Nursery

Welcome to Nursery

Mrs Fearby is your Nursery teacher. 

Mrs Garside is your Early Years Practitioner.

Week Beginning 10th July 2023

Nursery Graduation, Mini Sports, and a Teddy Bear's Picnic!

Wow, what a busy week, Nursery are really packing it all in before the end of term!

In Literacy this week, we learned about the story Handa's Surprise. We talked about the difference between hot and cold places to live, and how children in different places would live in different houses, and eat different foods to us. We renacted the walk of Handa with puppets, and we tasted all of the fruits that she took to her friend Akeyo, in the order that they were stolen by the animals. Some of them we liked, some of them we did not!

In Maths this week we have starting linking our mathematical thinking to recording, drawing pictures and making marks, and also practising writing numerals. We challenged each other to make marks to show the amounts we had, and took turns to draw and write on the board.

We had a lovely walk down to the Hetton Centre - what a lovely resource for the community, we then went to the cafe afterwards and had a cupcake and a drink together, such a nice time together. I will upload the events for the Summer on to Class Dojo as they have regular sessions that you can join in with as well as free stay and plays together - also please keep checking our school Facebook page for community events over the summer.

The children who are moving up to Reception in September spent time with their new classmates in the Reception garden this week, and they took part in a Teddy Bear's Picnic, with food and games, and lots of fun playing together outside. Reception is going to be amazing!

The children also took part in a celebration assembly to look back at all of our time together in Nursery, complete with a full graduation ceremony, and a video, the link is below for the video, and photos to follow, remember your tissues before you watch the video and look at the photos...

On the same day we completed a multi sports session, and tried out lots of different sports, the Year Five children helped us with the sports and took us round the obstacles in different groups. In the afternoon session we also played Hungry Hippos and raced each other - we had a great time! Thank you to the parents who attended, it's always amazing to have our families into school, and we will have a lot more opportunities coming up!

It is our last week next week, it us our last day on Thursday, and we have our parent drop in on Monday from 3:30pm until 4:30pm if you have anything you would like to discuss. 

Thank you for your continued support, Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside.

The link to our video: Nursery Graduation 2023: Unstoppable!

Week beginning 3rd July 2023

”I’m Unstoppable!”

As we approach the final weeks of this Nursery year, we are becoming more inventive in our play. Our communication and language skills have developed, and our physical skills are being pushed to the limit.

The children created their own gym this week, following on from their interests last week they made their own barbell, with sticks and small tyres, completing deadlifts and overhead presses…we are so strong!

We also created our own farm shop together, deciding on prices, writing shopping lists, negotiating deals, talking about money, transporting our shopping…some of us tasted the raw onions and radishes, we weren’t sure about them raw!

For literacy this week, the children investigated a strange package of African themed fabrics, and some small world African animal toys…I wonder what story we will be reading this week?

In Maths we continued with identifying shapes in our environment, and talking about their features, we went on shape hunts and cut out, painted and printed with shapes.

This was all in addition to some amazing play opportunities we had both indoors and outdoors, dress up, role play, art, music, dance, obstacle courses, and using the vehicles to move, we have been so busy learning, and we have another busy two weeks coming up!

Thank you for your continued support, Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside.

Week beginning 26th June 2023

This week in Nursery we have been busy looking back across the time we have had, by looking through our floor book and talking to each other about what we have got up to across the year.
We have also been looking forward to our move to Reception by spending time in there, as well as some time with our brand new Reception friends! The children that aren’t moving up have also had some time with their new teacher, Miss Redpath, so all in all it has been a lovely week.

We never stop learning, and this week we have learned the story of Little Red Riding Hood off by heart. In Maths we have learned all about the names and features of ‘flat’ 2D shapes, we learned new ways to describe them such as side, point, curve, straight, then we explored shape in our play. In the mud kitchen, cutting shapes in play dough, and in our indoor environment. See what shapes your child can spot at home.

Some of the Nursery children have shown an interest in challenging themselves and each other to lift heavy objects, so we introduced a weight training belt, some stretchy bands and some weights. They all agreed the belt helped them to lift heavier things, and the children investigated how heavy the furniture was!  We love to look after our health and our physical activity, so we are going to develop a gym in our outdoor area: Muscle Beach!

We are heading into the last three weeks of term and it is very busy with lots of opportunities to come into school and spend time with us. We have sporting events and our summer fair, we are also going to the Hetton Centre on 12th July if you would like to come along, and Nursery are hoping to have a ‘graduation’ event which I will keep you all posted about.

Exciting times! Thank you for your continued support, Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside.

Week beginning 12th June 2023

We have really made the most of the weather this week in our Nursery Class, the children have been very interested in water and how it moves, so we have been working with pipes for transporting, exploring floating and sinking, and on one of our really hot days we filled 100 water balloons and practised our throwing skills! When we ran out of balloons we started filling and emptying bowls and jugs…everyone was wet, including all of the staff, and a great time was had!

In literacy this week we helped Fred the Frog blend words again, and we have learned what the sounds M A and S look like when they are written down. We are so interested in mark making and practising what we have learned, so we have been developing our fine motor skills with play dough and building blocks, to get ready for writing.

In Maths this week we have been learning about how the number 4 is made up of smaller numbers. We used Numicon tiles to explore that 3 and 1, and 2 and 2 go into 4, and we decided that we liked the the combination of 2 and 2 the best! We used beanbags and hula hoops as part of a game to show that even when you have some outside the hoop, and some inside the hoop, you still have 4. We then immersed ourselves in the number 4, we sang happy birthday to everyone that is already 4, we looked for shapes with 4 sides, we jumped, we clapped, and we showed 4 in lots of different ways, we are really good at Maths in Nursery!

We have all been planning ways to make our Nursery garden beautiful, and attract more mini beasts and butterflies. After having lots of conversations and discussion, the children decided they wanted to plant some ‘smelly plants’, so we painted our pallets and created a herb garden planter. Next we will be creating a bug hotel in the far corner, and placing a shade to attract the busy insects for this time of year.

Thank You for your continued support, Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside

Week beginning 3rd June 2023

A busy start to the second (and last) half of our summer term!
This week, Nursery started learning a little more about the initial sounds of words, and practising listening for the initial sound of anything we could find, including our friend’s names, and we played games with a friendly frog called Fred, who only speaks in sounds. We played iSpy, and giving instructions in sound talk. We also began to learn about what the sounds we hear look like when they are written down. We focused on saying the sound ‘mmm’, and learned about things that had the initial sound ‘m’, such as moon, mountain, mouse and mirror. In Literacy this week we have focused on creating a story map for our focus story ‘Sam Planted a Seed.’

As a result of our new learning, we have become very interested in making our own marks in our play, and we have tried different ways to do it, with mud, sand in our brand new giant indoor sand pit, pens, on the floor on cardboard, on paper, on cling film easels with paint outside. Some of us had a go at writing the letter ‘m’ and some of us even had a go at drawing our very own story maps!
We have been keeping a close eye on our sunflowers and they are almost ready to be planted outside, everyone has a shoot, and we have been able to see the roots spreading in the see through cups we planted our seeds in. This has made us so interested in growing things, how to do it, what can we grow, do growing things smell nice, and can we grow things to eat? So we have decided to plants herbs and vegetables next week, keep an eye on the website for pictures of us planting!

We opened Hetton Bike and Car Wash this week, after noticing our vehicles had grown dusty and dry, the children decided how they would set it all up, they decided on the pricing, and the services they would offer. They then decided that a garage was needed for when the tyres and paint needed work on our bikes, we are getting so confident with our physical development!

Maths this week has been all about following and creating patterns, we learned a new song about making a pattern, and we used practical objects then moved on to pictures to create our own patterns. We were even clever enough to spot when Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside made a mistake.

Stay tuned for more fun and learning next week.

Thank you for your continuing support, Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside.

Week beginning 15th May 2023

This week Nursery have enjoyed National Numeracy Day, playing with fluffies and matching numerals to amounts from 1 to 5, we have done a great job with this this week!

We also started our ‘Sunflower Challenge’, we talked about what we already knew about sunflowers, and we decided what we wanted to learn together, then we planted our seeds.
 

Then we listened to a non fiction book called ‘from sunflower to seed’ which told us lots of facts about how to plant and grow a sunflower, and how to take care of it. We used our listening skills and remembered almost everything about how to do it, by ourselves.

Every day we are going to check to see if any shoots have started, and we are going to measure how tall the plants become when they grow. We are really excited! 
 

To enhance our physical development we have practised blowing bubbles, looking at the shape of our friends’ mouths, and then counting and chasing the bubbles around our outdoor area, so much fun and learning.

Thank you for your continued support, Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside.

! Nursery enjoy National Numeracy Day 17th May 2023 !

🔻 You can see our exciting activities below 🔻

Staff and children enjoying dancing with Katya and Number One!

Week beginning 8th May 2023

Stars of the stage, outdoor challenges, and asking for more!

Even though we have had a shorter week this week, Nursery have been as busy as ever. As well as exploring our new stage area, dressing up and singing and dancing, we planned what we wanted to challenge ourselves with by drawing it all out and then creating obstacle courses. Our physical development is even better than ever! 
In literacy this week we have continued to learn about stories relating to Jack and the Beanstalk. We learned about Jim and the Beanstalk, and used measuring tapes to measure each other, and we learned about Jack and the incredibly mean stalk, and talked about how to be kind to our friends. Our memory of stories is really growing, we know that there is a beginning, a middle and an end.

In maths this week we learned how to change an amount by adding more, we played a game rolling dice to see how many more blocks we should add to our tower, the some of us chose to play the game with a friend during our child led play time. We are also going back over matching numerals to amounts, up to 5. We are mathematicians!

Thank you for all of your continued support, next week we are growing and planting with our new book ‘Sunflower to Seed.’

Love from Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside

Week beginning 1st May 2023

Hairdressing, Afternoon Tea, and a

Right Royal Celebration!

This week we enjoyed a visit to the hairdresser in Hetton to find out more about what happens at a hair and nail salon. We had an amazing time talking to the staff and customers, having a go in the chairs, and the weather for out walk back was beautiful. We saw lots of signs of Summer and learned a lot about our local area. 
The week was taken over by a very special occasion, of course, we made crowns, practised our singing, and enjoyed spending time with the residents of Primrose Care Home having afternoon tea and creating crafts, all for the coronation of our new King Charles III! 

Week beginning 24th April 2023

Giants, Bears, and building muscles!

In Nursery we know how important it is to learn through play, and we support our learning by following our interests. We have been fascinated by the outdoor garden and some new equipment that we had delivered, and we enjoyed developing our essential large muscle skills with some heavy work by building, stacking, digging, and rolling our friends up the hill in a giant tube…only in Early Years! Imagine our surprise when we then found a GIANT footprint in the grass! The Nursery children remembered how we have been comparing in Maths, and used the footprint to see if it matched any of the children or grown up’s feet…we found that it was much bigger, and decided it must have been a giant visiting us, hopefully it is a tall friendly one!
 

This week in literacy we have linked our interests in giants and all things BIG to Bears! We enjoyed listening to the story ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen, some of us remembered this story from earlier in the year and joined in really well. As we are learning about positional language in maths, we went into the hall and re-enacted the story, crawling under, climbing over, and stomping through. We were very surprised to find a bear inside the ‘cave’ and filled the hall with screams and laughter as we ran back through the snowstorm, the forest, the river, the mud and the long, wavy grass, to get back home, but we FORGOT TO LOCK THE DOOR! Lots of fun with one of our favourite stories, which we then re-enacted in our play back in Nursery.

To develop our communication and language and our literacy skills we have also been continuing to read the story of Jack and the Beanstalk together. We are learning it by heart by drawing a story map and making up our own actions to help us remember - watch this space next week for the video of us telling the story out loud!

We wish all of our parents and carers a wonderful bank holiday weekend, we hope you have a safe and happy time and we are looking forward to seeing you for an exciting week full of festivities, and at our coronation celebration on Friday afternoon. All are welcome.

Thank you for your continuing support, Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside

Week beginning 17th April 2023.
Summer Term is here! Let’s Think…

BIG!

This week in Nursery we came back with a bang, and we learned all about a new story…one with a small boy, five magic beans, and a GIANT…

We have started to learn actions and draw a map for our story, so that we can learn it by heart, this will help us to hold the structure of the story in our heads for a long time.

In our adult led maths sessions, the giant left us some giant clothing to compare to our own clothes, and then we arranged ourselves in height order to find out who was the tallest and who was the shortest, in our key groups! 

In our play we explored our small world which was set up like the story Jack and the Beanstalk, and we had our own ideas to build towers and compare how tall we could make them. As always, we have enjoyed an extensive amount of time outdoors, and we have learned a lot about plants and flowers, having a go at planting, and exploring the parts of a plant, chopping and mixing in our mud kitchen. We also planned and built our own obstacle courses, and we have been so resilient this week, taking chances and keeping on trying. 
In our role play, we have enjoyed setting up our new indoor sand pit area and our hairdressing salon, check out the photos below to see how much fun we had developing our communication and language, and our imagination.
Next week, we are learning more about our focus story, learning more actions to remember the story, and about positional language in maths.

Week Beginning 27th March 2023 - Easter has arrived!

Easter well and truly came to Nursery this week! We have decorated cards, rolled, eggs, made collages, and had a fantastic time with our grown ups when they came in to make Easter crafts with us, followed by an Easter Egg hunt to find some treats that the Easter bunny had left. We even had a giant chick help us with our Easter crafts - what a week!

In our Maths this week we learned all about the language of size in group time - long, short, tall, high, length, we also learned how to 'compare' two things to see if they were the same, or different, we then used our new vocabulary in our play, comparing how far we could roll the cable reels, and rolling eggs to see who could get theirs the furthest!

In literacy this week our focus story was 'Supertato and the Great Eggscape'. We learned about what happened at the beginning, middle and end of our story, and we had a go at predicting what was going to happen when the veggies were kidnapped! If you'd like to watch and listen to a readalong of the story, here is a handy link:

https://youtu.be/30RUlO3eLbc

We have also been learning about how to differentiate different sounds, using instruments, and also about how to listen to our feelings and emotions, using peer massage as a way to build relationships with our friends and learn about kind hands.

All in all we have had an amazing term with lots of new experiences and learning, we are looking forward to next term when we will be learning about growing, and all things BIG!

Thank you for all of your support, have a happy and safe Easter holiday,

with love from Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside

Week beginning 20th March 2023

Another incredibly busy time for our Nursery children! We took part in a whole school music festival, and had a visit from the Police (just to tell us about their good work, we’ve been good, we promise!). We also spent lots of time outdoors, using the school Timber Trail to develop our balancing and gross motor skills. In Maths we have been learning about matching and sorting, and talking about why what we have looks the same, or different. We also learned about our daily routine, and how the time of day affects what we do. During our play we acted in our Hetton Health Centre, looking after each other, bandaging, injecting, and caring for our babies. Next week lots of Easter fun to be had, with our exciting craft days and our Easter Egg hunt.

🐣🧆 Thank you, Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside 🐣🧆

Week beginning 6th March 2023

Nursery have had a great week this week, full of learning and laughter, which was made even better by the appearance of two special things, the arrival of eggs in Reception, and SNOW!
 

We have enjoyed playing and learning in the snow, in our Nursery garden and on our big yard, thanks to Mrs Garside for loaning us the sledge. 

Maths this week has been all about capacity and the words we use when talking about filling and emptying - full, empty, half full, and when to stop pouring…that was a very tricky part! We love to get hands on when we are learning in Maths.

With the help of Julia Donaldson we have been learning how to describe our features, pulling a funny face and drawing ourselves after looking in the mirror - “move your eyes and nose and mouth all over the place!”

If you’d like to check out what we’ve been singing along to to help us pull our funny faces, you can follow this link…

https://www.facebook.com/Booktopia/videos/pull-a-funny-face-with-julia-donaldson/583162868988928/

Not to forget National Science Week, our whole school are learning about fingerprints, and Nursery decided to learn about different animal prints, which inspired us to paint our small world animal toy feet and print to try and get our friends to guess which animal made the print!

We finished the week with ‘Helicopter Stories’. After telling Mrs F and Mrs G an original story, two of our children directed the other children to act out their story in our session on Friday morning. A fantastic way to develop our literacy skills, we will be creating and writing more stories together in the next few weeks, and we will post them on our website each week.

Remember we have our dentist visit next week, please let us know on Class Dojo if you’d like to come along.

💙 Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside 💙

SNOW DAY!!! 9th March 2023

Week beginning 27th February 2023

What a busy week Nursery have had this week! As well as learning all about heavy and light in maths - the concept that not everything that is bigger is heavier blew our minds - we learned how to use balance scales to work out which object is the heavy one and which is the light one. We also learned about community helpers this week, and enjoyed playing in our police station, we arrested several members of the staff team, who just looked like they were up to no good! We chased them down, booked them in, ticked off the equipment we used, and placed them in jail. Remembering to feed them and make them comfortable, of course, we are a very caring bunch in Nursery! Next week we will learn more about how the Police help us, and also other people in our community help us, such as bus drivers, dentists and cleaners.
World Book Day was AMAZING, thank you to all of the parents for visiting Nursery and dressing your children up, your children looked superb, and we read books together all morning. As well as surprise visits from a Very Hungry Headteacher Caterpillar, and a Deputy Head Teacher Tiger looking for some tea, Little Red Riding Hood, Grandma, the Woodcutter and the BIG BAD WOLF showed up, and we joined in with the whole school parade in the hall, it was a great day and a fantastic way to reinforce our love of stories and books!

We are expecting some frostier weather next week, but Nursery go outdoors whatever the weather, and this week was no exception…we have been making chalk masterpieces using chalk and water, digging, climbing, rolling tyres, and so much more, to support our physical development and our wellbeing.

We are looking forward to another amazing week next week, when we will be taking part in National Science Week, thank you for your support, Mrs Fearby and Mrs Garside, and the Nursery children.