Nursery Dolphins 2023 - 2024
Please call our school office (01788 575328) or email admin2415@welearn365.com to discuss our Nursery and to register your child.
Mrs Birnie, Mrs McCracken and Miss Magdij would like to welcome you to the Nursery webpage.
Follow us on twitter @eastlandsschool for up to date news.
| Please click the image below to view our Curriculum Year Plan. | Please click the image below to view the Development Matters guidance for what the children should be able to do and know. |
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March
This month our topic has been 'Growth' where throughout the month we have been looking at the signs of Spring and new life.
Our first text was 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and we created a whole class story map of the main events of the story. Nursery really enjoyed our Castle role play area, pretending to be Jack and the Giant alongside their friends. For Maths we measured the Giant's footprints with cubes and counted how many there were each time.
Our second text was 'The Tiny Seed'. We learnt about the life cycle of a plant and what plants need to grow. We were very excited to grow our own watercress and observed the changes over a couple of weeks. We also planted our own sweetcorn ready to look after over the Easter holiday and we are looking forward to seeing these again when we return to put into our Nursery allotment bed! The Tiny seed led our learning into the different seasons too and we discussed what sort of activities we might do in each of the seasons and decorated trees for each season using various craft materials.
The phonics sounds we learnt in March were 's', 'd', 't', and sheets were sent home to practice each of the sounds.
We carried on with our Ten Town learning, looking at 'Tommy Two' and 'Thelma Three' and we practiced writing numbers 0-3 on mini whiteboards too.
For Easter, the children enjoyed making lots of Easter crafts and we spoke about why people celebrate Easter and looked at a simplified version of the Easter story. The children during circle time shared what things they might do in the Easter holiday and we look forward to hearing all about this when we return!
Nursery made a fantastic effort for World book day, we were super impressed with everyone's outfits and were very proud to be on the front page of the Rugby paper!
We are looking forward to seeing everyone again ready for our Farm topic to begin!
February
In our Jungle topic we looked at the Power of Reading text ‘Tanka Tanka Skunk.’ This had lots of musical links and the children loved engaging with our performance area and putting on a show to their friends with the musical instruments. The book was great for Nursery to explore rhythm and the children participated by clapping their hands and counting syllables.
Our second text for our Jungle topic was ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea.’ The children loved meeting Mrs Birnie’s large tiger teddy from home and were able to describe what a tiger was like on a Thinking Frame for our student, Miss Liburd to scribe on. They loved role playing as tigers in the home corner and pretending to eat all the food.
The children celebrated the Year of the Dragon for Chinese New Year by role playing the event in our home corner. We had Chinese lanterns up, takeaway boxes and pretend noodles and chopsticks for the children to play and share with. They learnt all about the Chinese New Year story and the order the animals completed the race in.
This month we’ve started phonics with Fred frog who visits us daily. The children learn a different sound a week and bring a worksheet home to practise how to write the sound they’ve learnt about. Please remember, we introduce the sound of the letter to the children as opposed to the letter name. So far, the children have learnt the sounds: ‘m’ and ‘a.’
Ten Town has also begun in Nursery whereby the children are learning about a new number a week and practising how to write it. This sheet should also be coming home weekly for practice. The children so far have been introduced to Zero Pond and King One in Ten Town.
Our most recent topic has been Under the Sea which the children have loved, especially their fabulous finish to the topic – Pirate Day! They absolutely loved being pirates for the day and have enjoyed doing all the pirate actions and songs. They loved our stories, ‘Hooray for Fish’ and ‘Pirates Love Underpants’ too.
January
Throughout this month, we have learnt all about Space in Nursery, with our key texts, 'Aliens love underpants', and, 'On the moon'. We focussed on matching patterns on alien underpants and ordering numbered aliens 1-5.
We have had a big focus on writing our own names and over the course of a few weeks the children practiced tracing over the letters of their name, building up to creating their own space rocket names. We looked at a range of non-fiction books about space, discussing what there is in space and the names of the planets, the children loved singing some planet songs too.
Nursery enjoyed our rocket role play area, pretending to be astronauts setting off into space! They discussed in a circle time how astronauts could keep themselves safe in space which led into discussions about the rules we have in our classroom and how they keep us safe.
The children were really engaged with some space science experiments, one in which we watched closely to see what happened when stones fell into a mixture of cornflour and baby oil, representing craters in the moon when it is hit by rocks.
We also looked at day and night, spoke about nocturnal animals and discussed the different activities we might do in the daytime and night time.
We have now moved on to our Jungle topic which will carry us through to the February half term!
December
We have had a lovely festive month in Nursery! The children loved going on our trip to the Macready theatre to see 'The man who wanted to be a penguin' and they all did brilliantly performing in their Nativity play, we were very proud of them all! The children also enjoyed our stay and play afternoon, engaging in all the different Christmas activities with parents- thankyou to all parents who attended.
We have learnt about repeating patterns using various Christmas items, such as different patterns and colours on baubles. We practiced counting Christmas items too, linking numerals with quantities and representing the total number each time using our fingers. The children used their motor skills to draw and cut out pictures to put on their letter to Santa which look lovely on our display. We also made melting snowman biscuits which were very yummy and made our own Christmas dinner hats for Christmas dinner day. The children also enjoyed singing a range of different Christmas songs throughout our celebration topic and learnt some with makaton signs. We spoke about what our family traditions are at Christmas and the children shared what they might do on Christmas day and we looked at family traditions in other countries around the world.
We are looking forward to our 'Space' topic on our return in January! We hope you all have a lovely Christmas and a happy new year!
November
We have had a busy month in Nursery! Our topic has been Transport and our key texts have been The Train Ride and the Marmalade Jam which the children really enjoyed. The texts led us to look at rhyming words and create a rhyming train and the children also learnt how to count syllables in words.
During the transport topic we looked at lots of different vehicles, including some from the past and spoke about which mode of transport we have been on before. The children played brilliantly alongside each other in our train and ambulance role play in the classroom.
The numbers we have learnt have been numbers 4-6 and we carried on with learning how to recite numbers beyond 5 and to link numerals and amounts. We also had a 2D shape focus and enjoyed driving various vehicles around 2D shape posters, saying the names of the 2D shapes and describing how many sides each one has. Alongside our Transport topic, the children also carried out some Bonfire night activities, learnt all about Diwali and also raised money for Children in Need! It was also Anti-bullying week and the children looked great in their odd socks for odd-sock day! They created a lovely handprint kindness heart which looks fantastic on our classroom wall and we spoke about our feelings, the differences between ourselves and others and what makes us special.
October
In Danny Dolphin class, the children are now established on their carpet bubbles and are trying so hard to become more independent in terms of putting on their shoes, coats and remembering to wash their hands. They have learnt about the numbers 0-3 and have enjoying counting objects in their environment to make the given number. They have learnt about owls and how they are nocturnal through our text Owl Babies. Also in literacy the children learnt all about bears with our key text We’re Going On A Bear Hunt. The children helped sequence the events in the story and enjoyed learning the actions alongside verbalising the lines. Michael Rosen even shared our Tweet!
Nursery staff are so incredibly proud of how the children have settled in over the last few weeks. Full days, before school, after school clubs and lunch times for some of the children too - they've coped so well! Our first topic is 'All About Me'. We have been learning all about the children's interests, likes & dislikes, cultures and experiences. We have been exploring our individual identity and looking at our family photos too. Nursery have been getting used to our inside and outside rules and have been enjoying group snack together. They really have been superstars and are adjusting to life at Eastlands so well. Well done Dolphin Class!
