We have had lots of fun listening to all their news in the Home/School Journals during snack time. It’s always such a lovely social time for the children to talk about the special times they have had with their families and friends.

It has been a very sticky week this week in Nursery, listening to our story about a little boy called Stanley who has some amazing times and some wonderful adventures with his special stick! His imagination is fantastick... from using the stick as a whistle to being a stickasaurus and making a pretend fishing rod with his friend Bertie. 

After all the rain on Monday morning we went on a soggy walk to the paddock on a stick hunt where we not only found lots of sticks but also lots of worms too! Luckily, the rain had stopped but the sticks we found were very wet and muddy so we took them back to Nursery to dry them out before making our very own stick wands on Wednesday.

This week, the children have been looking at lolly stick shapes to make patterns. They carefully looked at the stick patterns and chose the appropriate colours to make their own patterns on the paper. The children were fabulous at naming some of the 2D shapes they could see and counting how many sticks they needed for a square or a triangle.

One of our favourite activities this week has been threading Cheerios onto a stick. There has been some amazing counting as the children carefully put each one onto the sticks and, of course, lots of crunching and munching the Cheerios for a tasty snack. We are going to make cheese sticks on Friday by rolling out pastry and adding lots of delicious grated cheese!

We all had so much fun when we went on a stomping stick walk with the long sticks which were taller than the children! As we walked up to the back playground, we used our sticks to stomp onto the ground and the drain covers to listen to the different sounds which we made. We even dragged our sticks along the metal fences to hear the clanging sounds and stomped our sticks in the puddles to make splashes! Once on the playground, we tried to hold our stomping sticks in one hand to make them balance which was so tricky! Next, we twirled our sticks around to make giant circles. We sang If You’re Happy and You Know it Stomp your Stick and the children were amazing at making giant squares and triangles with the sticks by remembering how many sides each of the shapes have. We then used the sticks to make the letters F and H by laying the sticks correctly on the ground. And finally we sang Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, We’re Going to the Moon and used our stomping sticks as rockets counting down from ten to one and zoomed back to Nursery! Just like Stanley in our story. we had so much fun with our fantastick sticks!

We have noticed some beautiful spring flowers growing in our flower and herb garden. Some irises and a few daffodils are also nearly in flower - we are excited to see that spring is finally arriving in the Nursery garden!

On the interactive board this week, the children have been looking at the letters s, a, t and p by popping the bubbles on the screen with their fingers. They have been doing super listening to the initial sounds as they popped each of the bubbles. 

This week in Nursery, we have introduced a kindness jar. When the children show an act of kindness towards their friends, they can choose a coloured heart stone to place into the jar. Our new kindness jar encourages the children to show acts of kindness towards their friends, reinforcing positive behaviour, social skills and empathy. At the end of the week, we will count how many hearts we have in the jar and recall the acts of kindness we have shown during the week.

The children have been amazing at peeling carrots this week! After putting on a glove for safety they carefully held the peelers and pushed the peelers along the carrots away from their hands showing amazing control and confidence using the peelers. And, of course, they enjoyed a munch on the delicious crunchy carrots saying that they would be able to see in the dark! We thoroughly recommend their culinary skills to help you prepare dinner this week.

On Wednesday, we were very lucky to be invited by Mrs Curling to watch the big children perform a gymnastics display! The children were absolutely incredible demonstrating their balance and coordination skills and the Nursery children are now very keen to be able to perform some of these moves when they are older.

We have had a fun time in music with Ms Norford this week, choosing our own choice of song from her song box and playing and listening to the different sounds on the xylophones. We have also had lots of fun with the big children who come and play with us during our lunch breaks.

We are excited about celebrating Book Week in Nursery next week and we would love the children to bring in their favourite books from home to read together during the week.