Monday
This term, we are looking at life cycles. You may have noticed the tadpoles that are in the water tray at the end of the garden (the children are fascinated!) - we are hoping that we'll have some froglets in a few weeks' time. Today we were also very excited to welcome some tiny caterpillars to the nursery. The children will be watching them feed and grow, then witness their amazing metamorphosis into butterflies. Today we also changed our role play area into a farm yard, with animals, hay bales and a picnic basket. It's already a very popular area with the children. And we didn't forget that it was St George's Day today, with the children making the English flag and learning about the story of George and the Dragon.
Tuesday
We continued our farmyard theme today - some children coloured in different farm animals, while others did a sorting activity with the animal magnets. A discussion about parades led to an impromptu carnival (with samba drumming on the interactive whiteboard) and some very enthusiastic playing of various musical instruments. They could probably hear us in the main school! Elsewhere, playing with money was developed into an opportunity for the children to do different things with the coins - balancing them, seeing how much they weigh, adding them up, and so on. And, of course, buying things with them!
Wednesday
The children were helping to improve our farmyard display today - the pictures they'd so carefully coloured in this morning were cut out (great for practising their fine motor skills) and stuck up; they also had fun creating a tree trunk using footprints made from brown paint. It felt very nice when the paint squished between their toes! We have also started work on the children's self portraits, which are going to be printed on a very nice St Mary's Nursery tote bag. Be sure to buy one at the Summer Fete!
Thursday
This morning we were delighted to welcome Jazz from Music Bus into the nursery for a fantastic music session. We sang a range of songs, including 'Dingle Dangle Scarecrow' (with the help of her scarecrow!). There was much fun using a big parachute, bouncing pom-poms on it while singing a song about popcorn, and we used floaty material to do movement to the music. All the children had a wonderful time. Later on, we were decorating leaves for our farmyard display, which is looking brilliant thanks to children's hard work. We also played a balancing game, 'Don't Wake Hank', where the children took turns balancing fish on Hank the octopus' arms. Great fun, and also great for their fine motor skills.
Friday
Our story time theatre made a welcome return today, with a presentation of 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea' (a particular favourite with the children here at nursery). Elsewhere, there were flowers frozen in ice for the children to excavate and outside there was a small world drop box with water and the pirate ship. And at the end of the day some new toys arrived - a farm play set, with animals and a tractor, which makes animal noises - the finishing touch to our farmyard role play area!
