Seasonal Changes

It was wonderful to see the children return after the half term break full of enthusiasm and tales of their activities! We dived straight into our new topic in Nursery, which is ‘Autumn Adventures’ this term and we have begun learning all about this special season, using our senses to notice the changes it brings. We have been thinking about Autumn colours and observing the leaves changing from green to brown, orange, red and yellow and noticing that some trees lose their leaves and some are evergreens. We have talked about the change in weather and about how animals survive the change in seasons. We collected pine cones and made bird feeders, enjoying watching the change in the lard as it turned from a solid to a liquid. 

Hedgehog bread

After learning about hedgehogs, the children channelled their inner Paul Hollywood and were really engaged when making their fantastic hedgehog bread rolls! This involved many key skills including weighing, measuring, counting, following instructions, fine motor control, and the use of lots of rich vocabulary such as recipe, ingredients, mixing, kneading, texture, and dough. We hope they enjoyed eating them as much as they did making them!

Firework Activities

We are sure many of the children will be enjoying some Bonfire night celebrations this weekend. We have been learning about how to stay safe around bonfires and when holding sparklers and focused on our listening skills with a bonfire night ‘sounds’ story. The children had to listen carefully and think about what the sound we could hear might be e.g. someone zipping up a coat, crunching leaves underfoot, a crackling fire, a sparkler hissing etc. Listening to sounds is a core component of phonics and identifying environmental sounds supports the development of children’s phonemic awareness. The thread of fireworks ran through many of our activities this week and the children have used their creativity and fine motor skills to make some wonderful firework paintings, 3D rockets and dotted firework patterns, as well as creating lolly stick firework pictures which supports their understanding of spatial reasoning.

Leaf Man

Our 'Autumn Adventures' activities have been focusing on fine motor skills which play a crucial role in children’s overall development, enabling them to perform essential everyday tasks and fostering independence. Activities such as rolling play dough, threading, dot painting with cotton buds, using scissors and clothes pegs all support the development of small muscle movements in the hands and wrists which are vital for growth across various areas of learning and underpin the skills needed for control when writing. We have enjoyed sharing lots of Autumn themed stories including ‘Leaf Man’ by Lois Ehlert and were inspired to collect leaves like the author to make our own leaf man.

Remembrance Day 

On Remembrance Day, the children learnt all about why we acknowledge it as a special day and did lots of poppy themed activities following a discussion about the significance of poppies. During prayer time we remembered people who had died and we were incredibly impressed with the maturity and respect the children showed when taking part in the 2-minute silence with the rest of the school.