Nursery - Chestnut
Welcome to Nursery!
We will use this page to share information about out topics and activities. It is a great way to start conversations with your child about what they are learning and who they like to play with.
Autumn 1, Weeks 2 and 3
We have really enjoyed welcoming our new starters to Nursery. We have created a 'Kindness Garden' to celebrate examples of kind hands and friendly faces.
Welcome back to Nursery! September 2017
It has been lovely to welcome back our returning Nursery children this week. Everyone has enjoyed exploring the new Outdoor Area and we are looking forward to welcoming our new starters.
Summer 2, Week 3 - Dinosaurs
Tyrannosaurus Rex
Summer 2, Week 2 - Dinosaur Park
The children built a Dinosaur Park in the outdoor area. They were very busy buying and selling tickets, cooking for and feeding the dinosaurs, taking visitors on guided bike tours and even being the dinosaurs themselves!
Summer 2, Week 1 - Election
Nursery held an election to decide which dinosaur story to read. Everyone had a 'ticket' to represent their vote. The children placed their ticket next to their choice of book. When everyone had voted, the children lined up the tickets to see which book had most votes.
Summer 1, Week 6
We made the most of the sunny weather and set up our model village in the outdoor area.
Summer 1, Week 5
The children are working on lots of different buildings for our model village. Some of their drawings and plans are on display in the classroom.
Summer 1, Week 4
Nursery Maypole.mp4
Summer 1, Week 3
We found an empty eggshell in the outdoor area. Mrs Jameson asked:
What do you think hatched out of the egg?
We used Google images to find pictures to match everyone's ideas. Then we looked at pictures of eggs. We identified our egg as belonging to a wood pigeon. That makes sense: when we were bird-spotting last half-term, we counted lots of wood pigeons around Nursery.
Summer 1, Week 2
Many of our activities this week have been inspired by The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Photos to follow!
Summer 1, Week 1
It has been lovely to see everyone back in Nursery after the school holiday. All the children enjoyed seeing their friends and took advantage of the warmer weather to build dens in the outdoor area and practise egg-rolling down the slide.
Spring 2, Week 6
These fabulous chicks are to wish everyone a very Happy Easter!
Spring 2, Week 5
Some of the children in big school had a visit from some firefighters... and Nursery had an impromptu visit to the fire engine! It was a very exciting afternoon.
Spring 2, Week 4:
We read 'Oliver's Fruit Salad' and watched a Makaton video about making fruit salad. Then we were all ready to make some fruit salad of our own.
Spring 2, Week 3:
After reading the Charlie and Lola book "I really absolutely must have glasses", the children made some funky and fun glasses of their own...
Spring 2, Week 2:
Shrove Tuesday
It has been a very exciting week in Nursery. We celebrated Shrove Tuesday with a Mardi Gras parade…
World Book Day
On World Book Day, many of the children (and adults!) came to school dressed as their favourite characters. In the morning, we had a parade and then some Y6 pupils joined us and spend a wonderful half-hour reading stories and sharing books with individual children. In the afternoon, we mixed with Reception to enjoy more stories and then we visited the mobile library.
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Spring 2, Week 1: Hospital
The children worked with Miss Hurst to create a hospital in the role-play area. The children have been very busy working as doctors, nurses and receptionists. Babies have been delivered, injections given and many limbs wrapped in bandages! When Mr Roycroft gave Nursery a very big delivery box, the children worked together to turn it into an ambulance. Whilst the paint dried, everyone dressed up in medical outfits and then set off on a 'nee-naw' tour to see whether anyone needed any help.
Spring 1, Week 6: Lost and Found
We returned to some characters that the children have loved reading this half-term: the boy and the penguin. We retold the story of 'Lost and Found' and asked, "What if the penguin didn't have an umbrella?" The children investigated floating and sinking as they explored their ideas of things the penguin could have used.
Spring 1, Week 5: Dark and light
The most popular activity this week was building and playing in a dark 'cave'. On Monday, it was the home of a monster. On Tuesday, it was the Bear Cave - home of the Big Bear and Little Bear hand puppets. On Wednesday, it was a place to read books by torchlight. The children also learned about the ways we use technology to see in the dark. On Thursday, they put their skills into practice as they sought out dark corners where spiders might be hiding.
The cave
Searching for spiders
Spring 1, Week 4: Bird spotting
Last week we made bird feeders to help the birds who were struggling to find food during Winter. This week we tried to find out what kinds of birds we have around school and nursery.
Bird spotting walk
Identifying the birds
Spring 1 Week 3: Blue Monday and Busy Days Building Outside
It has been a great week in Nursery! On Monday, we chased away the Winter Blues by making hot chocolate for the parents. Then the children drew lots of smiley faces and spent the afternoon delivering them around Big School. We made so many people smile and it made us feel very happy, too!
As the week continued, we investigated 'fast' and 'slow' by building different ramps in the outdoor area. The children were also inspired to build a volcano after seeing some work by Year 3 on Monday.
Spring 1, Week 2: Up and down
The children had lots of fun investigating up and down in the indoor and outdoor environments.
Spring 1, Week 1: Same or different?
There were some changes in Nursery after the decorators were in over the holidays! The children looked to see what was new and different, and what was still the same. Some of the children acted as Nursery Tour Guides and made videos about the things they'd noticed.
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A special visitor
On Monday, Mrs Jameson had some mince pies in Nursery. She put one on a plate and the children thought it looked as though it was ready for Santa! Mrs Jameson wondered whether the children could wish hard enough to make Santa really come and see them... And it worked! What lucky children.
Christmas Post Office
The Nursery Elves have been very busy working in our Christmas Post Office. The children have made cards, cut out stamps and glued them in place, drawn and coloured pictures and even written letters to Santa! It's fantastic to see our mark-making and writing area being so popular.
Gingerbread Men
After learning about the story of The Gingerbread Man, we baked our own gingerbread men, decorate them and ate them for snack. There was no chance for our biscuit friends to run away!
Christmas Trees
Nursery took a trip over to 'Big School' to see the Christmas Tree in the hall. We spent a long time admiring the beautiful decorations made by the older children. Some of the children recognised decorations made by their siblings at home. Afterwards, we decorated our own tree in Nursery.
Reindeer Races
Frosty Adventures
On Monday, Chestnut Class wrapped up warmly with coats, hats and gloves and had a Frosty Adventure Walk around the school grounds. There were lots of interesting things to see. After spending a lot of time looking at the frost patterns on leaves, the children returned to the classroom. They used white paint, cotton buds and glitter to make their own frost patterns.
Poppies
Snow!
The first snow of the winter is always exciting in our Foundation Stage. Today we wrapped ourselves up in warm clothes and went outside to play in the snow and build a snowman. Then we went back indoors and enjoyed some 'hot' chocolate.
Fireworks
We talked about fireworks and made firework pictures using some different printing techniques.
Autumn fun
As a follow-up to our leaf investigation last half-term, we enjoyed playing in the fallen leaves on the field.
Pumpkin challenge!
The children lifted, touched and smelled the pumpkins. When the tops were removed, they used their hands to explore the flesh and seeds inside. Mrs Jameson challenged the children to remove all the seeds from the pumpkins. They used their hands and a variety of different spoons to scoop out the inside and then separated out the seeds.
Puddle play
Transient Art
We used natural materials and classroom resources to make faces and other pictures and patterns.
Conkers
To celebrate Roald Dahl's birthday, we shared a simple version of his story, "James and the Giant Peach."
We have no peach trees at school, but we do have some horse chestnut trees! We went to see what was growing on them. Some of the children thought it might be pom-poms and some thought it might be 'spikey apples'. We checked under the tree each day to see whether any of the mysterious green objects had grown too heavy (like the peach) and fallen from the tree.
On the fourth day, we found some conkers!
What happens to leaves in Autumn?
As part of our Autumn Topic, we are investigating what happens to leaves in Autumn. We have chosen three trees in the Agile Learning Zone and check the colour of the leaves daily. We have also been looking at the leaves we have found on the ground. Our results are on the big display board in the classroom.
