Nursery Dolphins 2024-2025

Please call our school office (01788 575328) or email admin2415@welearn365.com to discuss our Nursery and to register your child.

Miss Merrick, Mrs McCracken and Mrs Ryan would like to welcome you to the Nursery webpage. 

January and February 

Our topics over this half term have been all about Space and the jungle! Our key texts have included Aliens Love Underpants, On the Moon, Down in the Jungle and Tanka Tanka skunk and we have been very busy engaged in lots of different activities linked to these stories. We learnt about the first astronaut on the moon, looked closely at what we would find in Space, and through a fun science experiment we explored why the moon has craters as we made our own moon out of cornflour and dropped our own rocks into the mixture. The children loved making their own moons using creative resources and making their own name rockets which look lovely out on our Nursery display. We also had our first interactive experience using our Now Press Play headphones, where we listened to a story about Space and made up our own actions to the story.

Over the last few weeks for the Jungle topic, we have learnt all about the different animals we would find in a jungle, discussing that it rains a lot in the jungle and experimenting with shaving foam, water and food colouring to create rain coming through the clouds which was very exciting! We also enjoyed making our own lions and snakes and also learnt about beats and rhythm using instruments to the beat of the story Tanka Tanka Skunk. 

Alongside  this we learnt about Chinese New Year where the children role played in a Chinese Restaurant and used their motor skills to create Chinese Symbols in glitter, as well as making Chinese lanterns. We have also been recapping numbers 1-10 with Ten Town, practicing careful counting and creating repeating patterns. Safer internet day was in the final week and we read a story all about Buddy the Dog and keeping safe when playing on tablets and making sure we tell a grown up if anything pops up on the screen. 

After the half term break we will be starting to introduce the children to phonics sounds, this will be one sound per week just to start familiarising them with some sounds ready to start phonics in Reception. Over the half term break if you could encourage the children to practice putting on their own shoes and coats to encourage more independence with this, and also practicing writing their name as we are working hard on this in class currently! 

Thanks so much, enjoy the half term break! 

December 

We had such a lovely few weeks in Nursery getting into the Christmas spirit! We practiced our name writing on our letters to Santa and drew some lovely pictures of things we hoped to get! We have learnt all numbers up to 10 in our Ten Town programme and will continue to recap these in the New Year, along with careful counting and matching numerals with quantities. In our tuff tray we had wrapping paper and boxes and really enjoyed using our motor skills to cut the paper to help the elves wrap the presents for Christmas day! Our Nursery Christmas tree was also a favourite and the children re-decorated the tree each morning using a variety of tree accessories. We also used candy canes in a science experiment to see what happened to them when a mixture of vinegar, food colouring and baking soda was poured on to them and realised they slowly over time disappeared, along with making melting snowman biscuits!

Along with lots of fun activities, we also learnt about how different countries celebrate Christmas and we also had Christmas dinner day, our theatre trip to see The Three Little Pigs at the Macready theatre, our wonderful Nativity to parents and a special visit to the school both from Santa and from the Road Safety team, teaching us all how we can be safe around roads. What a busy month it was! 

We hope you all had a lovely, restful Christmas and look forward to seeing you in the New Year!

Here are some photos from December: 

November 

 What a busy month November has been in Nursery! Our topic has been all about transport and our key texts have been 'The Train Ride', and, 'It's a Marmalade Jam', where we looked closely at rhyming words from the story and had a go at creating our own rhyming train. The children have enjoyed learning all about the different types of vehicles there are and discussing which ones they have been in before and which ones are their favourites.  Nursery have also liked designing their own train tracks using various construction and also playing with the small world trains and tracks. We also looked at emergency vehicles and what these vehicles are used for and made our own fire engines using paper plates. 

Alongside our transport topic, we have also taken part in activities linked to Children in Need, Diwali, Bonfire night, Remembrance day and Anti- bullying day. We have continued with our Ten Town learning of numbers up to 7 so far and have also been very busy practicing our Christmas songs ready for the Nativity. 

 Please can we ask for all items of clothing to be named, including hats, scarfs and gloves, as now the cold weather is upon us the children have lots of different items of clothing in school and it makes it easier and quicker for staff to identify which items belong to each child. 

Here is some of our November learning: 

October

 What a fantastic few weeks we have had in Nursery. We are so proud of how well the children have settled in and adjusted to Nursery routines. The children have been learning about themselves and others in our 'All about me' topic, where they have looked at themselves closely in mirrors and painted their self portraits (which look great on our display!)  drawn around their bodies and helped to label what body parts we have, discussed our likes and dislikes and how we are all different, and learning all about emotions. We have started dough disco, where the children each day will have an opportunity to manipulate dough to music in order to develop their gross and fine motor skills. 

During October, our topic will be Autumn/Bears, where alongside taking part in lots of lovely Autumn themed activities, we will also have a focus in literacy on the key texts, 'We're going on a bear hunt' and 'Owl Babies'. We will also be going on our very own teddy bears picnic where the children will be invited to bring in their favourite teddy from home (more information to follow!) We will also be starting to learn numbers and practice our counting skills through our Maths programme Ten Town, where the children learn numbers through stories and songs. 

Can we just remind parents to name every item of clothing (including shoes) please, so it is easy for us to identify clothing when the children take things off.

Here are some photos of how busy we have been so far in Nursery. 

September

 The Nursery staff have really enjoyed meeting all the wonderful families and children who will be joining us in Dolphin's class this year. Over the next few weeks, the focus will be on settling the children in to Nursery life gradually and for the children to become familiar with a new classroom and new routines. They will be busy exploring all the learning areas we have both indoors and outdoors and forming relationships with their peers and adults. 

You will be provided with login details for Evidence Me where we will keep you updated with your child's learning throughout the year and also to keep you updated with any news or information you need to know. 

Please can you provide your child with a pair of named welly boots in school as they will be outdoors in all weathers, in areas such as the mud kitchen! Please ensure that your child has spare clothes in their bags each day and also ensure that every item of clothing is named so we can make sure everything is given back to the children.

We are very excited to get to know the children even better over the coming weeks!