March - June 2023

Wednesday June 7th:

Art Exhibition
We welcomed parents and carers to an informal display showcasing a range of the creative work that the children produce in nursery, including woodwork, junk modelling, and pictures and patterns created using a variety of media. Different techniques on display included painting with string and balls, printing, collage, pastel and paint work.
For anyone who couldn't make it, the artwork is also pictured below.

Numeracy: fractions

Learning about fractions by cutting and dividing play dough

Outdoor Numeracy

Literacy: making lists to inspire letter formation

Art Experiments - trying out a pointillism technique using cotton buds and fingertips

Scientific Experiments with gradients outdoors

Interactive Outdoor Literacy and Transient Art

Out in the Meadow, surrounded by nature, some children took part in the story of Twig Man and how he keeps stories of the forest alive through his friends - the Fairy Folk.
This is part of the Forest Kindergarten initiative to promote Literacy and Creativity.

Afterwards the children were given a wide range of natural materials to inspire Transient Art and to make the face of Twig Man and a head adornment for him.

Science - Exploring our Senses:
The children have had great fun exploring taste, smell and touch, as they learn all about their Five Senses.

Sense of taste: comparing sweet, bitter and salty.

Sense of touch

Sense of smell: comparing, contrasting and describing different smells - spices, perfumes, herbs...

Sensory Treats:
exploring our senses further through scented playdough and natural objects

Great inventions and constructions in the Block Play Area.

Mark Making in the sunshine - the never-ending fascination of water.

Repotting our growing plants.

Community Mural: Some of our nursery children were keen to help paint a Nature Mural in the school playground, putting their artistic talents to great use in order to contribute to their community. "I'm doing the poppies."

Adding some yellow lilies

"Can I do another swan?"

Still Life Fruit: One of our artists asked to draw a pineapple, which led to her and lots of other children creating Still Life pictures of fruit, using pastels and oil pastels. They learned how to blend the pastels by rubbing their fingers over them, and they enjoyed the bright colours of the oil pastels.

"I'm doing oranges."

"This is a pineapple and this is a butterfly."

"This is two apples."

Health & Wellbeing

Reading "Ruby's Worry" together

Each morning we can check in with how we are feeling using our Feelings Spoons, Feelings Books and Feelings Characters.

Enjoying picnic fruit snack in the spring sunshine.

"It's our tent on the beach!"

Green Fingers: we have been learning lots about different plants and vegetables and how they grow.

The children were eager to help prepare the soil and then plant potatoes in our Vegetable Patch.

Investigating different kinds of plants, comparing and contrasting.

What fruit and flowers will grow on these plants...?

Taking care of plants

Sensory Garden: Feel how soft the lamb's-ear is... Smell and taste the mint and chives...

We also had a very interesting visitor to the sensory garden...

With the help of our kind volunteer gardener, Gill, the children have been planting marigolds and other plants in the Side Garden of their Nursery.

Budding Authors & Illustrators

Several children have been keen to try making their own books, drawing fantastic illustrations and making up a storyline page by page.
"The Unicorn splashed in the pool. Then she saw a spider and she ran away from it. She digged a hole and the spider fell into it."

New titles in our collection include a book about a Unicorn and several stories with flowers as the central protagonist.

"This is the dragon coming, and the dragon wants to be friends with the flower. They played games with a dice and a magic coin."

Numeracy: Treasure!

Investigating different coins and their value in the sand.

Making coin rubbings

Busy Bakers making scones to share

Blossoming Artists: creating large scale art
After looking at pictures of blossom we were talking about what we had seen.
"I've got apple blossom in my garden."
"I have a tree in my garden with poison ivy going all the way up it and now it's turning to blossom."
The children were given large canvases, paints and a variety of mark-making tools along with glue and collage materials, and together we created a frieze of a blossom tree. Next several children wanted to create their own individual pieces, which included more giant trees and a castle, painted and printed entirely independently. Fantastic work!

"We've mixed the pink."

"I'm sticking blossom."

"I want to do blue."

"I want to do my own tree."
Using corks to print blossom

Colour experiments

"This is a castle."

Playing imaginatively with some fruit boxes led on to a productive day of Junk Modelling, using a variety of other recycled materials. Items created by the children included "a fridge", an electric light, a camper van, a sea creature and binoculars.

"We're making a camper van. We'll go to Torquay in it."

"That's the electricity wire going all the way up to the light."

Great focus and dexterity to create this symmetrical design, with paper straws and lollipop sticks.

Celebrating the King's Coronation!

We helped to make sandwiches! Spreading the butter and choosing the fillings.

Pouring and Measuring

Spreading

Baking and decorating the coronation cake!

Enjoying our snack!

Sandwiches

Strawberries

Scones

Clay Crowns!

Snack time!

We are helping prepare snack for our friends. We need to wash our hands, and use a knife and chopping board.

Yummy, we're having grapes, bananas and oranges today!

Well done everyone, you are developing fine motor and life skills using a knife and cutting fruit. You are becoming more independent and learning new skills.

Let's slice the banana

What do we do now? Let's get the trolley ready and start putting the plates on.

You are being responsible and using our knives safely while slicing the banana

I'm being very careful putting the plates on the trolley

Now it's time to push the trolley in -
snack is ready everyone!

Storytelling fun

The children chose to explore star books after being inspired by one of their friends talking about the infinite number of stars in the sky. This sparked their interest and led to retelling Oliver Jeffers 'How to Catch a Star' story, with their own personal touch!

We chose our own characters and decided how to overcome the problem -
how can we catch a star?

Exploring science and
rhyming words

We drew the story in stages using symbols to retell it. What fantastic skills!

high / sky
jet / net
balloon / moon

can you think of any more?

We listened to and closely observed the story.

Wonderful storytelling and problem solving!

How would you catch a star?

Developing our gross motor skills with 'Touch the Stars' song.

We counted in rounds of 8 beats with a steady marching action

Touch, grab, throw!

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

A Big Thank You to everyone who joined us for our successful STEM week! The children had a wonderful time developing their knowledge and skills, and enjoyed sharing their fun experiences with family members.