Thomas Willingale School and Nursery
Spring Term
Week beginning 4th January 2024
Welcome back to Nursery everyone! We hope you all had a lovely Christmas break. The children have come back to school eager to learn and ready to start our new topic 'Healthy Living.' To introduce our new topic, the children have started to talk about foods they enjoy eating and foods they are not keen on. They have enjoyed looking at a range of different fruits and vegetables, naming each one and sorting them into groups.
We have set up a new role play area for the children called the 'Nursery Shop.' The children have enjoyed helping us to set this up and they have begun to take on roles pretending to buy and sell food and other products.
Next week, we will be introducing the first of our five senses, exploring the sense of smell with the children. We will be introducing the letter sound 's' and reading the story 'Lulu's Lunch.'
Week Beginning 8th January 2024
The children have been very busy this week in nursery. They have enjoyed starting to explore our five senses beginning with the sense of smell. The children had to identify each smell, they then recorded their favourite smell to create a class graph.
In Literacy this week the children have practised developing their fine motor skills and we have introduced the letter sound s, identifying objects beginning with s, practising forming the letter correctly and then creating a class mind map of ideas.
In Maths this week our focus has has been the number 6, the children have created beautiful snowflake pictures counting six snowflakes whilst they worked. To complete our learning this week the children have enjoyed making their own balanced lunch boxes containing a range of snacks and food they like to eat for lunch, linking to our story Lulu's Lunch.
Next week the children will be exploring the story Oliver's Vegetables, the sense of sight and the letter a.
Week beginning 15th January 2024
What a wonderful busy week we have had! There has been lots of lovely learning opportunities including counting sets of objects and practising writing our numbers in our Maths lessons and using different fruits and vegetables to create beautiful repeating patterns.
The children are enjoying our daily phonics lessons and are beginning to identify the initial sound in words. This week we have been focusing on the letter sound a and identifying words that begin with a and not a.
Also this week we have explored another of our five senses - sight, the children have enjoyed looking closely at objects using the magnifying glasses, binoculars and mirrors to describe what they can see. This has also enhanced the children's vocabulary greatly. In our Nursery entrance we have displayed some of the children's wonderful work on food. The children are really enjoying this topic and this can be shown in the wonderful work they are producing.
Next week we will be exploring the letter sound t and our sense of touch and we will be exploring a range of non fiction texts and poetry about food.
Week beginning 22nd January
We have had a sensetastic week sharing non fiction books about our senses. We have explored the sense of touch. Each child completed a fun sensory walk through different textures, developing their spoken language as they explored.
Our sound of the week is 't' and we have been finding and naming objects around the nursery starting with this sound, as well as sorting objects into groups according to their sound. The children are getting very good at distinguishing between initial sounds. Their letter formation has also been phenomenal.
In maths, we have been counting out eight objects and identifying the numeral 8. We have also been matching and naming our 2D shapes, including hexagon.
Aside from this, we have been using our sense of sight to make observational paintings of teddy bears, also thinking about how this links to our sound of the week.
The children are enjoying their weekly P.E. sessions with Coach Adam, focusing on tennis skills and in music the children have been introduced to the word tempo, learning about fast and slow.
Next week, our main story will be 'Handa's Surprise.' which will reinforce previous learning on sequencing and types of fruit. We will also be taste testing, including some of the fruits from the story.
Week Beginning 28th January 2024
This week the children have been very busy learning all about their taste buds, eating a range of different foods to see if they could identify different tastes including sweet and sour. In our daily phonics lessons, the children have been exploring the letter sound p naming objects and making great progress in their writing skills.
Handa's Surprise has been our class reading book this week. Through our creative activities the children have made their own fruit baskets and have extended their vocabulary by talking about the different fruits they like to eat and why.
We are finishing the week by taking part in Number day, completing lots of number activities to consolidate and enhance their understanding of number to 10 and beyond.
Next week we will be making delicious healthy pizzas, practising our spreading and chopping skills and introducing the letter sound i.
Wk beginning 5th February '24
This week, we have been continuing our learning on our senses and keeping healthy, reading related non-fiction books to broaden our learning, as well as reading lots of stories too. We have focused on the sense of sound and have had lots of fun listening to familiar sounds and trying to guess what they are!
We also had an exciting start to the week when we got to make pizza, choosing our own toppings from a selection of sweetcorn, red or green pepper, black olives and spring onion. They were delicious! During our daily phonics lessons we have explored the letter sound i naming objects beginning with the initial sound including igloo and insect and developing our writing skills further practising forming the letter i correctly.
To end our week we have introduced the lovely celebration of Chinese New Year, the children have learnt about Chinese writing and have created beautiful banners using black, gold and red paints.
Next week we will continue to develop our understanding of Chinese New Year, celebrate Pancake day and continue our phonics learning with the letter sound n.
Week beginning 12th February '24
It has been a very eventful week with the celebrations of Chinese New Year, Pancake Day and Valentine's Day all in one week. We have done lots of related learning and craft making. We now also have an amazing Chinese restaurant in our role play area, which the children have loved playing in.
We have also been reinforcing our numbers to 10, looking at numerals, counting to 10 in different ways, including different parts of our body. Our sound of the week has been 'n,' and we have done lots of related activities and games linked to this.
We are now ready for half-term and wish all our nursery children a well deserved rest. We hope that you have lots of fun, and we look forward to sharing any pictures that you have linked to your break on Tapestry when we are back.
Week Beginning 26th February 2024
Welcome back everyone! We hope you all had a restful and enjoyable half term. The children have been excited to return to Nursery and begin our new topic all about Life cycles. This week we have introduced the life cycle of a butterfly through stories such as The very hungry Caterpillar and Caterpillar's wish.
The children have enjoyed creating their own caterpillars using cylinders to print caterpillars similar to the one from The Very Hungry caterpillar. They have also been introduced to the concept of symmetry and have used a range of different coloured paints to create their own beautiful butterflies.
The children have also noticed flowers growing in the Nursery garden, we discussed seasonal changes and created beautiful flower and blossom tree pictures to show that Spring has sprung.
In our maths lessons we have started to compare quantities saying which group has more and which group has less in. The Children have continued their phonics lessons and are enjoying learning all their letter sounds.
Next week we will continue our life cycles topic by introducing planting and growing seeds.
Wk beginning 4th March '24
This week, we have continued observing signs of spring and have started to look at the parts of a plant. We have carried on with our learning on life cycles, using books to reinforce our learning. Our sound of the week was 'd' and we did related activities to this, including craft activities to make a duck, duckling and a daffodil.
On Thursday, it was World Book Day and children were happy and relaxed, celebrating with their friends and older members of the school, who came to share stories with us. Children also enjoyed making book marks and drawing, colouring and sticking familiar story characters.
In maths, we have reinforced more,less and the same, and we have also shared counting stories and songs.
As it is Mother's Day on Sunday, we also made cards and read stories about mummies.
Next week, our sound of the week will be 'o.' We will be doing lots of planting!
Week Beginning 11th March 2024
This week the children have enjoyed reading different versions of the story Jack and the Beanstalk, they especially enjoyed watching a musical rendition of the story using a range of instruments. We have been very creative this week making lovely spring lambs, and painting beautiful pictures of daffodils and showing off our writing skills drawing our Mummy and practising our letters sounds and names.
As part of our Understanding the world topic growing the children have enjoyed planting their own seeds to watch grow and learning all about the life cycle of a plant including the vocabulary roots, shoots, grow, stem, leaves and flower. The children showed an excellent understanding of this topic through recalling their understanding whilst reading the story The Tiny Seed.
Next week we will continue our life cycle topic with a special reptile visit from Mrs Rattee and we will be matching and naming mummy and baby animals to enhance our vocabulary further. The children are very excited to see the reptiles on Monday.
Week Beginning 17th March 2024
We have had such an exciting and busy week in Nursery, Monday was an amazing day filled with lots of hands on reptile experiences. The children loved learning all about the Ball snakes, Yoda the Tree Frog, Rex the Bearded dragon, Sid the Chameleon, Gus the Crested Gecko and Herbie the Tortoise. We have been very creative this week creating beautiful painted Easter eggs.
We have continued our phonics learning with the letter o and have reinforced our understanding of mummy and baby animals using the story Monkey Puzzle and matching mummy and baby animals together. In Maths this week the children have loved exploring measuring finding objects that are longer or shorter than a meter ruler.
Finally the children are very excited to see that their sunflower seeds have started to grow! What a busy fun week we have had.
Next week we are looking forward to seeing Peter and Benjamin bunnies.
Week beginning 25th March 2024
we have had a busy but short week this week. The children have loved meeting Mrs May's animals this week and they have especially enjoyed hunting for Easter eggs in the nursery gardens and exploring the Easter sensory tray.
We hope you all have a lovely restful Easter and we look forward to seeing you all back in Nursery on Monday 15th April where we will be starting our new topic all about homes and buildings.
Happy Easter everyone!
