This week...

All things Harvest this week!

We have been talking about God’s Wonderful World and how it allows us to grow foods to eat. We found out how food was harvested and stored for the Winter months and how we should be grateful. We watched a couple of short videos. Click here for Harvest Time Down on the Farm and here for What is Harvest Festival?

We even made our own bread and ate it for snack! Everyone said it was delicious! We found our about wheat and how to make bread with my friend Pip, click on the button to see the slides. Maybe you could make some bread at home too!

We also danced the Harvest Samba, click here to dance at home!

We had great fun mixing our own playdough too!

Harvest Festival with Reception

Such a wonderful celebration! It was so lovely to be together as a whole Foundation Stage. We found out about Harvest Festival and talked about the generous donations we had collected and why?

To finish our assembly we said a prayer to say ‘thank you’ to God for giving us the world to live in and for the opportunity to grow such fabulous foods. We then danced the Harvest Samba all around the hall…and played instruments! It was joyous!

After worship we all had a BIG play in the nursery garden…together. It was magical!!

If you fancy a Harvest Story at home click here!

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone,

Summer has definitely gone now, and autumn is finally here, but it hasn't stopped the children from having fun.

Our nursery garden is full of Autumn colours and leaves. There are still plenty more to fall too, that means lots of sweeping! Never to miss an opportunity to be creative the children have been turning the leaves in to leaf people! They have brought them alive by gluing the leaves onto paper and adding faces and body parts! They look fabulous!!!

Here's an Autumn song. Hope you enjoy singing along to it. Click here. 

To continue working on our fine motor skills, the children have been having fun making dens using lots of different fabrics and large pegs to hold their den together. The children found it a bit tricky, as the pegs were quite wide to grasp, but they kept on trying, just like one of our learning characters, Sadie Spider…try, try, try to catch that fly!!!!

To further challenge the children’s fine motor skills we have been having a go at a fun finger and hand strengthening activity…stretching their hand muscles. The activity involved stretching hair scrunchies over a large cup, just like putting a sock over their feet. I will also be sending this activity home for you to practice, so have fun! It will help the children to put their socks on independently after PE sessions…good luck everyone!

Have a wonderful Autumn weekend and I will see you all for our last week before half-term.

Michelle’s blog

Welcome to this week's blog everyone.

We continue with our brain growing as we have been developing our pincer grip. We do this by taking part in lots of activities where we have to use our fingers to grip and pick up. I hope you have been enjoying the Evil Pea game that has been going home. I have enjoyed hearing the children tell us about how they played it at home with their families. This game helps children to develop a pincer grip, which they will need to become confident writers. We have lots more games planned, so they children can share their learning at home.

This week we have noticed that Autumn is definitely here. We have explored and investigated the leaves in the garden and have noticed that they are changing colour. Why not go for an autumn walk and see what you can discover. Here are some ideas.

Have a lovely weekend 

Michelle 

Wow! What a fabulous week!

It’s hard to believe we have nearly been at nursery for half a term! Can I remind everyone that nursery will close on Thursday next week for the half term holiday, we return on Monday 3rd November. Make sure you have a good rest because we will be starting number work (cardinality and counting) and sounds (phonemes) when we return!

The cardinal value of a number refers to the quantity of things it represents, e.g. the numerosity, ‘howmanyness’, or ‘threeness’ of three. When children understand the cardinality of numbers, they know what the numbers mean in terms of knowing how many things they refer to. Counting is one way of establishing how many things are in a group, because the last number you say tells you how many there are. Children enjoy learning the sequence of counting numbers long before they understand the cardinal values of the numbers. Subitising is another way of recognising how many there are, without counting.

Don’t panic, it’s fun!

Have a lovely weekend and stay safe.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

A lovely week at nursery. We have welcomed two new friends to our family here at school. Everyone has been very kind and generous showing them where everything lives and the routines and rhythms of the day.

When I think about everything that we do in a day and week at nursery I just can’t believe it. The children take everything in their stride. it’s no wonder they are exhausted by Friday. After half term we will be starting Read, Write Inc, sounds and Maths Mastery….even more learning, FANTASTIC! We love to grow our brains!

Read Write Inc (for those who want to know a little bit more and get ahead of the game!)

Read Write Inc is a method of learning centred around letter sounds and phonics.

Click here Please remember we will only be learning Set 1 Speed sounds. Sounds will be introduced slowly to ensure we can say the sounds correctly and have a go at writing them. Pencil hold is key!

If you scroll down the page there are some videos to watch. They are very useful especially how we say the sounds We are not at the blending sounds stage…save that video for later.

When we start (after half term) be guided by the information that I will post weekly.

Worship

The month of October each year is dedicated to the Most Holy Rosary. This week we have been making our own Rosary and practising the Hail Mary, Our Father and Glory be. There is a lot to remember maybe you could help our at home.

Everyone has made their own Rosary to use at school. We went to the school Chapel to pray the Rosary. We also took our prayer jar; we put new prayers in each week.

This week we have new prayer leaders to help us to make the sign of the Cross and how to hold our hands in prayer.

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone,

 Firstly, it was really nice chatting and meeting some of you for the first time at our parent meetings. Thank you for coming. If you have not managed to catch up with me, just drop me an email.

We have been practising our gross motor skills in the garden this week. Gross motor skills involve the larger muscle groups in the arms, legs and core. We have been using different sized paint brushes in water, and the children have been busy painting walls, floors and even the outdoor play houses (not to mention themselves!). The children even used large sweeping brushes dipped in water as well. Working on gross motor skills prepares the children for writing, like holding the paper down with one hand and writing with the other.

We have continue our learning thread by making colour monster biscuits. The children all got involved to help make the biscuit mix. We discussed ingredients and the utensils that we would need to be able to make the biscuits. When they were cooked, we decorated them with icing and colour monster sprinkles. Everyone enjoyed eating them for our snack as a treat. Nursery suddenly became very quiet at snack time on that day, I'm not sure why?

Here is a video to watch how to make 'hair do cookies'. If you get time, have a go. I would love to see your bakes. Have fun. Click here.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

See you all on Monday 

Emma

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's blog.

We had a really wet start to the week so this meant we had the opportunity to play lots of games indoors, practising our turn taking and sharing. We love the opposites game where we have to  find the opposite picture. It's quite tricky at times. Any practice you can give your child to find an opposite word will help with their recall and language development.

Another game we have been playing is sound lotto. This is where we have to listen really carefully and identify the sounds that we can hear. This is a good game for focus and concentration. It will also help with sound recognition when we start our Read, Write, Inc sessions. If you don't have this game at home you can easily play this outside by asking your child what they can hear.

We continue to develop our fundamental movement skills and have focussed on throwing and catching this week. Why not have a game of throw and catch at home this weekend.

Finally, it seems you have all been enjoying the Evil Pea game that I have been sending home. Don't worry if you haven't had a turn yet, everyone will get a chance to take it home.

Have a lovely weekend

Michelle 

My Happy Mind

This week we have been working hard to keep our brain calm and to improve our concentration skills.

We played mindfulness bubble bounce, have a go at home. Click here.

Harvest Festival

Thank you to everyone who has already brought in nappies for our contribution the the Harvest Festival. Don’t worry if you haven’t managed to yet we have until next Friday.

Family Mass

Don’t forget our first family mass on Sunday 6th October. As with everything that we offer in school, these are just opportunities and are never compulsory, just another way of coming together. Ironically, the theme of the Gospel that weekend is children coming to God - seems just perfect.

Lastly, I hope the weather stays fine and you manage some lovely family time outdoors. Here’s a little weekend challenge if you are up for it! Click on the button below.

Remember stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Another great week at nursery. The children are quickly becoming more confident and more willing to ‘have a go’ (just like Tommy Turtle) at new learning experiences. We read the story about Tommy being afraid to try new things in case they went wrong. We found out that making mistake is ok, as that’s when we do our best brain growing!

Autumn colours

This week we have been noticing that the leaves are falling from the trees and changing colour. We decided to do some printing using the clours we had noticed.

We got very messy…fabulous! Next week we will be doing autumn collages! Watch this space!

Worship

This week we have explored St Vincent de Paul. He aspired to live the gospel message by serving the poor with love, respect, justice, hope and joy, and by working to shape a more just and compassionate society. He was on a mission and so have we! Everyone has been trying to serve and think of others before themselves. I am more than proud of everyone. Click here to watch a short video.

On Friday we had a visit from Bishop Paul. We drew pictures of Our Lady and the created a display in the hall. Check out the main school webpage to see how the visit went.

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone! We have had a very busy week growing our brains and having lots of fun.

We have been practicing our throwing and catching skills using different sized balls. We tries underarm and overarm throwing. This will help us with our gross motor skills and hand-eye co-ordination. Have a go at home (if it’s not raining!). Mr. Nay also had us a throwing shuttlecocks, which were really fun to throw. The children loved watching them glide and spin as they landed. We played a game where we had to throw the shuttlecocks and hit the cones (target practise). This was really tricky but the children all had a go, just like Tommy Turtle.

It’s great this year as we have lots of P.E. sessions. We have PE with Mr. Nay and Mr. Murray on Monday and Wednesday, and on Wednesday afternoon and Friday we do dance!

This week we have been practicing using a knife and fork in spaghetti cutting activity. This was the like colour monsters feelings different colours and all mixed up. Our task was to sort the different coloured spaghetti and then to chop it up. This also helps with eye hand co-ordination and fine motor skills. The children loved it and we even had some great fork twirling too! Continue to practice at home with your knife and forks, as it all helps to strengthen the children's hand muscles, getting them ready for writing. Here is a little fun activity to watch and have a go at practicing with a knife and fork. Click here and enjoy

Dough Disco time!

This weeks song is about being in the jungle. I hope you are all enjoying having a go at home. Here is the link. Have fun.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

 Emma 

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's blog.

This week has been as busy as ever as we have played lots of games together. Playing games gives children lots of opportunities to learn how to share and take turns as well as extending their vocabulary and concentration and focus. One of the games we have been playing is Kim's game, which is great for memory, the children really have to use their brains to recall the information. Click here to play at home

We have also played a game where the children have to rescue the peas released by the Evil Pea. This game helps to develop a nicer grip which the children will need to be confident writers. Look out in your child book bag as this game is coming home for the children to play at home. Click here to watch Supertato and find out more about the Evil Pea. Click here.

I hope you have lots of fun playing games this weekend and remember children need to learn to cope with losing, so don't let them win every time!

Have a lovely weekend

Michelle

What to Expect, When Parents Guide

This guide is for parents of children from birth to five years old. It will help you find out more about your child's learning and development in the EYFS ...

Absences

If your child is off nursery could you please email me as by 8.00am, stating the reason for the absence. Thank you.

b.draper@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk

House teams

This week your child has been allocated their house team. Ask them at home to see if they can remember…it is quite tricky!

Red- Plessington

Green- Marsden

Blue- Harcourt

Yellow- Bamber

Don’t panic if they can’t remember just ask at the gate and we will tell you!

My Happy Mind

Our exploration of the brain is going well. I now hear the children talking freely about their hippocampus, amygdala and (not quite as easily remembered) prefrontal cortex. We are really trying to be in control by making all three parts work together in harmony- H.A.P.

This week we made a small world scene with all our My Happy Mind characters and our own mini me’s. Great fund and wonderful dialogue. We are continuing with our happy breathing. Here are a couple of exercises to try at home!

Click here and here

Harvest

Harvest mass for the main school is being held in church on Friday 11th October. Although nursery will not be attending you are more than welcome to come along and celebrate. Nursery will have our own celebration during our Friday worship session.

As in previous years we will be collecting items to be distributed around our local community. This year nursery will be collecting nappies, a much needed item in todays economic climate. We urge everyone to give generously. Thank you in anticipation.

Well, I think that’s enough from me for one week!

Have a fabulous weekend and I look forward to seeing everyone on Monday.

Stay safe and God bless.

Barbara

This week...

Another fabulous week. As I watch the children I see them forming lovely friendships. There are lots of giggles and exciting things to learn! We have been blessed with sunshine this week and as such we have spent a lot of time outside in the garden…it has been wonderful!

We have continued our exploration of the brain and Gods Wonderful world…more about that in a moment.

I would like to remind everyone that nursery are having our parent meetings a bit earlier than school. I am sure you are keen to come along and have a chat, to hear how they are getting on. Each collection time we will ensure the forms are available for you to book a time with your childs key person. I will also be available if you need to have a chat!

The dates are: Tuesday 24th September 3.45-4.45 pm and Tuesday 1st October September 3.45-4.45 pm. These sessions are for you to come long and have a quick catch up, therefore, we kindly ask that you do not bring your child along unless absolutely necessary. Thank you.

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's blog.

I have been so pleased with how well all the children have continued to settle in.

It is so nice to see them coming in with big smiley faces, ready to start their day of learning and exploring.

We continue our theme of getting to know everyone and learning all about me. We have continued finding out about our families by exploring the idea of being in a bigger family, such as nursery, school, and God's family.

We have had a go at drawing this week as we drew ourselves and attempted to write our names. Activities that help with developing a good pencil grip can be found here.

I will be sending home a little activity to practice and develop a good pincer grip. Look out for it in your child's book bag.

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week 

Michelle 

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone, 

 We have had a fantastic week of learning.

 We have continued learning about the colour monster and our feelings. The children have been so busy making their own colour monster out of kitchen roll and googlie eyes. We talked about how they were feeling at that precise moment; they matched their feeling to the appropriate colour then painted their colour monster to represent their emotion. We had some I can't wait for you to see them when you come for your.parent meeting

My key group have also been drawing colour monsters in our floor book. We have some wonderful artists. I am looking forward to showing you the floor book too. 

The children are enjoying dough disco. They are all really focused, listening and following the instructions. Here is another new song to have a go at home. Click here. The more the children ‘have a go’, the stronger their hands, fingers and wrist muscles will be ready for writing and it’s great fun…for everyone!

We have been looking at similarities and differences and asking the children what is different about each other and what is the same, which was a bit tricky. Here is a spot the difference game to do at home, enjoy. This will start to improve their observational skills! Enjoy! Click here.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone, and I can't for more fun next week.

 Emma 

My Happy Mind

This week saw the introduction of a new character and also two weekly Happiness Heroes! Firstly let me introduce Team H A P. H A P reminds us how our brain works together

H is for Hippocampus (it helps us store memories)

A is for Amygdala (responsible for our emotions)

P is for Prefrontal cortex (regulates our thoughts)

Team H A P works the best when it works together. That’s why Team H A P has three heads. This week we have been drawing Bertie, Betty and Team H A P. Take a look.

Question of the week is: What is your biggest dream? Mmmm let me think?

Worship

This weeks Gospel talked about serving each other and that is exactly what we have been trying to do all week. I must admit it is very tricky, but we have done very well. Everyone has been thinking of others before themselves and thinking about the needs of our friends, I am beyond proud! We will be continuing this next week and FOREVER!

We continue to be grateful for our Wonderful World and we have discussed how we should all do our bit should take care of it…by

Reducing the amount of waste we create.

Reusing items more than once.

Recycling a product to a new use instead of throwing it away.

Rethinking how our actions affect Gods Wonderful World

Click here to listen to Wonderful Earth by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen.

Fundamental Movement Skills

Physical literacy is when children have developed the skills, confidence, and love of movement to be physically active for life. You may often often hear talk of “fundamental movement skills.” But what exactly are they? And what are the fundamental movement skills that children need to develop to become physically literate?    

Fundamental movement skills (FMS) are the basic movements traditionally associated with human physical activity. The most common FMS include skills such as running, jumping, throwing, catching, skipping, and hopping. 

Here are a few tips to help your child:

• Encourage your child in her running by making frequent trips to parks and other places where there are open spaces. When presented with an open field, most toddlers want to run and explore. Play games that promote running such as chasing a soccer ball or take turns chasing each other.

• Help your child to develop throwing by playing catch with soft foam or fabric balls, or place simple paper targets on the wall for her to throw at. You should use balls that are small enough for your child to easily grasp.

• Show your child how to form as “basket” with her two arms in front of her stomach. Gently toss the ball into her basket from a close distance of one to two metres. As her confidence grows and her fine motor skills improve, she will eventually start to use her hands more than her arms.

• Help your child to develop her kicking skills by having soft, lightweight balls available. You can even play one-versus-one soccer at this age. Use your imagination: create goals using patio furniture, trees, shrubs, and other objects. Let her score lots of goals to encourage her, and make sure you cheer and celebrate.

• Investigate swimming lessons at your local recreation centre by age three or four. Many programs encourage parents to be in the water alongside their child at the early ages.

Finally, we have started our family wall but we are still a few friends mission. If you haven’t managed to send in a picture yet don’t panic next week is fine. Email it to me if your like and I will print it for you.

I am really proud of all our wonderful children they are embracing lots of new experiences and most of are having lots of fun! Have the most splendid weekend and will see everyone on Monday.

Remember to stay safe and God Bless.

Barbara

This week...

Such a busy week in nursery! The children have enjoyed lots of new and exciting activities, including Fundamental Movement skills with Mr. Nay and Mr. Murray. The introduction of My Happy Mind and much much more. We are all exhausted!

My Happy Mind

This week we started our myHappymind journey to support the children's mental health and wellbeing.  We are delighted to be a myHappymind school! myHappymind is an award winning programme for schools and nurseries, families and organisations. It teaches preventative habits that support mental health, resilience and self-esteem. All the concepts that are taught are based on science and research and grounded in neuroscience and positive psychology. myHappymind is commissioned by the NHS. 

We have set up our own Happiness Heroes team to spread happiness around nursery and school and support others with their wellbeing through techniques such as Happy Breathing.

 myHappymind modules include: Meet the Brain, Celebrate, Gratitude, Relate and Engage.

This week we met Berty and Betty and found our about our brain and emotions.

Next week we will be continuing our journey and be asking the children this question: to plan a nice surprise for a friend or family. Perhaps you could have a little chat at home about what they could do.: maybe sing a song, draw a picture, give a hug or ask a friend to come and play. Let me know how you get on.

Mrs. Gregan will be formally launching the programme on the 25th September with a coffee morning. Keep checking the school blog for further details and and get involved.

In the meanwhile I have attached a Parent pack for you to take a look at. Click on the button below. Enjoy finding out!

Worship

This week we explored how our wonderful world was created.

We stared by seeing what object was in our magic box…it was a globe ball, a good way yo start our conversation. Each day we have looked at what God crated for us to love and look after. I have attached the slides for you to have the discussion at home too. See what your child has remembered (or put in their hippocampus-the memory part of our brain!)

Also, we talked about Jesus-who is Jesus? He was a teacher, a healer and a very good person. We are going to try to be like Jesus and be kind and thoughtful to each other. We are doing very well. One friend said on Wednesday“ I am like Jesus”; how wonderful!

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone.

What a wonderful week we have had. Not only have we been growing our brains, but we have had lots and lots of fun doing so.

 The children have been busy getting to know each other and making new friendships. We have been talking about our families, the people we live with, where we live and if we have any pets. The children also drew what we had discussed. They really enjoyed talking about their pets and we found out that a lot of the children have dogs.

To help the children with their pencil grip and control, I've introduced dough disco. Playing with the dough helps to strengthen children's fine motor muscles to enable them to develop their grip which in turn will help to develop their drawing and writing skills. But most of all it's fun! What is dough disco, I hear you say. Dough disco is a fun activity that involves moulding play dough to music and performing different actions, such as squeezing, patting, poking, squashing into a pancake, tearing, twisting, rolling into a ball, rolling into a sausage, and pinching. Here is a link for you to have a go at home. I hope you enjoy, and remember, have fun! Click here.

Also, here is a recipe to make your own dough at home. Mix 2 mugs of plain flour, 2 tablespoons of cooking oil, 4 teaspoons of cream of tartar, 1 mug of salt, and 2 mugs of boiling water, and give it all a really good mix up. You can also add food colouring as you wish. Enjoy!!

Have a lovely weekend, and have a great time if you are going to the kite festival.

See you all on Monday.

Emma 

Michelle’s blog

Hello and welcome to this week’s blog.

Our learning this week has been focused on learning ‘All About Me’. We have explored what makes us unique and what makes us similar.  We used the mirrors to look in detail at our features and then had a go at painting them. We then all drew a picture of ourselves in our new floor book.  This year we are really going to try to ‘Reach for the stars’ and try to do our best. 

We have used our imaginations this week as we explored our role play home corner. We took it in turns to play mummy, daddy, brother, sister and baby. This enabled us to explore families and to think about our own families. We looked at the pictures of our families and found that we are all different, but we know that our family will always love us. Thank you for sending in your family photos, but don't worry if you haven't managed yet, there is still lots of time.  Just email to any of us, or send in a printed copy. We don't mind, but we would love to see all of our families on our family wall.

Here are some fun activities you could try at home. Click here.

Have a lovely weekend

Michelle

I’m sure all our learning will explain why your child is so tired at the end of the day…one or two friends even all asleep during the day!!

I hope that everyone has a lovely weekend in readiness for another busy week next week!

Stay safe and God bless.

Barbara

Our first week at nursery!

Welcome to our first blog of the year.

This year in nursery and in school, we are taking time to focus on our school name and how we can shine like stars in the sky. If we truly are to live the life that God intended us to, then we must look at how we can do all of those small things well and shine like a star. This message will be the golden thread in everything that we do and who we are this year; recognising all of the stars that shine so very brightly. We have got off to a great start and have all been shining brightly, but we must keep trying.

Each Friday you will be able to catch up with all the learning we have been doing at nursery and perhaps join in at home. The blog is full of ideas to extend learning and revisit, so get involved!

It is always lovely to hear the children enjoying finding out with their families. You could even send us pictures to share with or friends. Just email them either to me or your childs key person and we show them on our fabulous Touch TV.

It has been a fantastic start to the week. There may have been a couple of tears at drop off time but they haven’t lasted long at all. Everyone has been exploring the continuous provision both inside and outside, it is so very exciting. We have started to build new friendships, but it is a bit tricky remembering lots of names.

Each week your key person will write a short blog about your childs learning at nursery for the week. It will include photos and some activities you may want to try at home.

It is important that you visit the nursery to keep up to date with everything that will be happening in nursery, we would not like you to miss anything. You may also like to read about what is happening throughout the school too.

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful summer.

 Welcome to our nursery blog.

 The children have had a fantastic first week and it's been wonderful getting to know each and every one of them. We have been busy making friends and following nursery routine, the children have also enjoyed exploring inside and outside of nursery, enjoying the different spaces to play. 

As it’s our first week, we have been talking about our feelings. When starting nursery our feelings sometimes could be a little bit mixed up. The colour monster story is about a monster who wakes up with mixed up emotions and a little girl who helps him to sort them out using colours. The book is a brilliant way to express and talk about how we feel; to help the children learn to identify and discuss their emotions. It helps us to develop social skills, confidence, and empathy. We have been using different coloured pom poms to express how we are feeling. The children have really enjoyed the story.

 Why not watch and listen at home. Click here.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and I can't wait to to see you all on Monday for more learning and lots more fun. 

Emma 

Michelle’s blog

A very big welcome to our new families and those returning for another great year at nursery!!.

It's been a very exciting week as we have all got to know each other. We have learnt lots of new names and are beginning to know the rhythm of the nursery day.

We are all learning to be more independent by finding out trays and putting our coats on.

You can help your child on their road to independence by giving them time to put their coat on by themselves and also by recognising their name when written down.

We have had such a lovely first week and are really looking forward to next week.

Have a lovely weekend 

Michelle

As you can see we are having a lovely time in nursery. I am so proud with how the children have settled. More fun next week.

Story time

This week we read Little Rabbit Foo Foo. It’s a great story and it made us laugh so much. We talked about choices; was Little Rabbit Foo Foo making good choices? What is a Goonie? Click here to watch and listen at home.

A few good housekeeping reminders

I understand how difficult it is organising our lives around getting to nursery on time, as well the things we ask of you, sorry, but here are a few reminders that will help both your child and nursery ladies.

Please can each child have an Our Lady book bag and not bring back packs as we haven’t got room in our reception area. You can purchase them from Top Marque in St Annes.

When choosing shoes could you think about how you child will be able to get them off for PE etc and then put them on. We encourage the children to be as independent as possible. Velcro trainers/ shoes are probably the best. Hi-top boots are extremely tricky.

Please make sure that your child is wearing appropriate clothing for the weather. We go our in all types of weather. Wellies and waterproofs when raining. Coats for outside play.

Your child will require one snack (fruit or veg only please) for each session. Two pieces for a full day, one for half day. Please note grapes, cherry tomatoes are to be cut into quarters. All snack pots to be clearly labelled.

Anything your child brings to nursery or clothing that could be taken off during the day must be labelled. The nursery ladies get very confused!

Could each child bring a photograph of their family to display on our family wall.

Lastly, could I say a huge thank you, to you, our lovely parents. You have prepared your child so well for the next part of their learning journey. Working in partnership is so important.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and I will see you all on Monday.

God bless

Barbara

Welcome to Nursery!

Hello and huge welcome to our nursery.

We are all very excited about meeting you again this week. We have lots of fun things planned! I tried to remember all the favourite toys you told me about when I visited you at home; and I have put them out to greet you when you arrive.

Just a few reminders:

You will need an Our Lady Book Bag

You will need one piece of fruit or veg for each session you are attending

You may need a spare pair of clothing (just in case)

Could all items which could be moved be clearly labelled

Have an early night everyone, tomorrow is going to be busy

Finally, could you please bring in family photo for our family wall

Thank you and see you in the morning.

God Bless

Barbara

If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever....

Well all good things must come to an end. I am always sad when it is time for the children move on to the next stage of their learning journey. The children this week have been quite reflective and have spoken about how they will miss nursery and the nursery ladies. I reminded them that we will always have an invisible string, that will bind us together...forever. That special part in my heart is fit to burst this year, it has been truly magical and I have enjoyed every minute of it.

To the children who are moving into Reception here at Our Lady’s I will watch with keen interest how you shine your light in school…and remember always ‘be kind’.

To the children who will be forging a new path at another school don’t forget to shine brightly for everyone to see how wonderful you are and don’t forget to keep in touch.

To the children who are returning to nursery in September…I can’t wait!!!!

…and finally to you, our fantastic parents, thank you for trusting us with your child. It has been such a privilege to work and learn along side them. You have have been ‘fantastic elastic’ too.

Pirate Party Day

A note from Emma

Hello everyone, or I should say oooh arrrr me hearties! 

 Our Pirate Party was so much fun. The children had a fantastic time (and so did the nursery ladies!). It has been so lovely having our last 'party' all together and seeing the children having a great time. 

 I can't believe this is the last blog of the nursery year. I feel really sad, but also so happy, having seen how the children have grown their brains and worked so hard. They have made some wonderful friendships and shown their kindness to each other on daily basis. We have created some wonderful memories and sung lots of beautiful inspirational songs. I think the children’s favourites have been 'My Lighthouse' and 'This Little Light of Mine.' I am sure plenty of you have heard the children singing these songs at home.

Thank you for all your support and kindness throughout this year.

Have a wonderful summer, and hope all of the children have a good rest, especially those starting school next year, they all deserve it.

Take care 

Emma 

A note from Michelle

Hello and welcome to the last blog of the school year. I can’t believe that the end of the term has come and it is time to say goodbye to all those children going to school. I know they are all going to go on to bigger and brighter things as they shine their light in Reception. For those children who are staying with us next year, we have a busy and wonderful year planned, starting in September.

This week has been so busy, we have just never stopped. We started the week with a wonderful show, The Greatest Show. We were enthralled as Year 5 and 6 sang and danced us through this amazing production. It was just the best.

We then had a Pirate Party on Wednesday and we all dressed up as pirates. This was a really fun way to celebrate the end of the nursery year. We danced, we sang and played so many Pirate games. It was perfect!

We have spent some time this week revisiting some of our favourite activities, we do love a game and we absolutely love a quiz. It reminded us all of just how much we have learnt this year. Here is a link to a website that has lots of games and quizzes, if you get bored over the holidays. Click here.

I would like to say thank you to you all for being so supportive of everything we do at nursery, we couldn’t do it without all you wonderful mummies and daddies. Thank you also for the wonderful cards and thoughtful gifts, you are all so kind.

Have a lovely summer everybody,

Michelle

It would be great if we could go back to page one of the year, but alas Reception is waiting and I just know the children will have a brilliant time.

I would like to thank each and everyone of your for kind words and gifts. Your generosity has been overwhelming. As I sat and read each card I felt a tear of joy trickle down my cheek. Anyone who knows me understands that Early Years is my passion and to have that recognised by our families is truly thrilling. Thank you.

Finally, I hope you have the most amazing summer, make lots of memories which will last a lifetime.

Remember, in those moments of doubt ask yourself …‘what would Jesus do?’ and you will find the answer.

God Bless and stay safe

Barbara

This week...

The penultimate week of the year and preparations are underway for our Leavers Pirate Party!!!

The children (and nursery ladies) are so excited, I hope everyone is getting their costumes organised!).

We asked the children what has been their favourite activity or learning we have done this year and we have been revisiting some of them. It has been such a happy week and we have learnt soooo much!

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone, what a fun packed week we have had!

 We have some exciting news, all of the butterflies have emerged from their cocoons and have been set free in Lytham St Annes, keep a look out for any Painted Lady butterfiles! We hope they are having a nice time. It has been such a wonderful experience. 

Our bee houses are up in the garden, and the children are waiting patiently for the bees to move in. In the mean time, the children have been drawing their own version of bees, we have had some great drawings, even a three eyed bee. Did you know that bees have five eyes, one at each side of their heads, and three more at the top of their head to sense any approaching from predators. I'll let you know if we have any bees moving in next week.

We have been getting very excited for our Pirate Party next Wednesday. We have been channeling our inner pirate by dressing up in pirate costumes and building pirate ships in the garden. Our year 6 helpers joined too. Some friends have been drawing their own map, where X marks the spot for the treasure. It has been brilliant to watch the children having fun, finding lots of treasure around the garden, and putting it in Barbara’s treasure box (I think she may be a real pirate!). However, the box went missing! Super Croccy had to come with a mission for the children to help find the stolen treasure and box. The children love it when Super Croccy comes to visit. 

The children have been asking to put Dough Disco on the blog so they can do it at home. 

Here is a Recipe how to make the play dough. Click here.

Have fun over the summer holidays with all your dough disco moves, and maybe set mummies and daddies a Dough Disco challenge. Have fun!

Click here and here and here!!!

I cannot believe we have one more week left before all the children finish for summer. Next week is going to be sad, but also happy and fun.

 Have a lovely weekend see you all on Monday.

 Emma

Michelle’s blog

Hello and welcome to this week’s blog. We were very excited  when all five of our butterflies metamorphosised . We looked after them by feeding them flowers and sugary water and then we let them free. At first, they didn’t seem to want to fly away, they stayed inside the butterfly house, getting used to the outside air. Then they flew off into the sky. Fly high butterflies, we hope you have good lives.

We also checked on the ladybird larvae, but they have not grown into adult ladybirds yet. We will keep checking.

We have been practising for the Sports Fest on Friday. We used the track and had relay races and backwards races. It’s harder than it looks, running backwards.

We can’t believe it’s nearly the end of the year, where does the time go? They do say time flies when you’re having fun! We certainly have had lots of fun these past months. The children have learnt so much and have grown into such wonderful, lovely, kind people.

We are pleased to say that the fun is not over yet, not by a long way. Next week we will be having a PIRATE PARTY! This is on Wednesday 9.30-11.30. We have got lots of fun, fantastic games planned, like walk the plank and a treasure hunt. Click here if you need any help understanding your little pirate.

We all love story time and we have had lots of pirate stories this week. Here is a bedtime pirate story. Click here.

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week for our last week of nursery.

Michelle

Sports Fest!

What a FABULOUS afternoon full of fun! Take a look at the photos.

Come on England!!!

We are all really hopeful for Sunday!

It’s coming home!!!!

A quick note to remind everyone that school will be closing at 2pm on Friday.

Have the most fantastic weekend and I will see everyone on Monday for our last week at nursery.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

An odd sort of week, blink and you have missed Summer! Everyone has been focused on transitions this week. On Wednesday some of our friends visited Reception for a play and meet the Reception team, and what a fabulous time they all had. i don’t think they wanted to come back to nursey!!

We are all excited for Monday as we will be welcoming Steph back to nursery, after her maternity leave. Please take a minute to introduce yourself.

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone!

I can't believe we are in July and it's still raining! Come on sunshine, where are you?  

At the time of writing this blog, our caterpillar pupa are still in their cocoons, but I will keep you posted. The children have really enjoyed studying them...and waiting…

We have also have been looking at the life cycle of bees. We noted how similar it is to a butterfly (although bees don't lays eggs on leaves like a butterfly). Bees use honeycomb as a nursery, honey factory and food store. The queen lays eggs, which then hatch into white grub-like larvae. The larvae pupate and emerge as bees.

Here are some facts about the life cycle of a bee enjoy. Click here.

The children have been busy helping to make bee hotels for the nursery garden. They have decorated tin cans with yellow and black stripes and by cutting smoothie straws to size to fit inside the can, which was a little tricky. As the bees have lost a lot of their natural habitat due to urban development, and changes in the land and faming, we want to help. Our bee hotels are going to hopefully help towards increasing the availability of nesting resources for solitary bees.

Here is a video of how to make a bee hotel at home for your garden. Enjoy! Click here.

Have a wonderful weekend, especially if you are going to Lytham festival.  

See you all next week,

Emma 

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog.

The weather hasn’t been so good this week, but that hasn’t stopped us at all. We are still very busy investigating all the changes that are happening in the garden. New flowers are blooming, the strawberries are getting ripe enough to eat, and very tasty they were too. The bees have been so busy pollinating all the wild flowers, and the sunflowers are getting taller, but no flowers yet. We have been eagerly awaiting the emergence of the butterflies, but they are still in their chrysalis,  going through their metamorphosis from caterpillars. We did discover we have lots of ladybird larvae in the garden, so we are expecting to have lots of adult ladybirds this year. Here is a short film about the lifecycle of a ladybird. Click here.

PE was lots of fun this week, as we played team games, we had to work together as a team. We also had a go at scoring goals with the footballs and had a penalty shootout.

We have also been thinking about transitions this week as some of our friends will be moving onto Reception, some at Our Lady and some at other local schools. To celebrate our time together we will be having a party, your child should have brought home an invite this week. The children have requested a Pirate Party, so we are busy planning lots of pirate themed games and activities. The next two weeks are going to be busy!

We know that starting school can be daunting for some children (and parents), here is some useful info for you on starting school. Click here.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and we will see you next week

Michelle

Sticky Kids

This week we have started to learn some new songs about being together and what makes a good friend. The children loved them. Here they are to sing along at home.

We’re all together again. Click here.

Who wants a friend like Snorty Bull? Click here.

It’s good to be me!. Click here.

Pirate Party

This week I have sent home our Leavers Pirate Party invitation, Wednesday 17th July 2024 9.30 am -11.30 am. We invite all the children to attend but if it not your child’s usual session they must be collected at 11.30 am. You do not have to send in any food as we are hoping for a sunny day and we will have ice lollies!! Fingers crossed!

Everyone must come dress as a pirate even the nursery ladies!!! Arrrrrr!

Sports Fest

On Friday 12th July, Year 5 are organising a Sports Fest. This will be a sponsored event so that you do not need to worry. You can bring 20p to £20 - there is no minimum to get involved. Sponsor forms will be going out on Monday. On the afternoon, all children in school will be out at the same time taking part in a range of activities designed by Year 5; from dancing to racing, to football and everything in between. For the event, they would like the children to come in a kit or uniform that they belong to. For example: St Annes Football Kit, NW1 Academy t-shirt, Clifton Academy, CN Sports, Rainbows, Scouts, Sea Cadets - whatever you belong to, that is your uniform for the day. Please keep it appropriate, especially with gymnastics wear.

The class are also planning a cake sale in the morning and a tombola too!

Join in the fun!

The next couple of weeks are going to be busy so keep your eye on the blog and group text messages, don’t miss out!

Have a fabulous weekend everyone and I will see you on Monday!

God Bless

Barbara

NEWS ALERT!!!

TWO OF OUR BUTTERFLIES HAVE HATCHED!!! THREE MORE TO GO!

This week...

What a fabulous week! The sun has been shining, which can only mean one thing…lots of water! We have made waterfalls form umbrella’s, hosed and squirted each other down when we got too hot and generally got soaking wet. It was such great fun and we dried in minutes.

The warm weather has made everyone feel exhilarated and perhaps a little sleepy, but we are not complaining.

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone,

I hope your all enjoying this lovely weather as much as we are in nursery. 

Mr. Nay has had us working hard with different racing activities this week. We have been running, galloping, and walking. There was one race that he children found very tricky as it wasn't about who came first, it was about who came last by balancing a bean bag on their head for the whole race without it falling off; they had to move slowly! The children showed lots of determination, trying to keep the bean bag on their heads. The children had so much fun.

To continue learning about mini beasts, we've been finding out about bees and how hard they work, just like us. We watched a video about how bees pollinate and how they collect and carry the pollen. I then demonstrated how bees carry pollen from plant to plant using pretend bees on sticks and we then crushed up puffed crisps to represent the pollen. The children used the bees legs to carry the pollen from flower to flower, and the activity also helped to strengthen their fine motor skills.

Here is a short video all about facts about bees. Enjoy. Click here. 

The children have also become mini beast detectives. We went exploring around the school gardens looking under pots, in the flowers and bushes and we also looked in the school woods. The children found all sorts of bugs, worms, slugs, woodlice and even a black beetle. The children were very excited with their findings. Have a look around your garden to see what bugs you can find, and let me know. 

We have some great news about our caterpillars as all 5 of them are now inside their chrysalis , which is very exciting. We have moved them into their bigger enclosure and it's now a waiting game to see what is going to happen next, we can't wait.

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy St Annes Club day if you are going.

Emma 

Michelle’s blog

Hello and welcome to this week’s blog.

We have had a really busy week in nursery. We were excited to discover that our caterpillars have started to change into a chrysalis and are on their way to becoming butterflies. This can take up to 2 weeks, so we still have some time to wait until we can release them.

We watched this video and then tried to answer the quiz questions. Click here for the video.

Click here for the quiz.

We have continued to explore number 10, and this week we have been investigating how to make number bonds to 10. This is really tricky but we watched Numberblocks ten again and it helped us to work it out. Click here to watch.

We have been practising our yoga this week, pretending we were an egg, a caterpillar, then a pupa inside the chrysalis metamorphosing into a butterfly. Have a go at home, it’s very relaxing.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week.

Michelle

More about minibeasts

Here are a few activities to do at home.

Click here ‘What are Minibeasts’

Click here ‘Characteristics of Minibeasts

Let’s hope the weather stays fine for St. Annes Club Day on Saturday, i will keep a look out for everyone. Have a lovely weekend.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

What a fabulous week! We were all up bright and early for the Gym Jam Jog on Monday and then it was Sports Day on Tuesday afternoon. The children were so very tired by Wednesday. i believe one of our friends fell asleep in the barbers chair!!

Here are the photos of each event. Such a happy day!

Gym Jam Jog

Sports Day!

Michelle’s blog

Hello and welcome to this week’s blog. It has been such a busy week, as we started it by taking part in our Gym Jam Jog. We walked round and round the school field, in our pyjamas to raise money for two charities in memory of a former pupil, Harrison. It was lovely to see so many of you there.

On Tuesday we had our Sports Day with Reception. We have been practising very hard, and I am sure you will all agree that we were absolutely fantastic. We are all so proud of how well all the children did. Thank you for coming, it was a wonderful afternoon. I hope you all liked the t-shirts the children have decorated. Just a reminder that they need to be ironed for a couple of minutes, to set the colours, otherwise the picture will disappear in the wash.

We were very excited when our tiny baby caterpillars arrived. They have been feeding all week and are not so little now. We keep looking but they haven’t turned into butterflies yet! We really cannot wait.

We have continued to explore symmetry this week, some of us have painted symmetrical pictures on the easel and some of us have been playing this tricky game on the interactive white board. Click here to play.

We are learning all about minibeasts and their life cycles and this made us think about when we were babies. We had a tricky game where we had to guess the nursery lady from their baby photo.

We wondered if we could recognise our friends from their baby photos. Please send in a photo, so we can see if we can do this. It can be an email or a paper copy, we don’t mind, whichever is easier for you.

Have a lovely weekend

Michelle

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone 

What a fantastic week, we have been so busy on the physical side of our learning with our Gym Jam Jog and Sports Day.

Thank you so much for all of your support and for the donations on both days, it was really appreciated and was lovely to see you all. On Monday, it was wonderful to see the children having a fantastic time running and walking around the field with their friends and family. Best of all we were raising money for a good cause. I bet we had some very tired children that night.

Sports Day was just brilliant, the children had been working so hard getting ready for the big day. They all were amazing and we are so proud of all of them. A big well done to everybody.

The children have been enjoying singing and acting out '5 Little Speckled Frogs' as a group. We also have a book called Frog On The Log, and the children have been acting it out with puppets. It has been lovely to listen to the children re-enact the story in their own way.

Click here is the song to sing at home.

…and here is the story of Frog On a Log. Click here.

Continuing with our learning thread on mini beasts, we have been looking at ladybirds spots. I set the children a tricky challenge; the children had to cut a ladybird picture out (working on our fine motor skills), but the ladybirds didn't have any spots. Everyone had to put 10 spots on their ladybird and they had to be symmetrical. Everyone did really well solving the problem and also showing how their cutting skills had improved.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and enjoy Lytham Club Day if you are going.

Emma

As you can see we have been extremely busy! We even managed to squeeze in some more learning!!

We are still exploring insects and arachnids (minibeasts) and have learnt that insects have 6 legs and arachnids have 8 legs. We read the story ‘Mad about Minibeasts’ and played a quiz where we had to identify images of minibeasts. Everyone was very good at this.

The children asked for both to be put on the blog, so here they are.

What Am I? Click here.

Mad about Minibeasts. Click here.

I believe this weekend the weather is going to be splendid; make the most of it!

Enjoy your time being together.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Welcome back to our final half term of the year!

Everyone was eager to get back to nursery and to see their friends and to see what we will be learning this half term.

Click on the button below to find out!

This half term is always very busy so keep a look out for texts and remember to read the blog weekly. We would not like you to miss anything.

Our learning thread ‘all about mini beasts’ kicked off this week by everyone sharing what they already knew. We then watched this short video which asked ‘What is a mini beast?’ Click here to watch at home. Maybe you could go on a mini beast hunt in your garden or at the park?

Worship

This week we have discussing ‘growth’ and what small things we can be doing in our lives that have the potential to grow and spread; what can we do more of in nursery?

In the Gospel Jesus tells us the parable of the seed that grows and the parable of the mustard seeb. The readings focus on faith, growth andhumility. The messages show God’s power to nurture and transform lives, encouraging us to trust and follow him.

Number 10

Click here to watch

This episode introduces a big idea that is fundamental to understanding our base 10 system. Ten is both ten ones and also one ten. This introduces the concept of unitising. Ten is both ten ones an done unit of ten. Young children need lots of experience of exchanging ten ones for one ten and recognising their equivalence( they have the same value). Notice the gridlines marking ten sometimes disappear, to mark the fact that she is one ten and plays a special role in other numbers that follow, e.g. 11 is one ten and one more. Wow, who knew we were learning all that!

Sports Day

Mr Cornwell has been busy planning this year’s Sports Days. This morning, for the first time in a long time, we have had a track painted on the school field. Practise is well and truly underway! Please make a note of this year’s Sports Day time and date.

Our hymn of the week is ‘This little light of mine’. Click here to sing and watch at home.

Tuesday 18th June at 1.30pm - Nursery & Reception Sports Day

As with the good old British weather, we cannot rely too much on forecasts. It is looking dry and bright this week; hopefully we will be able to get this week’s event completed. The children are always the priority and we want to ensure that they enjoy the events. If there has been rain or it is forecast, we will look at how safe the ground is for them to compete. If we need to postpone the event because of the weather, we will do so at 11am. This will give all parents the chance to rearrange work or to make plans. It has been deliberate to put the events in quickly when we have returned, just incase there was any rearranged ones needing to take place.

Just a reminder that we are collecting for The Manchester Children’s Hospital in honour of our Dominic. Please bring change with you for our collection buckets!

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone, and welcome back. I hope you all had a wonderful two weeks off.

The children have got right back into their learning and have been having lots of fun with their friends. 

We have been very busy practicing our sporting activities in preparation for sports day; throwing bean bags in the hoop, relay races and much more. The children have worked so hard with listening and understanding the rules of each of the games. It’s going to be very exciting for the children on the day.

We have started a new topic this term; we will be learning about mini beasts. The children are very excited as they already love looking for different mini beasts in the garden. We have started to look at the life cycle of butterflies and frogs. On Wednesday our baby caterpillars arrived. We have to nurture and look after them so they grow in to butterflies. We are so excited to see this happen. I'll keep you all posted. 

Keeping with this thread of learning, we have been looking at how butterflies have symmetrical wings in terms of colour, shapes and patterns. I drew a large butterfly and the children had to work out if my butterfly was symmetrical on both side of the wings. We used pom poms and coloured shaped gems and the children found it a bit tricky as my butterfly wasn't quite right, but working as a team we worked it out.

We also met number 10 this week. The children were over joyed as they have been looking forward to meeting this number. 

We worked out as a group how many 1's were in 10, and that we had 10 fingers and toes. 

Here is a ladybird counting, matching and ordering game. Have fun. Click here.

Have a lovely weekend and see you all on Monday. I wonder how big our caterpillars will have grown?

Emma

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog.

What a busy first week back we have had! I hope you all had a nice rest over half term as we are going to be busier than ever for the last half term of the school year.

We were very lucky this week to have had a visit from a lovely fluffy puppy, as one of our friends brought in their puppy to show us. We had lots of questions, like what does she eat, why do dogs chase cats and why does she have paws and not hands. We were so excited that we got to give her a stroke. She was so good, I think she really liked it at nursery. We hope she can come back and see us again.

We did have a challenge this week that our Year 6 friends had to help us with. Barbara brought back a kite from her travels and we tried really hard to get it to fly. Turns out it is really tricky to fly a kite but we did get it off the ground a little bit. We hope to keep practising until we are experts.

We also met Numberblock number 10 this week and have been trying to think of lots of different ways to make 10. Watch here.

We have really grown our brains as we work out how many ones are in bigger and bigger numbers, we even got to one billion!

We have started a new topic this half term – we will be learning all about mini beasts and have started by discussing what we know already about different minibeasts. We loved the butterflies and loved the fact that the wings are the same pattern on each side. We painted our own butterflies, making sure they were symmetrical. We then explored symmetry further with the loose parts in the garden.

We have also found time to practise for sports day which is next week, hope to see you all there.

Have a lovely weekend

Michelle

Jim Jam Jog

Don’t forget to join us for the Jim Jam Jog on Monday at 8.00am! Every Summer, 240 children, staff and parents come dressed in their pjs ready to run as many times around the school field as possible. The funds raised always go towards the development of the school; this year that is our outside area and break time equipment.

In addition, this year we wanted to help another cause. It is very important that our children are aware of their community and causes that are close to them and us. There have been a number of significant events that have really made us stop this year and reflect. We hope that this summer, we can raise money for them both.

On 15th September 2023, we lost a very dear former pupil of ours, Harrison Bretheron. In a couple of week’s time, the family and friends of Harrison will be running his 22nd mile. Harrison never made it to 22 years of age; this is their tribute to him. All money raised from the run will be donated between Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and The Firefighter’s Charity; both of which have supported many of our current and former families. So far, they have raised over £15,000 - it is remarkable. We want to do our bit as well. Please support this event as much as you can - get your pjs ready!

We will be hosting a second charity towards the end of the year which our Year 5 children will tell us all about in a few week’s time.

Finally, have a fabulous weekend and I will see you all bright and early on Monday morning.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Everything was going so well this week…the sun was shining and we were loving being warm and in the garden, then Wednesday arrived along with the rain! Never mind it saved us having to water the garden!

I must say the garden is looking spectacular. All the seeds we lovingly planted have germinated and are growing well. This week we have started to send home the childrens sunflower plants. Please encourage your child to look after them and then send us a picture when they have bloomed. We will have a little competition to see which sunflower is the tallest! No pressure!

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone,

I can't believe how fast this half term has gone. You know what they say, time goes fast when you are having fun and that's exactly what we have been doing.

Here's what we have been up to.

Mr Murray has had us working our legs in a running race, ready for Sports Day. The children were put into teams and had to compete with each other (without wandering into another teams running lane!). It was made tricky as Mr Murray changed the movements to include hopping, jumping, galloping and finally, running backwards (this was really tricky). The children really enjoyed it and are getting very excited for Sports Day. 

Everyone has been busy being bug detectives in the garden. As our garden is growing, the children are starting to notice that the bugs are enjoying our garden too.

We have been very brave, picking them up to explore them in more detail. We can't wait to see what we can find when the garden has fully grown. Here is a bug matching game for you try at home. Click here. Enjoy!

It's show time! The children have been busy putting a show on for their friends. They have been dressing up, dancing, telling jokes and singing too. It has been fantastic to see how the children's confidence has grown. The nursery ladies really enjoyed it too. 

As the worms in our wormery have had babies, we have made our own little baby worms out of string for our wormery display. I measured the children's and nursery ladies little fingers, cut the string to that size, before sticking them up onto the wall. We played a size ordering game. The children had to work out the order from longest to shortest. We noticed that some of the strings were the same size. Although we have had a wonderful time exploring our wormery, it’s time to put the worms back into our garden so the babies can grow.

Have a wonderful 2 weeks off and I can't wait to hear what you've all been up to. Have lots of fun. 

Emma

Michelle’s blog

Hello and welcome to this week’s blog.

This week has been super busy and I can’t believe we only have one half term left of this school year.

This week we have had lots of practising for Sports Day. We have been kept very active in PE, as we tried really hard with our throwing and catching. We have also had some practice on the field, running in races.

We have also been practising our writing, trying to remember to use our ‘duck fingers’ also known as a tripod grip, with lots of name writing this week.

Every day in May we are keeping a tally of how we get to school, as we hope to help the environment by walking, cycling or scooting to school. Please join in with this if you can, as good habits started now will hopefully last a lifetime.

Michelle

Worship

As you will know we have been learning about Mary and the Rosary. We have all made our own Rosary and made Rosary pictures as our nursery devotion to Mary. We have also created a small shrine dedicated to Our Lady and each day we have said the Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be.

We have also visited the school worship area to pray and Mrs Gregan has been joining us.

Jim Jam Jog

Your sponsor forms have been out going out for our annual JIM JAM JOG - a firm fixture on the school’s calendar. Every Summer, 240 children, staff and parents come dressed in their pjs ready to run as many times around the school field as possible. The funds raised always go towards the development of the school; this year that is our outside area and break time equipment. This year, it will take place on Monday 17th June at 8am.

In addition, this year we wanted to help another cause. It is very important that our children are aware of their community and causes that are close to them and us. There have been a number of significant events that have really made us stop this year and reflect. We hope that this summer, we can raise money for them both.

On 15th September 2023, we lost a very dear former pupil of ours, Harrison Bretheron. In a couple of week’s time, the family and friends of Harrison will be running his 22nd mile. Harrison never made it to 22 years of age; this is their tribute to him. All money raised from the run will be donated between Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and The Firefighter’s Charity; both of which have supported many of our current and former families. So far, they have raised over £15,000 - it is remarkable. We want to do our bit as well. Please support this event as much as you can - get your pjs ready!

We will be hosting a second charity towards the end of the year which our Year 5 children will tell us all about in a few week’s time.

Sports Day

Foundation Sports Day is being held on Tuesday 18th June at 2.00pm. All children are invited to attend this event. If it is not your childs usual day/session they are most welcome to join but they must be in nursery no later than 1.45 pm wearing shorts and trainers.

Things to do in the holidays

Purple Mash

Don’t forget there are lots of exciting learning opportunities on Purple Mash! Check to see what there is to do.

Story time

How to catch a rainbow. Click here.

Finally, I have just one thing to say…have the most wonderful half term holiday and may God send us the sunshine.

Keep safe and I will see everyone on the 10th June.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

A lovely week. We have spent most mornings learning alongside Reception and we have really enjoyed it! It was lovely to catch up with friends that we made last year and also brothers and sisters. A true learning community.

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone, 

The weather has been wet this week but it hasn't stopped us having a fun packed week of learning. 

On Monday, Mr Nays PE class was brilliant. He taught the children how to play cricket! One team of fielders and the other team ‘throwers’ of the ball. We had to run around the a set cones before the fielders retrieved the ball. It was a very competitive but in the end it was a draw.

The children have been busy decorating their t-shirts for Sports Day, we can't wait for you to see our designs, they all look fantastic.

The children have been practicing writing sounds using the sound rhymes to help them to form the letters. It's lovely seeing the children having a go, just like Tommy Turtle. 

We have some very exciting news about our wormery. They have been working hard turning their food into compost, but also, they have had babies! The children have been investigating with magnifying glasses, watching the tiny worms move in the soil. It’s all very exciting.

This week we have been rhyming words. We had a rhyme bag with lots of different rhyming objects, the children had to work out the rhyming objects. It was a bit tricky. We used things like cat and bat, fish and dish. We also played a rhyming game on the computer. The children have asked for it to go on the blog, so here it is. Have fun rhyming. Click here. 

I can't believe we only have one week left before we break up for May half term.

Have a wonderful weekend. 

Emma 

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog.

This week has been a little different as we have been able to spend some time with our friends in Reception. We did impress Mr. Nay and Mr. Murray in PE this week , as we played a team game practising our throwing and running skills.

Its been a very active week this week with lots of outside activities. We have really enjoyed going on the trim trail this week, and being very adventurous as we climb, but always keeping safe as we do it.

We have been lucky with the weather and have enjoyed outside picnics every day. We even had a picnic in the castle.

Thank you for sending in your t shirts for Sport Day. We are looking forward to showing you all our kills we have been learning and practising hard.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and we will see you next week.

Michelle

A big thank you to everyone who managed to pop in to see us on Tuesday after school. It is always lovely to see you and share your child’s achievements.

A gentle reminder to to send in a plain white t shirt to decorate in readiness for Sports Day (18th June at 2.00 pm).

Jim Jam Jog

On Monday, sponsor forms went out going out for our annual JIM JAM JOG - a firm fixture on the school’s calendar. Every Summer, 240 children, staff and parents come dressed in their pjs ready to run as many times around the school field as possible. The funds raised always go towards the development of the school; this year that is our outside area and break time equipment. This year, it will take place on Monday 17th June at 8am.

In addition, this year we wanted to help another cause. It is very important that our children are aware of their community and causes that are close to them and us. There have been a number of significant events that have really made us stop this year and reflect. We hope that this summer, we can raise money for them both.

On 15th September 2023, we lost a very dear former pupil of ours, Harrison Bretheron. In a couple of week’s time, the family and friends of Harrison will be running his 22nd mile. Harrison never made it to 22 years of age; this is their tribute to him. All money raised from the run will be donated between Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and The Firefighter’s Charity; both of which have supported many of our current and former families. So far, they have raised over £15,000 - it is remarkable. We want to do our bit as well. Please support this event as much as you can - get your pjs ready!

We will be hosting a second charity towards the end of the year which our Year 5 children will tell us all about in a few week’s time.

Ideas for the weekend!

If you happen to be at a loose end this weekend here are some ideas to do as a family.

Sound Starters Game

If it’s raining and you can’t get out and about here’s a fun (noisy) game to play indoors.

Click any of the yellow bubbles on the game to hear a random sound. Some are real sounds and others are funny sound effects. Some start off quietly and gradually get louder, some are long and some are short so there’s lots to talk about. Click here.

Phonics learning opportunities

To develop listening skills.

To describe sounds and talk about the differences between them.

To know a range of words that can be used to describe sounds.

Have fun!

Whatever the weather, enjoy just being together with loved ones.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Summer has begun…at last! We have enjoyed the sunshine as it has allowed us to use lots of water in our play and learning! It has been such fun to splash, squirt and spray everywhere!

A gentle reminder that we need your Sports Day t-shirts in as soon as possible…Health and Happiness weeks are getting close.

Worship

May-The Month of Mary

May is a very special month, as we remember Mary, the Mother of Jesus and Mother of us all. 

The whole month of May we will be learning about Mary and the Rosary. We will be thinking about Mary, saying special prayers to tell her how much we love her, and to ask her to help us stay close to her son Jesus and to try to live as Jesus shows us. 

We will also be learning the Lords Prayer and the Glory be. We have already learnt the Hail Mary and next week everyone will be making their own Rosary!

Perhaps you can pray the Rosary at home together as a family. 

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone,  

I hope you all had a lovely Bank Holiday and have been enjoying the sunshine. 

We have been in the garden every day this week and have been busy growing our brains, watching our seeds grow in the sun. The children have shown so much interest looking after everything they have planted and they especially love to water them.

Here is a fun growing activity to do at home; growing cress heads. The best thing to do once it has grown is to give your cress head a haircut and taste what you have grown. Click here.

The children have been busy in the water, using large pipettes for filling up large bottles and containers. This will help with developing the children's fine motor skills and strengthening their hand muscles. The children have also been pouring large containers of water over our wheel to make it spin. Carrying heavy objects carefully, can help the children develop balance, coordination, and strength. The children have loved the challenge. 

We have continued using our muscles in PE as we have been using the apparatus for jumping, balancing, hopping and moving our bodies in different ways across the beams. The children came up with some fantastic ways to move their bodies and some were a bit tricky too. The children have been practicing their jumping from a high platform and landing on their feet without wobbling over. Their confidence is growing, which is lovely to see.

Something different happened at one of our story times this week. Some children stood up in front of their friends to help tell the story of the Gruffalo. Using the puppet characters, the children enjoyed getting involved and told the story beautifully. Everyone was so proud. 

Here is a lovely story about a seed by Eric Carle. I hope you enjoy as much as me. Click here

Have a wonderful sunny weekend, and see you all on Monday.

Emma 

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's blog.

The weather has been glorious this week so we have found lots to do in the garden. Our sunflowers we planted from the seeds of last year's flowers have all start d to germinate. We are planning on sending them home before half term so you can grow them at home. It would be great if you could send us some pictures so we can see how big they are growing.

Preparations for sports day are well underway, Mr Murray gave us lots of practice of the fundamental movement skills in PE this week. The fundamental movement skills are running, hopping, jumping, throwing and catching. We hope you can come to Sports Day to see how well we have all improved in these skills.

We continue to work hard on our counting and number recognition. Here is a good game to practice number recognition, helicopter rescue. Click here 

We were able to go on an adventure this week and explore school while everyone was at mass in the church. We were challenged with finding a cross, a set of rosary beads and a monkey in every classroom. We had lots of fun exploring and also visited the office and the kitchen.

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week 

Michelle 

Exploring school

All the children on Thursady went to mass which left us in school alone!! We had great fun exploring all the other classrooms and shared areas in school. Can you spot where we went?

Parent ‘Drop in’ session

We will be holding our half termly drop in session on Tuesday 14th May from 3.45pm to 4.45 pm. Try and pop in to see us and look what your child has been learning about at nursery.

Eco Day

Friday 17th May is Eco Day in school! Children attending nursery on that day are invited to bring £1 and wear green! If it is not your day…choose and other day to join in.

Our Eco Warriors in school will use donations to to enhance our eco environments in and around school. Please give us your support!

Reminders!

‘Walk, Scoot, Cycle or Skate’ to school month

Help us win £50!!! Each week the class that has the least cars arriving at school will win £50 to spend on new equipment of the childrens choosing

Remember to ‘Walk, Scoot, Cycle or Skate’ to school month during May. We want to encourage all members of our school community to get involved. If you drive to school, could you park a little bit further away so that you could walk in and quieten the roads? There is the Parish Centre car park that can be used or even just further down the road. Do you have bikes or scooters in your shed that need their cobwebs brushing off?

Each day during May we are going to tally this in each class and create a whole school picture. We really are counting on you to keep our roads around school safe.

Sports Day

Foundation Sports Day is being held on Tuesday 18th June at 2.00pm. All children are invited to attend this event but must be in nursery no later than 1.45 pm wearing shorts and trainers. As in previous years each child will be designing their own t-shirt. We therefore ask if everyone can bring in a. s. a. p. as named, plain white t-shirt. We have to start early to ensure that we get them all finished in time!!

Finally, word has it that it will be a sunny weekend, please make the most of it! Enjoy your time together and make some magical memories.

As always stay safe and God bless.

Barbara

This week...

Here comes the sun! What a fabulous week. It has been so warm we have set up our BIG water play in the garden. Such fun even if we did get a bit soggy!

Our garden is now beginning to look spectacular, there is so much growing…we can’t wait to start eating everything, mmmm.

This week we managed to go on another Super Croccy mission. The Owl babies mother has gone missing and had been frozen by Ice Woman. We found her camouflaged high up in a tree, and shivering. We had to rescue her and warm her up!

Just in case you haven’t met Super Croccy…here he is!

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone,

We have had a fantastic week, we have been so busy growing our brains. 

The children have had a great time in Mr. Nay's PE class, the children really look forward to it. This week included a tricky game, and the children had to throw a tennis ball into a football net which was quite far away. Some of the children couldn't believe their eyes after their ball went into the net. Mr. Nay split the children into 2 teams and they had to throw as many balls as possible into the other teams net. It was great fun with balls being thrown everywhere. The children are really working hard on their over and underarm throwing skills. Well done everybody. 

The children have been practicing their listening skills and following instructions to the Superman, and There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden song. The children have asked if the songs can go on the blog, so here they are, enjoy! 

Click here for Superman

Click here for Wiggly Woo

Speaking of worms…something very exciting has happened to our wormery and fruit seeds. The worms have started to bury the leaves that we put in the wormery. They have been pulling them down, making more gaps and tunnels in the soil. It's amazing to see. Also, some of our fruit seeds have started to germinate. The apple seeds and the tomato seeds are coming along well but the orange seeds are yet to crack open and shoot.

The children have been busy in the garden making a snail hotel and ant farm (known as a formicarium).

The children were looking and following snail trails to find some guests to stay in our hotel. We have found around 12 snails in total, and we left some fruit outside to see if we could attract some ants but so far, we only had a few visitors. In the end, the children found more ants dotted around the garden, so in they went into their new home. 

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

See you all on Monday for another fun week.

Emma 

Michelle’s Blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog. The weather has been kinder to us this week, so we have mostly had fun in the garden, looking after our plants and seeds that we are growing. Everything has really grown so much, we are taking lots of care and giving everything lots of water to drink.

This week we have continued to watch our worms in the wormery and we decided to make our own worms out of spaghetti. They were very wormy and squirmy when we used the tweezers to try to pick them up.

Why not make your own worms at home, just soak the spaghetti in hot water with a little food colouring for your very own worms.

We read Superworm again, it’s one of our favourite stories and we started to think about how the Wizard Lizard was always telling everyone what to do and did not listen to others views. We know how important for everyone to have a voice in nursery. Sometimes when we can’t decide we take a vote…the biggest number of votes wins! We decided to watch a video about democracy on CBeebies, the Treasure Champs. Click here to watch. We voted for which story to have before lunch, maybe you could have a family vote this weekend.

As you will have seen in Mrs Gregan’s newsletter last week, the month of May is walk, scoot or cycle to school month and in nursery we are joining in too. Every day we are collated the numbers to see how many of us walk, scoot or cycle to nursery. This is a good way of keeping fit as well as being really good for the environment. Fewer cars means a better planet for all of us. We’ve only got one planet so we have to look after it.

Have a lovely weekend and enjoy the Bank Holiday on Monday,

Michelle

‘Walk, Scoot, Cycle or Skate’ to school month

The council have decided to hold a ‘Walk, Scoot, Cycle or Skate’ to school month during May. We want to encourage all members of our school community to get involved. If you drive to school, could you park a little bit further away so that you could walk in and quieten the roads? There is the Parish Centre car park that can be used or even just further down the road. Do you have bikes or scooters in your shed that need their cobwebs brushing off?

Each day during May we are going to tally this in each class and create a whole school picture. We really are counting on you to keep our roads around school safe.

Sport’s Day

Sports Day

Well done to everyone who has already sent in their t-shirts…I am impressed! Don’t worry if you have not had time we still have time.

Foundation Sports Day is being held on Tuesday 18th June at 2.00pm. All children are invited to attend this event but must be in nursery no later than 1.45 pm wearing shorts and trainers. As in previous years each child will be designing their own t-shirt. We therefore ask if everyone can bring in a. s. a. p. as named, plain white t-shirt. We have to start early to ensure that we get them all finished in time!!

Lastly, don’t forget that it is Bank Holiday this weekend so sadly there will be no nursery on Monday., but we will be back on Tuesday!

I hope the weather remains sunny and warm so we can fire up the BBQs.

Stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Such an exciting week, our seeds have started to germinate!! The children couldn’t believe their eyes. The nursery garden will look so beautiful this year.

As we have had lots of sunshine this week we have spent most of time outside tending the garden and getting our new house decorated and ready to use. The new flooring went down on Tuesday and it looks fantastic. We have new curtains and fairy lights along with some rare pictures hanging on the wall. Come and have a look on our drop in session.

Drop in session

This terms parent ‘drop in’ session is being held on Tuesday 14th May from 3.45- 4.45 pm. This is an ideal opportunity to pop in to see all our wonderful learning and have a chat with the nursery team. No appointment necessary.

Sports Day

Foundation Sports Day is being held on Tuesday 18th June at 2.00pm. All children are invited to attend this event but must be in nursery no later than 1.45 pm wearing shorts and trainers. As in previous years each child will be designing their own t-shirt. We therefore ask if everyone can bring in a. s. a. p. as named, plain white t-shirt. We have to start early to ensure that we get them all finished in time!!

We have been practising our fundamental movement skills and team games with Mr. Nay and Mr. Murray and we are getting better and better.

Getting ready for school

Click here to find out more about the skills your child will need to be school ready.

Click here for What to Expect When. This is a really useful document.

We have also been on a ‘mission’ with ‘Super Croccy’. The Big Bad Wolf was busy blowing things down and we had to catch him! We listened to the Amazing Super Hero song and decided which special super powers we may need! Click here to sing along at home, maybe you could go a secret mission too!

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s blog.

We have all had a lovely but busy week at nursery, planting more wild flowers and plants to eat. We have planted peas, beans, different herbs and also raspberry plants. We are hoping we get lots of lovely fruit and vegetables to eat.

We were very excited this week as our new house outside has had new flooring put down and we can now use it. We had a grand opening this week. It looks really fantastic, just like a real house.

We met another number this week, number nine. We worked really hard to think of different ways to make number nine. We watched numberblock number nine and it helped us to remember that nine can be made from three plus three plus three. We also practised writing number nine ‘loop and then a downward line, that’s the way to make a 9’.

In PE we have concentrated on practising our Fundamental Movement Skills, ready for Sports Day. We are getting very good at throwing, running, jumping and hopping.

We were very excited when Emma showed us the wormery and we could see that the worms had wriggled and writhed in the sand and soil. We then enjoyed an activity where we had to rescue Superworm from the Wizard Lizard and his crow. This was tricky as we couldn’t use our hands, we could only use clothes pegs. It was lots of fun, but it also turns out that using clothes pegs is a good way to exercise those muscles in our hands that we need to be wonderful writers. Here are some activities to try at home. Click here.

The weather has been great this week so we have enjoyed our time in the garden, where there were lots of superheroes. We practised our superhero jumps and runs, and of course, rescued lots of our friends who were in tricky situations. We spoke about our superpowers; everyone has their own superpower. We are all superheroes! What’s your superpower?

Have a lovely weekend everyone

Michelle

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone 

We have had a very busy and exciting week.

Firsty, some of our seeds have germinated inside and outside. We have carrot, lettuce and sunflower seedlings and now we just need lots of sun to help with the rest.

Something exciting has happened to the wormery as all of the food has gone, and there is more compost than before. The children have been helping by giving the worms some more food, and you could see that the worms have started to pull down some of the new leaves. We are very excited about the changes. 

We have been brain growing, looking at the cycle of a seed from an apple using a chain to link the cycle together. The children worked out in order of events and we all agreed that, we eat the apple, we find and plant the seed. The sun and water help it to grow. We then eat the apple and give the core to the worms for them to turn it into compost. The whole process then starts again. 

To continue our thread, learning about planting, we have been busy making spring flowers out of dough by following Dough Disco. It's a little bit tricky, but the children all did fantastic in having a go. Here is the link to practice at home, click here. Enjoy!

We became scientists this week and we wondered what would happen if we put food colouring in the water of some flowers. We used red, blue, and yellow food colouring, and the children worked out that as the flowers would drink the water, they would charge colour. And guess what, they did! We couldn't believe it. I'm sure the children will tell you all about what's happened. Click here.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone. 

 See you all on Monday 

Emma 

Meet number 9!

We met number 9 this week and the children were excited to meet another new number.

Saying the counting numbers to 9

We recognised the cardinal principle of counting that the last number counted represents the entire set of the objects counted.

Partitioning and combining to 9

We noticed that nine if formed by combining one and eight and then partitioned again.

9 and 4 are square numbers

Although the children are not formally introduced to square numbers until much later, number 9 provides us with an opportunity to look at both the structure of squares with 4 equal sides and 4 corners, and square numbers make a shape with the same number of blocks down as across. Identifying pattern and seeing structure in number is important to early maths development.

Complicated stuff don’t you think!

Click here to watch the episode.

Wow, such a busy week!! A well earned rest is deserved.

Have a fabulous weekend.

Stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Such a busy week. All our flower seeds, veggies and fruits are now planted!! It was such a mammoth task. Mrs Mather also gave us some peas and beans to plant too! If we are lucky enough for everything to grow we will be full to the brim with healthy foods!

The weather has been a bit better this week which has allowed us more time in the garden. The children really do miss being able to access both learning environments.

On Wednesday we explored what would happen if we put carrot tops in a little dish of water…would they grow….mmmm? We then watched a short video, click here. We are watching our carrot tops very closely. I have sent home an experiment sheet so you can join in at home. Let me know how you get on.

Worship

I have had a request from the children to put ‘My Lighthouse’ song and actions on the blog. We have been learning it all week in readiness for assembly on Friday. Our link class also came to visit in Wednesday to help us remember the actions. Here goes…click here for the actions and here for the song.

Our word of the week has been ‘witness’. We have been witnessing others who are sharing the news of Jesus. All the friends and nursery ladies have been spotting disciples of Christ in each other.

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone, 

We have had a fantastic week of brain growing, and lots of fun too.

Firstly, we have been busy exploring the different parts of a flower, and what helps the flower needs to grow. We found some really interesting names with one part being called the petiole, the part of the leaf which joins it to a stem or branch. Also, the flat part of the leaf is called a blade, and the children found it so interesting. The children then drew a flower on the touch screen, adding details such as nutrients and roots. Look out for the children’s wonderful creations as they bring them home.

The children have continued to plant seeds in the garden and everyone has planted a sunflower seed in their own pot. The children are working hard to make our garden look, smell and feel fantastic. I can't wait to see what it will look like once everything has grown. 

We have some exciting news too, our wormery has started to change in just 1 week. The dead leaves are starting to disappear and we can see worm tunnel. The sand and soil has started to mix together. It’s all very exciting, I will keep you updated with further changes.  

Here is a video of a wormery over 20 days (don't worry, please don't think you have to sit and watch it all day, every day. The video has been speeded up!). It’s so incredible how the amazing earth worms work so hard under the ground. Click here

The children are always so curious about finding seeds in their fruit; they say we should plant them and see what's happened. We did some exploring by cutting up some fruit with safety knives and looking for what seeds we could find in apples, pears, blood oranges, bananas naval oranges and tomatoes. We found seeds in everything apart from the pears and we couldn't understand why there weren't any seeds. Once we collected the seeds, we then diced the fruit to make a smoothie with the blender. We had it with our snack, it was delicious, mmmmm

 We are going to put the seeds in a clear bottle and see how the seeds germinate. Fingers crossed something happens to them and as always, I will keep you updated.

We have also been so busy with numbers this week, continuing to make 8 using our fingers and working out where numbers should go to be in order. Here is a game to play. Have fun! Click here.

 Have a great weekend everyone 

 Emma

Michelle

Hello and welcome to this week’s blog. T

This week we have continued learning all about worms, including reading Superworm and exploring worms. We found lots in the garden, maybe you could look for worms in your garden.

We have enjoyed playing a game looking for the vegetables with Supertato on Cbeebies. The children requested the link on the blog, so here it is. Click here

We have continued with our gardening in the sunshine and have planted sunflower seeds and more wild flower seeds. Our garden is going to look so beautiful when they bloom and we can’t wait to see all the bees and butterflies they attract.

We have been looking closely at the different parts of the flower, from roots to petals, and have used lots of different media to represent our own flowers, from the computer, to painting and collage.

We have been practising recognising all the letter sounds we have learnt so far. Some of us are getting a little mixed up with ‘d’ and ‘b’ when we see them written down. Here is Geraldine the Giraffe exploring these 2 sounds: Click here and here. Why not go on a letter hunt for ‘d’d and ‘b’ and see how many you can find in your house or when you are out and about.

We continue to practise our Fundamental Movement Skills in PE with Mr Nay and Mr Murray and we have gained more and more confidence when using the beams to balance and jump. We are concentrating on our landing, making sure we land on our feet with our legs bent.

Activities for practising jumping at home, click here.

As you will know we have worked hard at independent skills, and now the children can mostly put on their own coats and zip them up, put their shoes and socks on after PE, recognise their own name on their tray and book bag. These are all essential skills your child will need when they start school in Reception. One other important skill that children will need to master is to use a knife and fork to eat their lunch. We can only practise this with the children that have a school lunch, here at nursery, so now would be an ideal time to give your child lots of practise at using a knife and fork at home, ready for September.

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week.

Michelle

Purple Mash

I have updated the pinned learning threads in the virtual classrooms, if you have a minute take a look. Also, keep checking to see if your child’s key person has posted any activities to do. Purple Mash is a safe site and it is FREE!

Finally, I’m sure you will agree that we have been extremely busy.

Try and have a restful weekend as next week will be just as busy. Most of all make time for enjoying being together.

God Bless

Barbara

This week...

Welcome back! I hope that everyone had a lovely Easter despite the rain and the wind!

We have started our new learning thread ‘growing’. A big thank you to everyone who has donated seeds and pots. Our delivery of soil arrived just before Easter…I may have over ordered, it’s HUGE bag.

On Monday we planted carrots, meadow seeds, lettuce, tomatoes and strawberries. Now we are waiting patiently. In the meanwhile we have been discussing what will be happening under the soil and what the seeds need to thrive. Click here to watch and here to see the seeds start to germinate.

Worship

This week we explored the concept of the Trinity, where God is three-in-one and each part loves the others and loves us. We discussed how Children we are made in the image of God, we are designed to love God and love one another in our wider communities too.

Our word of the week is ‘believe’. Even though we have seen the season of Lent cumulate in Easter Sunday, and Jesus’ Resurrection, Eastertide still continues. Now ids the time to celebrate in the risen Lord; during which we are called to grow in friendship with Jesus, believe in Him, and tell others about the Resurrection. We have been learning the hymn ‘Be Still for the Presence of the Lord’. Click here to join in at home.

Emma’s Blog

Hello everyone, 

Welcome back. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. It's been lovely hearing the children telling us all what they have been up to over the holidays.

As it’s a new term and Summer is here, we have been busy planting seeds in our garden. We have planted strawberry, carrot, tomato and cucumber plants as well as wild flower seeds, and lots more. We have been working our brains and learning about how seeds germinate, and how the roots of the seed need water and nutrients to feed the plant and to help it grow from under the ground. Talking about nutrition in the soil, how does the soil gets the nutrition I here you ask? Earthworms are fantastic burrowing creatures and are the living, breathing, engineers of the underworld, eating and recycling organic matter to keep our soil healthy with nutrition ready for planting.

We also found out lots of interesting facts about the earthworm, and here is a link for you to look at: Click here to learn more.

The children have been working together to make a wormery in nursery, to see how the worms live and eat underground. The children really enjoyed looking for the worms and layering their new home with sand and soil and feeding them by leaving out dead leaves and plants on top of the soil. I will keep you all updated with how they are getting on.

We have also been busy learning our new sounds, ng, nk, qu, th, ch this week. The children are working really hard with their sounds.

See you all next week.

Emma

Michelle’s blog

Hello, and welcome to this week’s nursery blog. I hope you all had a restful and peaceful Easter and didn’t eat too many eggs.

This week we have jumped straight into our new topic of spring and growing with both feet, or should that be both wellies?

We have decided we want to grow lots of things , lots of flowers and lots of fruit and vegetable. We have spent some time planting seeds and plants with pots and compost. We keep looking but they haven’t grown yet.

Here are some fantastic spring ideas for you to try at home. Click here.

If you would like to have a go at growing at home but are short on space or time, here are some ideas for growing using vegetable scraps, click here

In PE we have continued to practise our Fundamental Movement skills of throwing, catching, jumping, running and hopping. Catching is really tricky but we keep practising. This is a skill that you could try practising with your child, as you can throw and catch anything, it doesn’t have to be a ball.

We have also continued  exploring numbers this week and have been growing our brains trying to find all the different ways we can make different numbers and also looking for numbers in the environment. When you look, they are everywhere! Which numbers can you spot?

Here is a link to some fantastic number games, including letter formation, counting and number recognition. Click here.

That’s all for now. Have a lovely weekend and we will see you next week.

Michelle

Storytime

The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle; Click here

Please look out for a seeds sequencing card game to make at home…coming home this week! Enjoy!

Lastly, it has been so lovely to see everyone back at nursery this week, ready and eager to learn. Next week…more growing! We can’t wait.

Have a lovely weekend

God Bless

Barbara