel in the school garden. We are learning lots of new songs to sing and to sign.

Diary Dates

Tempest school photographer will be in school on 12th October- I will give you more information nearer the time.

Break for half term 20th October 3.30 pm

Curriculum Evening 17th November- more details to follow

Nursery Drop in session 29th November 3.45-4.45 pm- just in case you want a quick catch up. This is for parents and not for children. Your key person will be contacting next week to arrange a meeting this half term.

Advent Mass in school at 8 am 25th Nov, 2nd Dec, 9th Dec and 16th Dec. Please come along with your child, we would love to see you.

Foundation Stage Nativity 7th and 8th December - more details to follow

Foundation Christmas party 19th December - all children invited- more details to follow

Break for Christmas 2pm on the 20th December.

Now just a few housekeeping points.

Owing to lack of space in our entrance would it be possible to get your child and Our Lady Book bag instead of a large back pack.

Could any item of clothing that may be taken off during the day please be clearly labelled. We are getting so confused, especially if we have two items the same.

We are a healthy eating nursery. Could all snacks be either fruit or vegetables only and put in your child’s blue bag and not in their lunch bag please.

Finally, it has been such a happy week in nursery and the children have enjoyed being together. We can’t wait to see everyone next week. Have a lovely weekend, hopefully the sun will shine.

God Bless

Barbara

Welcome!

Barbara, Michelle, Colette, Justine and Stephanie can’t wait to see you all next week!! We have been getting nursery ready for you to have a wonderful play!

Have a lovely weekend everyone and see you on Monday! If you wait at the main gate when you arrive we will come and collect the children and take them into nursery.

Barbara

It's time for us to say goodbye...until September.

It never gets any easier saying cheerio to all our wonderful children and their families at the end of the year. It has been an exceptional year at nursery, where our learning has known no bounds. The children’s sense of self and duty to others is quite remarkable. Each time we have worship their contributions to our group discussions brings a tear to our eyes. Every single child is truly magical.

As you know we had our Pirate Party on Monday…..it was sooooo very hot we had to split our time between indoors and outdoors. A regular dousing down with the hose pipe kept us cool, and soggy!

We had games such as walk the plank, pass the cannonball, finds the treasure, musical spots and many many more pirate themed games. One of the children said “it’s the best party I’ve been to”. Job done!!!!

So you can share in our fun we have put some photographs together for you. Here goes……

Finally, I would like to say thank you for choosing to send your child to Our Lady’s. We all feel very privileged to have been able to work alongside your child and yourselves. We have watched them blossom and grow and we are all so very proud of their achievements.

I know they will continue to grow as they move through the school and rest assured I will always have my eye on them. Please continue to keep in touch with us….. you belong to Our Lady’s!

Have the most splendid summer and remember to stay safe and well. We look forward to seeing the children in their school uniforms and also to the children who will be returning to nursery in September.

God bless

Barbara, Colette, Michelle, Stephanie, Justine and Frances

Only three days left......

We have been preparing the children for the next stage of the Foundation Stage, Reception. Mrs. Hartley came for a play on Wednesday and had a lovely time. She can’t wait to see the children in September!

The nursery ladies can’t believe it’s nearly time to say goodbye, we are all so sad.

Key person blog

We’ve had a lovely week in nursery enjoying the sunshine playing in our wonderful garden. We have made full use of the sand pit and our wonderful water area. In preparation for our Pirate Party on Monday morning we constructed a huge pirate ship and have been firing the canon, walking the plank and singing pirate songs. We have also made lots of treasure maps to hunt for buried treasure.

The children made a huge bed from crash mats and had a whopping game of ‘there were 10 in the bed’! No one went to sleep, especially with the rock band that was taking place on the stage!

To practise our catching and throwing skills we hung some large hoops in the trees. We had to throw bean bags, balls and loopies through the hoops. We are getting very good!

The children have been of measuring the height of many different things around nursery, so look out for a piece of string coming home!

The obstacle courses and whacky races have been great fun and the children have been moving our bodies around in lots of different and creative ways.

The children have been enjoying assembly with the whole school, something we haven’t done for such a long time. It was so lovely to be together again!

On Monday we watched the Year 6 production of Mary Poppins.. The children have really loved singing the songs especially “Let’s Go Fly A Kite”, which they sang on the way back from a trip to the beach.

The children have been tending the garden every day and we have now seen the fruits of our labour (no pun intended). We have harvested some pea’s and strawberries and our beanstalks and sunflowers are getting ever taller and taller.

As always we loved our trip to the beach! The photos show how much we love it!

 Barbara, Michelle, Colette, Stephanie and Frances

We had a visit from our friend Supercroccy this week. He is our helpful Super Hero. We all made Ninja headbands and went on an adventure to capture a lion that had escaped from the zoo. We all chose our special super power and were ready to go! What great fun!!!!!!

May I remind everyone that on Monday it is our Leavers Pirate Party. All the children (and nursery ladies) are invited to come wearing their pirate costumes…..arghhhhhhh! We will be having a fish and chip lunch, so no need to send a packed lunch that day! It starts at 10.00 am and finishes at 12.30 pm!

Also, school will be finishing at 2.00 pm on Wednesday for the summer holidays.

Have a wonderful weekend and we will see you on Monday for our last few days.

Barbara

This week......

A fabulous week! We have been enjoying being together in our final couple of weeks. Luckily the weather has been kind to us and we have loved learning in our outdoor environment. Now all the trees are in leaf and our plants and flowers in bloom it is truly and beautiful place to be.

Key Person Blog

This week the children have enjoyed practising their sounds in the garden. We had lots of objects to sort; our task was to work out what the first sound in the word was, and then find the matching letter on the tray. We were very proud when we sorted all the objects together as a team!

We got ‘creative’ with the stickle bricks this week – the children have loved making different creations and were proud to show them to their friends and adults in the classroom. Some of us made excellent cameras with moving and removable parts!

As usual there has been lots of counting (the children want to count everything!) We have been introduced to the Number 9 Number Block (click here to watch). Numberblock Four is amazed to find another square Numberblock (number 9)! We have also been finding out different ways that we can make the number 9. We used different objects to help us to explore and some of the children even thought of 3 numbers to make up 9!

The link blocks we used for counting have been very popular this week. We have revisited ‘Octoblock’ (number 8) and made Octoblock in a different ways using the purple blocks. The remaining blocks were used to stretch from one side of the garden to the other…it took absolutely ages and a fantastical amount of blocks.

As if that wasn’t enough the children used our wellies in a row to see exactly how far they stretched across the garden. They were 52 single wellies! Phew! That was a lot of counting.

Why don’t you see what you can count at home!

Have a lovely weekend

Barbara, Michelle, Colette, Justine and Frances

Could I remind everyone that our Leavers Pirate Party is on Monday 18th July 10.30 am -12.30 pm. A fish and chip lunch will be provided for each child…mmmmmm! Please send your child to nursery dressed as a pirate! We are planning lots of exciting games to play!

Watch out for your ‘endless possibilities’ home activity sheet being sent home today and enjoy being creative!!

If you are out and about this weekend click on the button below and do a bit of butterfly spotting! If you want to find out more about butterflies click here!

Finally, have a great weekend and enjoy your time together as a family. We will see you all on Monday…and what a week we have planned!

Keep safe

This week....

Yet another fabulous week of learning. Our brains are growing so fast.

We are all enjoying our visits to the beach and to the library. We are now thinking where else we can visit that is within walking distance!!

Key person blog

What a week for our caterpillars! We came in on Wednesday morning and one of our caterpillars was starting to emerge from their chrysalids! We were all super excited. At first there were only four but today, another has emerged, meaning all five have now gone through their metamorphosis (one of our wow words we have recently learnt).

Our caterpillars had grown beautiful wings. The children said that the butterflies must be hungry—it’s hard work growing wings! We dissolved our little sachet of nectar in water and placed little droplets on flowers and pot them in the butterfly habitat with some slices of juicy orange. The butterflies landed on them and seemed to enjoy their tasty treat! We have been feeding them nectar and plan to release them soon.

 We have also enjoyed reading our story we wrote together last week! Some of our friends hadn't seen the story as they weren't in last week, so we concentrated like Cooper Crab and told them all the parts of the story! We used our story map to help us—it was so much fun to remember all the different minibeasts we had put into our story.

We have continued with our trips out and have explored more of St Annes sea front, this time spotting baby ducks on the pond and investigating the waterfall. We tripped trapped across the bridge but luckily, we managed to avoid the troll. 

Some of us also enjoyed a super story at St Annes library, Whatever Next. Click here to listen at home. We also had our snack at the library!

PE was great fun in the hall where we practised moving in different ways to the Sticky Kids song. This is one of our favourites. Click here to join in at home.

The children have explored length by measuring and comparing lengths of lots of different objects, including themselves.

Click here for a measuring activity to do at home.

We have even made popcorn…it went everywhere!!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and we  will see you all next week for more fun and learning.

Barbara, Michelle, Colette, Justine, Stephanie and Frances.

I am sure you will agree that we are all working very hard…and also having lots of FUN!! Here are even more photos of our learning; sound sorting, symmetry, mark making big and small, constructing, reading our floorbooks, making collage pictures, playing hairdressers, working on the Touch TV and capturing minibeasts for further investigation!!! Phew!!

We have a request from any gardeners at home. We have had delivered a small Christmas tree to look after and nurture. If anyone has a large pot and some compost and you are willing to donate them to nursery, we would be most grateful. We are wanting it to grow the tree really tall then we can decorate it at Christmas time with baubles and lights!

Make sure the children have a good rest this weekend as next week is even busier!!!!!

Have a fabulous weekend full of family fun and we will see you on Monday!

Barbara

What a week......

It seems that every week is getting more and more busy. This week it has been hot so we have had to keep ourselves cool with lots of water activities. The children have instinctively looked for shade underneath our canopy of trees….how sensible!

To relax and try and find our ‘cool’ we did Rainbow Relaxation. See if you can remember how to do it! Click here.

Friday saw us hold our Gym Jam Jog sponsored event ( the first one in two years!). It was so lovely to see all our families back together having fun. Well done everyone and thank you for your wonderful support.

Key person blog

Wow….God has truly blessed us with the sunshine this week and there has been so much work to do!             We began the week by making sure that everything in the garden was still ‘rosy’ and we planted some new poppy and bluebell seeds.  So far, the existing flowers are ‘blooming’ marvellously, the tadpoles are still swimming (no sign of any legs yet but we are still hopeful) and there continues to be a plentiful supply of minibeasts to spot (according to our team of explorers!) The children are now the proud owners of some ‘Super Pupas’ as our greedy caterpillars have eaten all of their special food and have turned themselves in to Chrysalises. We will continue to watch them very closely!

This week we have enjoyed looking after our lovely plants in the garden—it has been so warm and sunny that we have had to give them lots of water to continue to grow! We have experimented in different ways to fill up our buckets and watering cans and moved around the garden to get to all the flowers. We also used the syringes to strengthen our muscles in our fingers—we hung the umbrellas upside down and tried to aim the water into them. We also them into a cascading waterfall. As well as practising our number skills aiming the water at the gingerbread numbers hanging on the wall. This was both great for strengthening the muscles in our hands and also cooling us down as the water fell back down onto us! There were lots of happy faces during this activity!

There was a successful trip to the beach where the children had made some sand art including a sand man using some seaweed. Sadly our Wednesday trip to the library had to be postponed due to a road closure but on a positive note a very helpful Police lady allowed us to inspect the Police van. It was fantastic!

There has been some popcorn making (we are still finding the evidence) and some excellent joke telling and some obstacle courses.

 Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Barbara, Michelle, Colette, Justine, Frances and Stephanie.

Worship

Created to Live in Community explores our relationship with the wider world. Here we explore how human beings are relational by nature and are called to love others in the wider community through service, through dialogue and through working for the Common Good. Living in the Wider World helps children to extend their understanding of communities from Unit 1, as they learn about the responsibilities they have to people, places and the planet now and increasingly as they get older.

Religious Understanding introduces in a very simple way the concept of the Trinity, where God is three-in-one and each part loves the others and loves us. The children will come to understand that as we are made in the image of God, we are designed to love God and love one another in our wider communities too. Through the story of Jesus feeding the 5000 with just the humble offering of a small boy, children will learn that our loving actions can be used by God to do incredible things.

We began our worship by singing a new song called ‘My hands are yours’, we are still learning it but we think its going to become of our favourites! It helps us remember how we can be more like Jesus by using our hands, feet and voices for good.

Home learning

We are doing so well with our phonics. Here’s a game you can play at home to practice! Click here to play!

We have been looking at pattern and symmetry on mini beast we can fine in the garden. It was a bit tricky at first but now we are looking for symmetry everywhere! Here is game to play at home …good luck!

As always we love our Numberblocks, especially Octoblock! Eight is great….click here

Also, watch out for some fun learning activity sheets being sent home today!

Finally…

It’s hard to believe we only have four weeks left to the end of the year. The nursery ladies are already feeling sad. That means we have to make the time we have left together count, so we have been planning a Pirate Leavers Party!! Keep a look out for child’s party invitation.

Have a great weekend!

Barbara

Sports Day extravaganza!!!!

First of all, apologies to everyone for making you wait till Monday for our blog, but I just ran out of time!

We kick started Health and Happiness week with Nursery and Reception Sports Day and what a fabulous time we all had! Thank you for coming and supporting us, didn’t we look good in our bespoke t- shirts? Everyone worked so hard at all the activities, it was such good fun. We had lots of Bobby Bees, Sadie Spiders and Tommy Turtles.

Key person blog

Wow- what a wonderful week we had last week. we have been so busy with Sports day, trips to the library and the beach.

Sports Day was so much fun! It was so lovely to have so many grown ups join us to cheer us along. We all enjoyed moving around the different stations and trying out different activities with our team. Moving our bodies in different ways gave us the chance to try new things and ‘have a go’ like Tommy Turtle! There were lots of smiling faces all afternoon especially when we ended the day with a yummy rocket ice lolly! Lots of ideas here for active fun- Click here

Wednesday was also very exciting - some of us went on adventures outside of the nursery and into the community! We will all get a chance to do this over the coming weeks. In the morning 6 of us went to the library. We had a look at all the books and joined in with their story time session. It was all about Winnie the Pooh, we coloured some pictures and joined in with a game of indoor pooh sticks. The nursery ladies were very intrigued by this game—we will definitely be playing this one again with the children in nursery! In the afternoon another 6 children went to the beach. This was great fun—we looked for shells and pebbles and even buried some of the nursery ladies legs in the sand! The trips gave us a great opportunity to practise our listening skills, making sure we were very careful crossing the roads and walking nicely with our friends. We made lots of people smile along the way and we had a great time. Don’t worry if your child was not in one of the groups, as we will be making sure that all the children will get an opportunity to go on a walk over the next few weeks. All the children were very well behaved and had lots of fun.

Some ideas to try at the beach here

We have continued to care for our garden and this week we have had to measure the sunflowers as they are growing so tall. We are also so excited to see the strawberries are starting to ripen and our potatoes are coming into flower. Our wildflower meadow is attracting so many insects. Click here to find out how you can do the same.

The children have enjoyed exploring symmetry using the paint to make beautiful butterflies. We had fun getting messy making the paint go splat onto the paper! We painted one side of the paper, folded it in half, pressed the paint down then unfolded it to see the magic happen! The children were amazed to see their patterns had been repeated on the other side of the paper.

The tadpoles are getting bigger everyday but as yet, have not grown any legs. Our snails had lots of races in the garden before we released them back to the wild and our caterpillars are so big now, we think they will be making their cocoons soon, ready for their metamorphosis- this is one of our wow words we have learnt, we love to learn new words and use them in our conversations. We also discovered some new facts about ladybirds. Did you know ladybirds don’t have ears or a nose? Our investigations and discoveries continue daily.

Tips here to encourage minibeasts in your garden or outdoor space- Click here

We have continued to learn all about number 8 and we have explored how number 8 can be made in lots of ways- ask your child to show you number 8 with their fingers.

Our funky fingers have had lots of exercise this week as we practised our pre-writing skills by squashing and squeezing the clay and making swirly patterns in the shaving foam- great for developing those muscles we will need at school for writing.

We have lots more learning planned for this week.

Until Friday!

Barbara, Michelle, Colette, Stephanie, Justine and Frances

As you can see we have been very busy. This week we are hoping to go to the library and the beach again so watch this space!!

As you are aware Ofsted joined us for the day on Friday. A big thank you to everyone who took the time to speak to the Ofsted inspector. We will share with you the outcome of the inspection when the report is published, unfortunately until then we have to keep it top secret! As soon as I receive the final copy I will send you all your own copy to read.

Barbara

Jubilee special!!!!

Welcome back everyone. It’s hard to believe it is the last few weeks of the year!! The children have been full of interesting things that they have been doing at home to celebrate the Queens 70th Jubilee. It sounds that you all had great fun!

Our favourite bit of the celebration was Paddington have tea at Winsor Castle with the Queen. If you didn’t manage to see it click here, it was truly magical.

As you know we had our Jubilee Afternoon Tea Party before the holidays. It was such good fun. We played lots of ‘Royal’ party games (including ‘pin the Tail on the Corgi1), danced to all our favourite songs, stood smartly for the National Anthem and ate lots of yummy food!!!!

Have a look at all our photos!

We were also lucky enough on Wednesday to receive and invitation from school to join in their Jubilee Picnic. We then had a chance to play with everyone in the whole school on the field! It was such great fun to play with big sister and brothers, cousins and friends. We even got to play on the big climbing equipment! It was lovely to all be back together again!

It has been another splendid week at Nursery, the children have come back full of energy and ready to learn. There have been some avid explorers spotted in Nursery garden who have been surveying the environment along with their backpacks and binoculars! There have been a few minibeasts spotted along the way!

The explorers are aware that there is so much to do, in our garden. As well as looking after all our plants and flowers we have some new additions to our Nursery family. Firstly, we have some tadpoles to care for. The children have helped to make them a new home and we will be examining them closely over the next few weeks to see if there are any changes….watch this space!

Naturally, not being satisfied with just the tadpoles, we went on a snail hunt and made them a new habitat with supplies of lettuce so we can observe those too. More??? Absolutely! The next mission was to build a wormery with layers of sand and soil so that we can observe the worms too! Last but by no means least Thursday saw the postman bring us a delivery of baby caterpillars so that we can watch their journey as well!

In addition to all this there has been some painting of minibeasts, music, practising for Sports Day and we have been introduced to the Numberblock Eight the amazing Octoblock! Click here to watch. 

 Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Barbara, Michelle, Colette, Justine, Frances and Stephanie.

You may have noticed a new name on our Key person blog. Stephanie has joined our happy band of learners at nursery! I’m sure you will have chance for a chat at the gate and to introduce yourself. Like the rest of the team I’m sure you would like to say a huge ‘welcome’.

It has been a full on week of learning and the children are starting to flag. Hopefully you will get some rest at the weekend?

It’s been good to see you all after the holidays, enjoy your weekend.

Barbara

This week...

As we limp towards half term we have reflected on all the learning we have encountered sine Easter. It really is no wonder we are all exhausted!

The garden is blooming and we are now seeing lots of minibeasts are starting to visit the garden. The children are always on the lookout for anything that moves! This has made us think we should explore minibeasts as a learning thread next half term! Click on the button to have a look at our plans.

Key person blog

 What another busy week in Nursery! We have continued to celebrate our reply from Buckingham Palace by making our own crowns to wear for the Platinum Jubilee Party on Friday! Look out...there is a lot of ‘Bling.’ If that wasn’t enough, we decided we would create our own portraits of Her Majesty and have put them up on display.  We have also enjoyed listening and singing (very enthusiastically!) to the National Anthem. Click here

There has been a little bit of messy play in the garden (your washing machines may already know this!) The children have made their own mud kitchen and were making mud pies and potions that could turn humans in to lions. It was ferocious!!

To counteract the mud we did have lots of water play as the sunny weather appeared towards the end of the week...we have washed babies and  also our beautiful selection of sea shells.

We have been out on the school field practicing for our upcoming sports day and the children’s running and throwing skills are improving all the time.

We have been looking after some poorly patients in our animal hospital where our super vets have been caring for and looking after some of nursery’s teddy bears and animals.

Our outside house has been redecorated by some mini painters who have painted it with glitter water and it is now all beautiful and sparkly. This is a fab activity to do at home outside in the garden with your children , all you need is some water and a paintbrush. This activity really helps develop those important muscles needed for writing.

We have continued caring for all our plants in the nursery garden and have also now planted some courgettes and everything else continues to grow. We hope your sunflowers are growing at home, we have loved seeing the photos you have sent in.

We have been learning about the number 8 and watching the number blocks video. Click here to watch at home

We hope you all have a lovely half term holiday.

Barbara, Colette, Justine, Frances and Michelle.

 Worship

This half term we have discussed at great length our relationship with others; our family at home, our family at nursery and school, our friendships and relationships and the wider community, the Church and God. The children expanded their vocabulary by applying names to different family/friend relationships, considered positive/negative behaviour in relationships and learn to look to Jesus as their role model for a good friend. We learnt to resolve conflict and the importance of asking for forgiveness: that when we hurt others, we also hurt Jesus – but that Jesus teaches us how to forgive ourselves and others.

We also have explored our religious understanding. We talked about why the Bible is so special to Christians.

This week in assembly Miss Hornby talked about how we should love each other and when we smile it shows our love for another person. Some of the older children thought of other ways to show our love, by giving hugs, helping each other and sharing. Our challenge for the holidays is to smile and show the people around you how you can be more like Jesus.

Theo and Henry received the Learning certificates this week; Theo for being a concentrate Cooper Crab and doing good listening at Carpet Kingdom time; and Henry for being a Cooperative Roger Robin. He always notices if anyone needs help and is the first to lend a helping hand. Well done Theo and Henry.

Finally, the nursery team would like to say a big thank you for all your wonderful support of nursery, we really do appreciate it. Try and have a rest over the next couple of weeks because the last half term is even busier!!!!

Hopefully the weather will be sunny, if not here is a rainy day activity sheet for you. I have also sent a few maths games home for you do (if you have time) ….sorry I just can’t help myself!

Stay safe and have fun and I will see you all on the 6th June bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Barbara

This week.....

This week has been a little different. It has been a ‘getting to know you week’ with Reception! We have had great fun learning and playing alongside the Reception children and teachers. Everyone loved getting to know each other and made lots of new friends. We read the story ‘Colour Monster goes to school’. Click here to listen.

Sports Day this year starts our Health and Happiness week in school. It is being held on Monday 13th June at 1.45 - 2.45 pm. We are happy to tell you that parents are invited to this event as well as all the children. However, if it is not your usual session we ask that you collect your child from the nursery entrance after the event has finished.

Our experiment form last week had some success, our white roses which we put in the blue water turned blue, the flower with water of course died as did the flower we put in milk. Sadly the flowers in the green water and red water also died! Mmmm we couldn’t fathom why. We are going to run the experiment again after the holidays

Meaningful May

Here is a monthly calendar with a happiness challenge for you all to do every day during May. Look our for Joyful June!

Key person blog

The children have had a marvellous week at nursery, we have spent every morning on the school field  enjoying lots of different activities like obstacle courses, football, den building, cloud gazing, skittles, construction and lots lots more.

This week we have been practising our fundamental movement skills in readiness for Sports Day. We have also nearly finished our sports day T-shirt’s with our own designs. We are going to look so fabulous. There are still a few children who don't yet have their T-shirt to decorate. We don’t want any child to miss out so please make sure you send in a named plain white T-shirt, it doesn’t have to be new. We must say they are all looking splendid!!

Here are some physical activities for you tp try at home. Click here.

We have also learnt about baby animals, they all have different names, there are a lot to remember. This song helps us remember. Click here

Here is a jigsaw game you may want to do too. Click here

We have also been looking at shapes in the environment. We decided to make giant shapes using our bodies. The children made a giant triangle, a giant circle, and then a giant square.

Music is always a popular activity at nursery so along with the Reception children we had a outdoor music session on the field. Colette played her guitar to help us keep in tune! We've also enjoyed lots of singing circle games, at one point there was nearly sixty children in our circle! That was great fun!

Snack in the mornings have been al fresco picnics. We made a  giant fairy ring on the field using huge bobbins as seats.

 I think we are all in need of a rest after our busy week!

Barbara, Colette, Michelle, Justine and Frances

Worship

An exciting week! Nursery was invited to join in KS1 assembly in the hall. We were so proud of them. Everyone sat beautifully and joined in all the singing and prayers. Miss Hornby told us the story of why Jesus is called the ‘Good Shepherd’ and how he takes care of us all just like a shepherd looks after his sheep. She explained that whenever we feel lost or scared, we should ask for Jesus’ help. He always listens and will show us the way.

In chapel this week we read the story of Noah’s Ark. We discussed how God was sad that people were not looking after our wonderful earth, that’s why he sent the floods. When we got back to nursery we got our huge Noah’s Ark out and marched the animals in two by two. Click here to listen to the story of Noah’s Ark.

Our singing in the chapel is so beautiful (and loud). We now know so many beautiful songs and its so uplifting hearing all their angelic voices.

May I remind everyone that Our Jubilee Afternoon Tea is next Friday 2-3.30pm. You will need to send a plate of name food in (one sandwich cut into bitesize pieces, one small celebratory bun and one packet of crisps). Everyone is to come dressed in red, white and blue!

If you can recall about five weeks ago we wrote a letter and drew some pictures to send to Her Majesty The Queen…guess what…we have had reply! Sadly she in unable to attend our afternoon tea party but she send her best wishes. We are all (especially me) sooooooo very excited. Take a look at these fabulous pictures.

Finally, because I can’t top a letter from the Queen, I would just like to say have a lovely weekend, I believe it is going to be sunny and I will see you all on Monday.

Barbara

This week....

Another fabulous week! The weather has been on and off but we are a stoic bunch and have not let it stop us from learning.

You may have noticed that we now have a composter in our garden so we cane made our own compost for the growing beds! Fingers crossed!

We have also planted a raspberry and a black current bush. We can’t wait for a bumper crop, mmmmmmm! The strawberries are doing exceedingly well. I suspect when they are ripe they may mysteriously disappear!

In our exploration of flowers and their life cycle we are conducting an experiment. We have bought some white roses and put one flower in blue food colouring and water, one in red food colouring and water, one flower in green food colouring and water, one flower in milk and one flower with no water at all. We have predicted what may happen…watch this space. Maybe you could try the experiment at home!

Key person blog

Although this has been a shorter week after our Bank Holiday, we have still managed  lots of learning.  The children have been full of enthusiasm. We began the week discussing Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ painting. We examined the sunflowers and enjoyed the sight of the beautiful bright yellow petals. The children wanted to create their own sunflowers to display in Nursery….look out for these as they will certainly brighten your day!

In our hall time on Wednesday we enjoyed ‘stirring up the porridge’,  a little walking and we also listened to a ‘floating’ song using some beautiful coloured ribbons to move to the music. We have enjoyed playing the magpie game where we use our listening skills to guess which instrument we could hear (including the best drum sticks in the world and a train whistle!!!) Ask the children if they could sing you the magpie song?

There was even time to build an extremely long train in the garden however, everyone did have to buy a ticket before you climbed aboard….…even the nursery ladies!!

We have continued exploring lucky number 7 and made as many number bonds as we could think of. We also have started a ‘number 7’ number search!

We have also made a start on decorating our T shirts for Sports Day. Thank you for sending them in so promptly. Just a friendly reminder if you haven't to please send a plain white t shirt in next week. Thank you. We are continuing to practise our Sports Day skills too.

 Have a lovely weekend.

Barbara, Michelle, Justine, Frances and Colette.

Worship

This week during worship we talked about how we are all part of God’s family. We learnt that God loves us all the same, whatever we look like and whatever our special gifts are. We explored how we are all different but can have some similarities all of which we should celebrate. We are learning a new song, Big Family of God, watch here and sing along!

 Finally, just a few reminders:

You may have noticed that we are having a Jubilee Afternoon Party in celebration of the Queen’s 70th anniversary. If you haven’t received your copy click on the button below to find out more! 

If you haven’t sent in your consent for your child to visit the beach don’t worry it’s not too late, just drop me an email.

Sports Day t shirts are coming in thick and fast ( a named plain white t-shirt). If you haven’t managed to send one in yet, next week will be fine!

At the children’s request I have sent home a science experiment for you to enjoy at home. They were all quite particular it had to involve making a rainbow, I think I managed the challenge. Let me know how it goes…pictures are always lovely to see.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and I will see you all on Monday.

Barbara

This week...

Another week of gardening and understanding how plants and flowers grow. Sing along at home, click here

We have even planted grass seeds in one of our Tuff trays so that we can grow our own lawn for the outside small world area! The problem is it isn’t growing fast enough! Patience is definitely a virtue.

Our cress seeds have grown our carrot tops are starting to sprout and the beans we put in a jam jar with cotton wool have started to sprout too. It’s all very exciting!

The children all painted their own flower this week named the parts of the flower as they painted. Take a looks at our display.

Here are our Wow words! We are always looking for new words

Germinate

Pod

Nutrients

Photosynthesis

Pollination

Nectar

Key Person Blog

This week we have been spending a lot of time in Nursery garden. The children have really enjoyed exploring the garden looking for signs of new growth. We have been given a new potting shed so we decided to store our watering cans, trowels and plant pots in there (we always tidy up when we have finished!).

We have now got a designated digging area in our garden to look for worms and to plant the pips and seeds we find in our fruit. Who know in time we may have an orchard!

The children decorated the shed by painting spring flowers on it (remembering to include the stem, leaves, roots, petals and seeds of course!)

Now that we have planted the seeds, we are also remembering to water them too. We definitely need lots of sunshine (we hope it isn’t too far away!)

We have had a very active week with lots of racing, practising for sports day and lots of active fun on the soft play.

We have continued to learn about lifecycles of frogs and butterflies, and have learnt some new yoga moves, the egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly.

The number 7 has been our focus this week and we have had fun watching the luckiest rainbow coloured Numberblock in the world. Click here to watch the seven song. Can the children show you how to make 7 by using their fingers? We have also been drawing flowers with 7 petals and went to the school field to pick 7 daisies!

Click here to watch the ‘Meet Number Seven’ Numberblock.

The children have been exploring words that begin with the ‘f’ sound. We looked in our sound bag and found five frogs! Click here to watch Geraldine Giraffe

The children were amazed to discover that a bean stalk had started to grow when they arrived at nursery and have been using lots of words to describe the giant– gigantic, gargantuan, ginormous, massive. We wonder if there are any more we haven't thought of? Fee, fi, fo, fum, here he comes! There have been lots of giggles as the children acted out the story, next week we are going to have a go at writing our own version of Jack and the Beanstalk– watch this space!

Click here to watch Jack and the Beanstalk

We have very musical children here at nursery and this week they performed a concert in the garden, with lots of bands and songs.

Have a lovely weekend, don’t forget to plant your sunflower seeds and bean!

Barbara, Michelle, Justine, Frances and Colette.

Worship

This week we have continued thinking about how we can be kind like Jesus. The children thought very hard and made some excellent suggestions of how we can be more like Jesus, such as being kind, saying sorry and thank you, asking our friends if they want to play and being helpful at home.

We have also been learning about the Bible and listened to a story from the first book of the Bible, Genesis about how God created the world and everything in it. The children were amazed to discover that God did all this in just six days!

A fabulous week at nursery! I have just a few gentle reminders. As I wrote on the Newsletter we are wanting to start taking small groups of children to the beach to explore but I do need written consent from you. Just drop and email to b.draper@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk

Also, Sports Day is looming and we need to start designing our t-shirts. If you haven’t already done so could you please send in a. s. a. p a plain (named) white t shirt. We are hoping to start them next week.

Keep checking Purple Mash for activities for home and also for learning sheets sent home in your child’s bag.

Finally, we are hopeful that the good weather will continue over the bank holiday weekend so fire up the BBQ and have a relax!

See you all on Tuesday

Barbara

Welcome back.....

A glorious start to the summer term. Everyone has returned to nursery happy (and full of chocolate)! I hope you all have had some lovely family time during the holidays, magical times together that will last forever.

Our learning this term has begun with gusto. You won’t believe what we have achieved in only four days! We have been learning about parts of flowers and the life cycle of a flower. Click here or here to find out more.

We have also started an investigation table where we have started to grow carrot tops, beans and cress. Next week we are going to grow a lawn!!!

Why not have a go at home. All you need is a carrot top, a shallow dish and water. It’s really simple, just put the carrot tops in the dish with the water and pop them in a sunny spot like a window sill. Keep topping up the water. It will take a little while to get going but once your carrot top gets going it will grow quickly. Good luck!

If you catch the veggie growing bug, leeks, spring onions and garlic can easily be grown from leftovers.

Outside in the garden plans are underway to create a potting shed for the children to be able to access garden tools and a growing patch of their own….this is a work in progress, fingers crossed!

Click on the button below to see everything we have planned for this half term!

Key Person blog
All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today – Indian proverb

This week we have been growing, not only our brains but our garden. We have lots of investigations happening at the moment, and we can’t wait to find out if the carrot and parsnip tops will grow.

We have been carefully examining the flowers and plants to find out what they need to grow. We will be bringing some seeds home to continue our investigations at home.

We have also been finding out about the lifecycle of frogs and learnt a new word ‘froglet’. Click here to find out more.

Our fun in the garden has continued as we explored the soft play, building trampolines, castles and trains.

This week we have learnt a new sound “sh” and we were so amazed at how many words the children could think of that begin with this sound.

PE was amazing, the children demonstrated such good control in their balancing and their jumping. They were also fantastic at putting their shoes and socks back on afterwards. We think they have all been practicing at home! We will be continuing to support the children in their independence skills, such as pouring their own drinks, putting on their coats, ready for going into Reception in September.

 Colette, Barbara, Michelle, Justine and Frances

Watch out for home learning sheets coming home too! We would love for you to send the completed work back to nursery or email some photos…we love to see them. Don’t forget to keep checking Purple Mash, there’s always lots of learning happening there!

Worship

Created to Love Others

This week we discussed our relationships with others and with God. Building on the understanding that we have been created out of love and for love. This will help us to understand friendships and relationships, and teaches strategies for developing healthy relationships and keeping safe.

We have also been learning a new song to help our understanding. It is so beautiful and the children’s voices give such meaning to each word that they sing. The nursery ladies were moved to tears when we sang together on Friday.

Finally, we are hopeful that the fine weather will continue for the weekend and that you can get out and about as a family. We will see you all on Monday for another busy week of learning and fun.

Barbara

This week.....

Holy Week at Nursery

It has been a reflective week as we have followed the schools Easter assemblies and their journey through Holy week. We have visited the chapel each day to discuss and retell Jesus’s last week. The children have asked many questions about why Jesus was crucified and which of His disciples let him down. The children thought they made ‘bad choices’. Each day we tried to understand why? What would we have done? How does the Easter story make you feel?

On Thursday afternoon Mrs. Gregan and Year six invited us to join their assembly rehearsal of the Resurrection. The children were silent and engrossed as the children depicted Holy Week using drama and music. We were all moved.

We started the week with finding lots of creative ways to make crosses. We even found them on hot cross buns. Then of course we had to spread butter on them and eat them, yummy! The children have asked me to buy some more when I go shopping…and of course I did! Who doesn’t enjoy a hot cross bun at Easter?

We must say a massive thank you for all your Lenten donations. I can announce that we have collected £131.49, our best year yet. I have passed the money to school to add to their total. When I have the whole school amount I will let you know.

The Platinum Jubilee

On Wednesday we started to discuss how we could celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. We discussed who the Queen was by looking at pictures, we found out her name and how long she has been Queen for (this did lead to lots of other questions about other royals and their palaces). We decided that we should write her a letter and send it to Buckingham Palace, we also drew pictures of Her Majesty! We then popped everything into a large envelope, popped in a stamp (large) and then walked down to the postbox to post it! It was soooooo exciting!

We are now waiting for a reply, finger’s crossed.

I will be sending our more information after Easter about our planned celebration. The children has lots of ideas.

Key Persons blog

What a joy to start every day with a lap or two of the field for our CAFOD Walk for Hunger and then gather in the chapel for part of the Easter Story and singing. It is so uplifting and we are pleased they have been teaching you at home their chorus of ‘Sing Hosanna’!

 We have continued to practise our speedy sounds and rhyming games, and the children have been brilliant Bobby Bee’s. He is an enthusiastic Bee who loves to learn new things and he is helping all us in nursery too. We can chant together ‘I believe I can learn’ and if we find something tricky we have to remind ourselves of the key word YET as we say ‘I cant do it YET’ (but we will learn of course!)!!

Number 6 is becoming even more familiar and we are so proud of everyone for really working hard on their maths mastery. I wonder which numbers we will be looking at next?!

 The children led us this week, asking to make a Dr. Surgery. We have loved having the role play boxes out and people awaiting treatment!!

We have also had lots of fun playing pin the tail on the bunny, lots of giggles could be heard during this game. Blowing bubbles in the garden also caused great excitement as they grew bigger and bigger.

 We also had a great game of Pin The Tail on the Donkey, Easter magic box and dancing bunnies!!!

Michelle, Colette, Hannah, Justine and Frances

Outdoor activities for the holiday!

Click here for Forest Bathing

Click here for Birdy Surveys

Click here for Going on a Sound Walk

Click here for Barefoot Safari

Enjoy!

 A note from Hannah

On a personal note I want to say a huge thank you to all parents for giving me the opportunity to work with, care for and love your children. It has been an absolute privilege to spend the last year in nursery and see them grow and develop as the weeks go by. I am so proud of them as individuals and am sad to be leaving them...but its bittersweet as I will only be over the garden wall in Reception and will hopefully get to see a good number of the class come to school in September! Working in early years really is a magical, the team here are fantastic and there is so much joy in everyday.  I know the children will flourish when they return for the Summer term and I can’t wait to see them continuing to shine!

Hannah

As we have come to the end of another term at nursery I would just like to say that all the nursery team are so proud of the children’s learning. They never cease to amaze us at their eagerness to learn, their resilience when things go wrong and how they have embraced our nursery and school ethos. They all truly want to be more like Jesus.

On behalf of everyone here at Nursery I would like to wish you all a very Happy Easter and to thank for everything that you do for your child in support of Nursery. We are all so grateful to you.

We have more exciting (and challenging) learning planned for the Summer Term so watch this space! Make sure you have a good rest!!

Finally, the children have asked if I would upload some of the Easter activities we have done this week, I can’t resist their requests. Click on the buttons below to access them.

Keep safe

Barbara

This week...

One more week before the Easter holiday, I hope we can make it! The children have worked so hard this half term and they are all now in need of a good rest….and chocolate!

I hope all our mummy’s enjoyed their Mothers’ Day surprises. The children were so excited to give them to you, especially the chocolates!

You will have noticed that our new outdoor areas are now complete. We officially unveiled the bridge and took turns to walk across it. We all agreed it is much “bigger” and “higher” than the previous one. We love it!!! The children now would like a tunnel which they could slide inside…no pressure!

Key Person Blog

Well it’s been another fun packed busy week in nursery. The children have been busy making colourful Easter cards and beautiful Easter light catchers that are currently brightening up our nursery windows and making it look like church stained glass windows.

We have been building bridges, walkways and all sorts of balancing apparatus with our new wooden planks and building resources. The children have been practicing their fundamental movement skills over the past weeks and it is noticeable how good their jumping, hopping, running and catching and throwing is getting. We have had great fun using the parachute with games such as cat and mouse, teddy bounce and catching the air inside the parachute to make a huge balloon. We also have introduced our giant outdoor stretchy band. We played Sally go round the moon, stretched the band into an enormous circle and then let it go….wow it was very springy!

The children have been asking to play lots of board games (Snakes and Ladders is a firm favourite). Our turn taking and dice skills are just getting better and better.

On our new stage area outside the children has been a huge success. On Thursday the children performed an act for their friends. Britain’s got Talent here we come! We thought we would video the next performance and then you can watch too!

Michelle, Colette, Justine, Frances and Hannah

Worship

We continue our journey through Holy Week. The children now confidently recall the events leading up to Jesus' death by crucifixion and His Resurrection. Click here to watch a video of the Easter Story.

Each day we have tried to be a little bit more like Jesus and our Lenten Heart is overflowing with smiley faces, one for each act of generosity, gratitude, kindness, love, helpfulness and thoughtfulness. Also, thank you for your kind generosity, our Lenten collection now stands at £119.58…fantastic! Thank you so much!

Each day, rain or shine we have completed our Cafod Walk against Hunger. Click here if you would like to find out more. The children have been stoic in their determination to walk and to help others. We are so proud of them all.

Phonics

For anyone that has missed Gerald Giraffe here are the sounds we have been focusing on this half term (c, k, u, b, f,)

Click here for c

Click here for K

Click here for u

Click here for b

Click here for f

Heads up for next half term e, l, h, sh, r

Mathematics

Here are some number games for you to play if you have time!

Click here for Easter Teddy numbers

Click here for the Gingerbread Man game

Click here for Buds number Garden

After Easter Hannah will be moving next door to work in Reception. This is a huge transitional asset for the children who will be going into Reception in September.

Just like all of the nursery team I’m sure you would like to wish her well. Although she will be greatly missed in nursery, we will still be able to see her over the garden wall!

For the Summer term I will be taking over Hannah’s key group, supported by Justine. We will have a fabulous time, I can’t wait!

Next week I will be sending home some fun activity sheets for the Easter holidays, I hope you enjoy doing them. Watch out for them in your child’s book bag.

Finally, we break for the Easter Holidays on Friday at 2pm and return on Tuesday 19th April. Have a lovely weekend everyone and we look forward to seeing you on Monday.

Barbara

Such glorious weather......

The fabulous weather this week has meant that we have been able to take full advantage of the garden. You may have noticed the building works happening on the top part of the garden. We are having a new (even bigger) made, new planting boxes and a stage for budding West End performers! Hopefully it will be completed by the end of next week, we are all very excited.

Thank you for your continued support of our Lenten appeal. To date we have collected £115.06! Wow that’s fantastic, thank your so much for your generosity.

It was lovely to see some of our families face to face at the Key Person meetings this week. Thank you for all your kind words in support of nursery, it is really appreciated. Michelle meetings are on Monday, if you haven’t managed to book an appointment yet just drop her an email. I also will look forward to catching up with you.

Key Persons Blog

Another exciting week in nursery with lots of outdoor play whilst the sun is shining. We have continued to enjoy our beach area with all the lovely new sand we had delivered. We have also got a bit wet with our outdoor water play area but we soon dried off in the warm weather.

We’ve continued to practice our fundamental movement skills with hopping, jumping, running and throwing and catching. This lovely weather has enabled us to enjoy our Cafod ‘Walk for Hunger’ around the school field. We’ve even had snack times outside enjoying the sunshine.

The children have continued to explore the fantasy/mythical theme and have made their own magic wands so be careful you don’t get turned into a frog and listen out for spells being cast by your little budding wizards and witches.

The children have also made their own dragon egg. We will be sending them home next week for them to take care of. Our eggs at nursery have hatched and we now have baby dragons somewhere in the garden!

This week we have introduced a new Number Block friend ‘number 6’. We have been practicing number recognition skills through playing games such as snakes and ladders and throwing a giant dice. Why not have a games evening at home, it’s great fun ( and sometimes rather competitive!).

Click here to watch the Number 6 video.

All the children have been very busy making some wonderful treats for a very special day on Sunday. It has been lovely to hear why the children love their mummies so much, enjoy your weekend.

Colette, Hannah, Justine, Michelle and Frances

Some of our parents have been asking about letter formation. I have sent home this week a Read, Write Inc letter formation sheet to help you at home. If you haven’t received it click on the button below.

As promised last week here’s a little teaser for the children, Where is Fairy Love? I wonder if they can tell you where in nursery or school she is?

Worship

This week we will be continuing our Easter Journey. click on the button below to read the story at home.

We have also started to learn the Hail Mary. One of our friends bought us a beautiful book to help us remember the words. It is called ‘Hail Mary. A book of Prayer’, illustrated by Julianna Swaney.

This week when we visited the chapel it was truly joyous. We all sang like angels whilst Colette played the guitar. It is so moving to see the children’s faces as they sing. Next week we will try to take pictures but we really don’t want to spoil the moment.

Next week we have lots of Easter activities planned including eating hot cross buns…mmmmmmm. Watch this space.

Lastly, I have it on good authority that the weather is going to be splendid this weekend so enjoy it and have some family fun!

Stay safe

Barbara

This week.....

I have only one word for this weeks learning…truly magical. On Monday a Dragon came to nursery to lay her eggs in a dragons lair….ooooh eggciting (sorry I couldn’t resist!).

On Tuesday we had two tonnes of sand delivered, so we decided to make a beach!!! I must say moving that amount of sand was hard work! Needless to say we did it and we now have the most wonderful beach, although the children now are asking where the sea is!!!!! I’m not sure what I can do about that, I will have to put my thinking hat on!

We have been continuing our mathematical journey by exploring shape, space and measure. We have made obstacle courses, visited new areas around the school, drawn maps, read books using spatial language, spotted patterns, made patterns using natural resources, predicted routes to get to places and used small world to practice position and direction. There is so much to learn! Watch out for the handout about Spatial Reasoning I will be sending home, it may give you some ideas for activities at home.

Our exploration of number five is fabulous. The children now understand that ‘5’ can be made up of five ones, three ones and two more, four ones and one more… Click here to watch ‘Where are Five & Friends?’

Next week we will start exploring number 6.

Worship

This week we have continued our Easter Story by reading about ‘The Last Supper’. The children were concerned that Judas made a bad choice. Everyone was so eager to know what happened next we had to read on! One of our friends also brought his Easter story for us to read.

If you click on the button below there is the Easter story in sequencing cards. Perhaps your child can cut out the cards, tell you the story and put them on the correct order? Wow, that would be great. Let us know how they get on.

Also, each day we have been doing our Cafod walk for Hunger by walking twice around the school field. We can’t believe how much we have raised already for our Lenten collection. As of today our total is….£92.11. We are all blown away by you generosity, let’s see if we can get above £100!

Key Persons Blog

What another busy week here at Nursery! Our magical quest has continued with the arrival of a Dragon on Monday! Underneath the Dragon was a basket of eggs...the children counted 12!! We closely examined them (gently of course) and are watching and waiting to see if any magic happens.  We have made a Dangerous Dragons display and have ben very creative painting our own dragons. We made sure we looked really closely at  the colours of dragons. Our dragons are even breathing fire.

Click here to listen to Zog the dragon story.

We didn’t forget to make more fairy playdough (we all had sticky blue hands this time….not sure if we followed the recipe as closely as last week!!!). We have also learnt how to write like fairies using magic fairy dust and magic wands.

There has been a lot of music in the air this week and have been singing a song about ‘Leafy Green’ who has a body made up of healthy foods (not chocolate I’m afraid!).

We have also been rally busy on a top secret mission involving plant pots and chocolates. Shhhh! (All will be revealed!)

Using our open ended resources there has been some wonderful creative play in the garden. Building towers from the coloured bricks and plastic reels and also making cubes from the large waffles. We have also enjoyed singing and dancing in the garden, enjoying the sunnier days.

 Colette, Michelle, Hannah, Justine and Frances

I believe it’s going to be a lovely weekend so enjoy the sunshine and have lots of fun! We will see you on Monday, who knows maybe one of our dragon eggs may have hatched!!

P. S. The children will need an early night on Sunday as we have lots of learning planned for next week. Don’t forget Colette’s Parent Meetings on Monday and Hannah’s on Tuesday. We look forward to ctaching up with you all.

Stay safe

Barbara