Nursery Staff

Spring 2 Half Term 2022

The children have had another busy half term. Our Talk for Writing book has been “The Tiny Seed” by Eric Carle. We have been busy preparing our Nature Garden and clearing sticks. We used the sticks to enjoy wool winding and then we planted seeds and have been enjoying taking turns to water them. We also spent time planting seed potatoes.
We have been learning about celebrations and enjoyed making Mother’s Day cards and drawing pictures of our mummies. We looked carefully at daffodils and painted pictures. We also noticed how the daffodils changed over time. We enjoyed egg painting, egg rolling and a shapes Easter egg hunt and we were delighted to welcome a parent who came and talked about Easter. We have been enjoying our outside area – playing in the mud kitchen and painting on large sheets of paper.
We joined in a whole school project to share the book “We are all wonders” by R.J. Palacio. The book enabled the children to talk about themselves and others and they looked in the mirror and worked really carefully to produce a wall display of self-portraits: “We are all wonders”, which looks beautiful!
We also took part in Science Week and welcomed another parent to come and share activities which helped the children understand what a scientist does.
The children enjoyed dressing in red to raise money for Comic Relief.

World Book Day 2022!

Everyone in Queen Edith celebrated World Book Day with a whole week of events! Each year group read ‘We’re All Wonders’ written by R J Palacio.

We’re All Wonders is a text for younger readers based on Wonder and shows what it’s like to live in Auggie’s world – a world in which he feels like any other kid, but he’s not always seen that way. We discussed themes of belonging, being seen, empathy, difference and kindness. Each year group had a project that they carried out linked to this text.

Nursery painted beautiful self-portraits with the title We’re All Wonders.

Reception children wrote individual letters to Mrs Jarman telling her how they are all special.

In Years 1 & 2, children used the text to inspire them and wrote their own recipes for kindness, to create a kind person 

In Year 3, they wrote a letter from Auggie to his friends on Pluto, exploring his experiences and feelings. They started when people were mean to him, then looked at visiting Pluto, to making his first friend who saw him as a wonder.

Year 4 created a diary entry, empathising with the main character of August, revealing his emotions both before and after his first day of school. They also wrote a letter to the Plutonians to show how Auggie was feeling after making new friends.

In Later Years, pupils used both We’re All Wonders and the original story of Wonder to look at inferences within reading, family dynamics, anti-bullying targets, emotive language and diary entries. We chose one of the children from Auggie’s school tour and wrote as one of them, framing our writing from a different perspective, not that of the protagonist. Some chose Julian, the school bully; Charlotte, the friendly but self-obsessed drama fanatic, or Jack Will, the friendly boy who sees with kindness and becomes Auggie’s best friend.

Our Book Fair was a huge success with us receiving ‘rewards’ per class for books to choose for our book shelves and also ‘rewards’ for us to spend on widening our representation of texts. Thank you to all who bought books and, in turn, supported the school!

Spring Term 2022

This half term, children in nursery have enjoyed learning about the Lunar New Year. They enjoyed sharing noodles and using chopsticks, exploring Chinese writing and playing a money game with numbers. We shared stories and watched children enjoying Lunar New Year celebrations. Children also enjoyed playing drums and dancing a dragon dance together.

Our learning has been focused on the story of The Train Ride by June Crebbin. Children have enjoyed making model trains and painting large boxes to make our own train for our role play station.

Children have enjoyed a range of train stories and information books, they have made a story map and retold the story using our story stones. They made sandwiches and talked together about journeys they had been on themselves. They made their own train tickets and made marks. They also painted beautiful pictures for our Train Ride display.

Autumn Term 2021 – Nursery

Children in nursery have had a busy term. Our new children have settled really well and the children re-joining us have enjoyed making lots of new friends.

Our Talk for Writing stories this term are: Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell and the traditional tale of the Little Red Hen.

Children have enjoyed a range of activities focused on these stories. In our learning around Dear Zoo, the children have been making a story map, learning the story with actions, painting animals, sharing information books about animals and they brought toys from home to talk about for our animal show and tell week.

We have also been learning about the season of autumn and the children have enjoyed exploring autumn resources, planting bulbs in our Nature Garden and going on lovely walks in our school field to look for signs of autumn.

In our learning for the Little Red Hen, children have been making a story map, learning the story, exploring flour and water, mark making in flour and making bread rolls. They also shared lovely ideas to re-write the story with a Christmas theme, which they performed, along with other songs and poems, at our Christmas celebration.

Children have enjoyed learning about Diwali and Christmas and have been busy making Christmas cards and chocolate muffins to take home at the end of term.

Communication and Language and Literacy – Autumn 2021

Communication and Language is one of the Prime Areas in the Early Years Foundation Stage and many of our children are learning English as an additional language.

Children in Nursery listen to stories during each session and we spend time talking about the story together. They are learning to talk about what has happened in the story and this is helping them to use longer sentences and to respond to questions.

Children also enjoy daily singing and rhyme times. They love learning new songs and enjoy songs with actions and playing ring games.

We place importance on talking and conversation – talking to adults or friends and listening and responding appropriately. New vocabulary is learnt through activities such as playing games in small groups, gardening and planting bulbs, cooking or on seasonal walks. Children are encouraged to talk and share ideas with each other in our group times and to share news from home at fruit time or in our regular themed show and tell sessions.

We use our Book Corner and our displays to encourage conversation by displaying items for children to explore together.

Children enjoy our role play areas both inside and in our nursery garden. This play helps them to learn to use appropriate conversation in a variety of settings.