Thomas Willingale School and Nursery
Autumn Term
CELEBRATIONS
Week 5
2nd - 6th December 2024
Hanukkah and our Christmas Party
This week the children have learnt about the Jewish festival of Light, Hanukkah.
The children dressed up in traditional Jewish clothing, looked at some Jewish artefacts and found the items in a story book about Hanukkah.
The children carefully painted candles onto a menorah template and counted the candles.
The children drew pictures and wrote a letter to Santa with their Christmas wish list.
On Friday, the children had a very exciting day as we had our Nursery Christmas party.
There was dancing, party games and food, Corky the children's entertainer with puppets, magic and balloon modelling which led to many giggles and laughter!
What an amazing and exciting surprise when Santa came to visit and each child had a photograph with him as they received a present!
Next week, the children will continue to learn about Christmas and they are looking forward to telling the nativity story through songs and performing other seasonal and Christmas songs to their families.
'Father Christmas, he got stuck 'Mary had a baby, 'I'm a little Snowman, short
coming down the chimney.' yes, Lord.' and fat.'
Week 4
Celebrations
This week we have continued our learning about celebrations and introduced the children to the word Advent. As a whole class we made beautiful Advent trees the children will be given the opportunity to help count the days until Christmas.
During our creative lessons this week the children started designing and making their own Christmas T-shirts using festive sponges, paints and glitter. They will wear these when they perform Christmas songs to their families.
The children also enjoyed making long paper chains using red and green paper to make repeating patterns.
Next week the children will be learning about Hanukkah the Jewish festival of light and creating their own menorah pictures.
Celebrations
Week 3
18th - 22nd November 2024
Birthdays
This week we have been talking about our birthdays and reading the stories,
'Kipper's Birthday' and 'The Blue Balloon' by Mick Inkpen.
The children made rice-krispie cakes with Mrs May and talked about what happens to the chocolate when it gets hot and what happens when it cools down.
In our mathematics lessons the children made comparisons between sizes and ordered three different sized balloons by their sizes and used the language of size. Most children could use the words, 'big' and 'small'.
In our P.E. lessons, the children played a game called 'Sharks'. The children were little fish swimming in the sea and when the coach called out 'Shark' the children had to find a hoop and stand in the hoop. The coach had a ball and if he tapped the children they did five star jumps.
On Friday, the children and staff enjoyed coming to school with their crazy hairstyles.
Thank you to everyone who brought in a donation of chocolate for the Christmas Hamper raffle.
Next week, we will be talking about Advent and starting lots of creative activities as we begin the countdown to the Christmas celebration.
Celebrations
Week 2
11th-15th November 2024
On Monday 11th November we joined the rest of the school in a two minute silence for Remembrance Day. A few children from Apple and Pear classes joined the rest of the school on the school playground with our class poppy wreaths and cross.
The rest of the nursery children watched the 2 minute CBeebies film, 'Poppies.'
During Science Day the children used their sense of touch to feel objects and describe the different textures they could feel. They used scientific vocabulary including; hard, soft, bumpy, shiny, fluffy, smooth, rough, spiky and crinkly.
In their mathematics lessons the children have been practising careful counting of objects, saying one number name for each object as they counted them.
The children also looked at number cards to practise their number recognition of numbers up to ten.
On Friday, the children brought in toiletries for our Christmas Hamper Raffle and wore yellow or spots as it was Children in Need day. The children engaged in a variety of yellow, spotty and Pudsey Bear learning activities.
Next week, we will continue our Celebrations topic by talking about our birthdays and reading, Kipper's Birthday by Mick Inkpen.
Week Beginning 4th November 2024
Welcome back everyone! The children have been so busy this week, first we introduced the Hindu celebration of Diwali, the children explored Rangoli patterns and made beautiful Diva lamps.
On Tuesday 5th November the children used glitter, paints and cotton buds to create beautiful firework pictures. As a whole class we learnt about firework safety.
During our Understanding of the world lessons we introduced Remembrance day. Speaking about all the brave soldiers and thanking them for keeping us safe for hundreds of years. As a special tribute the children created their own individual poppy to make a class tribute and then used different materials to create a Remembrance picture, that are now proudly displayed in the Nursery. On Monday we will be taking part in the 2 minute silence as part of the whole school Remembrance assembly.
The children have also loved exploring bubbles and making pictures with 2D shapes.
Next week we will be introducing our Birthdays.
AUTUMN 2
Our topic this term is Celebrations.
Week 1
4th - 8th November 2024
Week beginning 2nd September 2024
Welcome to our Nursery, it has been lovely to meet all our children and families this week. We look forward to getting to know you all and giving the children lots of wonderful learning opportunities.
Meet Our Nursery Team
Red Apple Class: Mrs May-Townsend, Mrs Andrew and Mrs Carter
Green Pear Class: Mrs Piper, Miss Bishop and Mrs Bevan
The children have loved exploring their new learning environment and creating their first day hand print pictures which are on display in the nursery.
The children have been learning which class carpet to sit on for registration, snack time and stories. Your child will sit on either Red Apple carpet or Green Pear carpet.
Next week we are looking forward to having all the children in together, establishing routines and completing activities linked to our class story, 'The Colour Monster goes to School.'
Our topic this half term is All about Colours.
Week beginning 9th September 2024
Wow! The children have all completed their first week of Nursery. We are very proud of them. This week we have been establishing routines, finding our coat pegs, making new friends and getting to know our new teachers.
Our class text this week has been 'The Colour Monster goes to School' The children have loved listening to this story, meeting the different colour monsters and making their very own colour monster ready to display in the Nursery.
During our maths lessons this week we have introduced the colour red and enjoyed exploring finding red objects within the nursery.
We have also introduced our My Happy Mind characters Betty and Berty and started to learn the importance of our brains in helping us to learn.
Well done everyone! Next week we will be sharing the story 'The Yellow Balloon' and exploring the colours blue and yellow.
Physical Development
This week we met our P.E. coaches from UKA, Coach Jack and Coach Andrew.
We listened carefully to their instructions and practised stretching, did some exercises, ran and learnt to stop. We ended our P.E. lesson with some calming meditation.
Outdoor Learning
We had lots of fun exploring the nursery garden where we can run, jump, skip, balance, climb, swing, slide, dig and ride bikes and scooters.
Physical Development
Colours
Week 3
16th-20th September
Our story this week has been, 'The Yellow Balloon' by Helen Bird and Simona Dimitri.
This week we have been learning about the colours blue and yellow.
We have been mixing the primary colours blue and yellow to make green.
Last week we learnt the colour red.
This week we learnt about a famous artist called Piet Mondrian and looked at a piece of his artwork. We talked about the colours and the shapes we could see.
Then we had a go at creating our own Mondrian style paintings, by using red, blue and yellow paint to paint the squares and rectangles.
Next week in our nursery we will be learning about the colours green and orange.
Week beginning 23rd September 2024
Maths
This week the children have been learning about the colours Orange and Green the children have enjoyed sorting objects by colour, creating orange fish and green fish linked to our class story Orange Fish Green Fish.
Understanding The World
As the weather and seasons are changing this week the children started to explore the season Autumn. The children loved using the broccoli heads to print beautiful Autumn trees using orange, green, red and yellow paints. The children found out that when you mix red and yellow together you get the colour orange.
Fine motor skills
The children are continuing to develop their fine motor skills to start with the children chose a pattern card to trace over, focusing on their pen grip once they had finished the children then practised holding their scissors and cutting along a straight line.
Next week we will be exploring the colours pink and purple and reading the story
'Dogs Colourful Day' by Emma Dodd.
Week beginning 30th September 2024
This week the children have been enjoying exploring the colours pink and purple and the 2D shape circle. As a class the children have listened well to the story Dog's Colourful Day and using their creative skills to draw circles on their own dogs.
In Maths the children have enjoyed learning about the properties of a circle and using the circle to create pink and purple circle pictures. The children were very good at holding the circles and drawing around them several times to create their own circular patterns.
During our creative lessons the children have used lots of creative materials including paints and collage materials to create wonderful self portraits, decorated alphabet letters and autumnal animals including hedgehogs and squirrels.
Next week the children will be exploring the colours black and white and reading the story Zigby Camps Out.
Colours
Week 6: 7th - 11th October 2024
This week we have been learning the colours black and white.
Our story this week has been 'Zigby Camps Out'.
The children used scissors to carefully cut along lines on white paper to stick onto black paper to make zebra stripes.
They also tried ripping black and white paper to make zebra patterns.
The children thought of some other animals that are black and white including;
pandas, zebras, penguins and polar bears.
Our shape this week has been a triangle and our number of the week has been number 3.
The children counted the three straight sides of a triangle and sorted shapes to find the triangles. They used 3D shapes to print triangles and created character pictures with triangles.
On Friday, everyone made themselves a sandwich to eat at snack time and after spreading the butter and jam, they cut their sandwiches into two triangles to consolidate our shape of the week work.
Next week, we will be reading 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear.' Our colours of the week will be brown and grey.
Our number of the week will be number 4 and we will be learning about squares and rectangles.
Week Beginning 14th October 24
This week the children have enjoyed exploring the colours grey and brown. Our class story this week has been Brown Bear, Brown Bear and other grey and brown stories including Baby Elephant and Where's my Teddy. The children have enjoyed finding brown and Grey objects in Nursery and linking this to their learning at home.
Maths
During our daily maths activities the children have loved learning how to make number 4 using the multi link cubes and Numicon pieces and learning all about the properties of a square and rectangle. The children have then applied this knowledge to combine colours and shapes to make rectangular elephants and circular brown bears.
Creative development
During our creative lessons this week the children have loves using the different coloured brown paints to create their own observational paintings of teddy bears thinking caefully about the shapes and colours needed to create their wonderful bears.
Literacy
During our literacy lessons this week the children have enjoyed exploring the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear, using their understanding of the story the children have worked together to sequence the different elements to rebuild the story using picture cards.
Next week is our final week of colour and the children will be exploring all the colours to paint rainbows and make colourful rainbow Elmer elephants. Our class story next week will be Elmers Rainbow.
Week 8
21st - 25th October 2024
COLOURS
To finish our colour topic and to consolidate all the colours the children have learnt we read the story, 'Elmer's Rainbow' by David McKee.
The children made rainbow paperchains and painted rainbow pictures. They learnt that rainbows are visible when the weather is sunny and raining. They named the colours of the rainbow and counted the seven colours.
We also read the story, 'The Rainbow Fish' by Marcus Pfister and talked about how sharing can make you and others happy. The children made their own rainbow fish pictures by printing scales on a fish template.
In our 'My Happy Mind' lessons the children have been learning about their brains and how their brains help them to learn and do everything.
The children made their own brain hats.
The children have been talking about what they will be doing during half-term and many talked about celebrating 'Halloween.' The children enjoyed watching a science experiment with the mixing of food colouring, bicarbonate of soda, water and vinegar. This made the mixture foam and rise.
The children had a lot of fun exploring pumpkins and scooping out the pumpkin flesh and seeds.
We wish all our nursery families a happy and safe half-term.
Next half-term our topic will be CELEBRATIONS.
The children will be learning about some different celebrations and festivals including;
Bonfire night, Remembrance Day, Christmas, Diwali, Hannukah, and talking about how they celebrate their own birthdays.