January 2026

Happy New Year!

What a first week back at nursery, We have had snow and ice, which we enjoyed out on the field making footprints in the snow and finding different shapes in the ice.

We all helped paint a giant snowflake.

There was a sensory activity in the water tray using oranges and lemons to explore our senses of touch and smell. We  have been practising our fine motor skills by using scissor skills cutting out shapes also using tweezers and scope grabbers to pick up pom pom's. We had a fun in a winter tuff tray learning what animals live in cold climates while Mrs Deacon read us a story. Outside learning children where turn taking and sharing putting balls through a basketball hop, building a bug house and sharing knowledge what wild animals eat. We celebrate RSPB big garden birdwatch, where we learned about what kind of birds visit our nursery garden the children did some grate mark making by ticking of the birds we seen on our checklist chart. We did a spot off cooking where children made chocolate rice cake bird nests with Mrs Symons the children had a great understanding that when we had to warm up a bar of  chocolate for it will melt to make it easy for us to mix in the rice crispy's. We did lost of expressive art and design activities where we made bird  masks using different coloured feathers, we also did Owl baby's where we use different tolls and materials to get the perfect texture for our pictures. As our topic is winter we talked about what birds like cold weather. We also did great size comparing when we used different size heart shape to make a penguins. The children had great fun making our bird feeders we mixed lard and bird seeds together the push the mixture into the moulds and piped the in the fridge too hard. We took a walk done to the school woodland area where the children chosen a perfect tree to hang the feeder. We sat very quietly in  the outdoor classroom to watch the birds visit the woods.

December 2025

We started the festive season by decorating our Christmas tree. The story of the week was "The Christmas Pine' and we watched "My First Christmas on CBeebies.
In our 'White Christmas' area we set up our Nativity figures and read 'My First Nativity'.
Using Christmas tree hand prints we made some lovely cards for our families. We had fun on a Christmas decoration hunt around the school and picked out some lovely Christmas story books from the library.
Using offcuts from the class tree, we made clay decorations, adding gems to make them sparkle.
Everyone made a snowman and used ties and different shapes to decorate them.
There was a reindeer food tuff tray and everyone filled a bag to take home ready to sprinkle on Christmas Eve for Santa's reindeers.
We had a Christmas jumper day and a Christmas party with festive music and plenty of bubbles.

November 2025

Our role play are has been transformed into a 'hedgehog hospital' as we have been learning about hedgehogs and hibernation.
We looked at different types of fireworks and created pictures using cardboard tubes to re-create exploding fireworks.After watching a CBeebies "My First Festival' programme on Bonfire night, we discussed how to keep safe around fireworks. Using pretend sparklers we practised how to handle sparklers safely.
In the tuff tray we practised matching numerals and quantities.
We learnt about Remembrance Day, decorating poppy biscuits to practise fine motor skills. We also did some poppy stamping and, using rose petals, we made our own poppies to take home. We watched 'Poppies' - a CBeebies animation designed especially for young children to observe the two minute's silence.
Children in Need was celebrated with a fine motor skills tuff tray activity and the children painting spots onto the 'Pudsey' pictures using cotton buds.'Pudsey's Great Fundraiser' was our featured story book.
We took part in learning about road safety. We learnt all about colours on a traffic light and zero crossings using the wiggle bikes to help us in our role play.
When we had a light dusting of snow we went out on the field to enjoy it!

October 2025

As we entered Autumn we changed our seasonal area over  to a lovely woodland scene complete with woodland animals, books and poems. Our first story focus of the month as voted by the children was 'The Gruffalo'. We enjoyed getting messy in a 'Gruffalo Crumble' tuff tray where the children used various tools to scoop, crush and mix oats. The children were able to recount much of the story and used their knowledge of the book to complete sequenced story boards using the scenes and characters. Using chocolate scented playdough and loose parts we made some recognisable Gruffalo models, choosing the correct coloured parts for his features.

Outside we observed the changes happening in the natural world and looked for signs of Autumn. We supported our understanding of the seasonal changes reading books such as 'The Leaf Thief' which tells us about the life cycle of an oak tree through rhyme and beautiful illustration. We gathered natural objects from around the school grounds and used the conkers to develop our hand eye coordination and fine motor skills. We used dried leaves, along with coloured film to make squirrel sun-catchers. We then waited for some Autumnal sun to beam it's light through the windows to make the squirrels shine.

As we approached half term we celebrated Diwali and made some colourful Diyas lamps to take home. We also learnt about how Hindus celebrate the Festival of Light. We decorated paper hands in a Mendhi style, learnt about Rangoli patterns and used natural objects to make our own circular and repeating patterns. We also explored our own fragrant Spice station, using our sense of smell to find out about different spices.

We ended the month with some Halloween fun, making our own mixtures in our Witches Potion area, dressing up and making our own natural magical wands.

September 2025

We returned from the Summer holiday with lots of new friends starting nursery. The first few weeks we focussed on settling the children into their new environment and encouraging new friendships. Once the children were comfortable in their nursery surroundings, we ventured further into the school, familiarising ourselves with the wider school facilities, including the library, woodland area and the hall where we enjoyed riding the wiggle bikes.

We played lots of games that promoted sharing and turn taking. Our favourite was 'Pop Up Pirate' which helps develop turn taking, patience, colour recognition and fine motor skills.

Our first story focus' of 'Anyone Can Be My Friend' and 'All Are Welcome' celebrated new friendships and our similarities and differences. We spoke about our own uniqueness and looked in mirrors to talk about our appearances. We then made mini figure collages carefully selecting materials that looked like our own features. Following on from the children's interests, we also read lots of Elmer the Elephant stories which gave us an opportunity to practise our colour recognition. We then worked together to create a giant Elmer, exploring different printing tools to make various paint effects. As we said goodbye to Summer, we looked at the changes happening outside. We found apples growing on the trees which we picked and then had great fun rolling them down ramps to see whose was the fastest. We then used the apples to print with and made some wonderful masterpieces. We also used them to help with our counting and used weighing scales to compare and balance and to predict which side was heaviest/lightest.