Pre-school and Nursery

This project supports children with settling into the new rules and routines of school and encourages them to make new friends and feel confident in their class. It teaches children about being helpful, kind and thoughtful at home and at school. This project also teaches children how they are unique and special, the importance of friendship and how people in their family, school and local community are important and can help them.

Parental Engagement: For our memorable learning experience, we went on a walking trip to our local library. We talked about the variety of houses we could see on the way. We shared stories and found out what a librarian does.

In addition, parents and carers sent in  photos of the children’s families. They used the pictures as prompts to tell us about different kinds of families.

Cultural Capital:

We picked apples from the school apple tree and made some pastry roses. They were delicious!

Communication and Language: We modelled the words: under, over and through. The children had lots of opportunities to demonstrate their understanding of these through obstacles courses, cars in the tuff spot and toy people in the playground small world outside. The children were encouraged to use these words to describe what they were doing in their child initiated learning.

Personal, Social, Emotional Development:

The children talked about how they could tell what they were feeling. We looked at various faces to identify emotions. They shared how they would feel if they were chased by a bear (as in the story of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt). They took turns pretending to be the bear in the story.

Physical Development:

We picked apples from the school grounds and then washed them in the sink. The children cut the apples for snack with some support.

Literacy:

We read We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and Lulu Loves the Library as our focus texts in conjunction with this topic. The children learned the symbols on our visual timetable as they became familiar with the routines of the day at Nursery. They were able to assign meaning to the symbols and the practitioners modelled how we read information from left to right.

Mathematics: The children looked at the difference between  long and short items. They used the term to describe hair, train track, necklaces and ribbon.

Understanding of the World: The children crushed dill, mint, thyme, rosemary and oregano with a mortar and pestle. They described how each one felt and smelt. They were very curious to see what would happen when they mixed the herbs together.

Expressive Arts and Design: The children explored how to make marks with marbles rolled in paint. They were intrigued to find that it looked the ‘swishy swashy grass’ in our story.

This project explores the differences in the world at night compared to during the day. It teaches children about the importance of a good night’s sleep, and helps them to discover what is happening in the world while they are sleeping, including finding out about nocturnal animals.

Parent Engagement: Our families came into school one evening to have a bedtime story, sing a lullaby, take a torchlit walk of the playground and explore the shadows we could make with the numicon, followed by sharing some nice hot chocolate.

Cultural Capital: This half-term we had weekly sessions with Rock It Music, where we have explored the sounds of a variety of instruments, explored movement to music and sang lots of songs, seeing how we could change and the pitch, tempo and lyrics.

Communication and Language: We visited the residents at Corsers Court and sang Nursery Rhymes together. We created shadow puppets and read stories. It was a fantastic opportunity for the children to practise using their social phrases.

Personal, Social, Emotional Development:

We built a fire, like the monks in our story, Stone Soup. The children were able to listen carefully and follow the instructions to wait for their turn to place a stick into the fire. They were proud to be given the responsibility to help.

Physical Development: We have learnt that firefighters, doctors, construction workers and police officers sometimes work through the night. The children explored running around obstacles to their fire engine, carrying hoses over steps and then putting out fires by aiming at the base of a fire. They had to look where they were going and adapt their movement to accommodate each other and keep safe.

Literacy: Our two focused texts for this topic were Stone Soup and How the Stars Came to Be. The children have access to familiar stories during their own free time. They often share stories together and retell them in their own words.

Mathematics: The children enjoyed playing a swaps game where they close their eyes and then someone swapped two of the numicon in the number line. They were excellent number detectives, working out which ones were in the wrong spot and putting them back into order.

Understanding of the World: The children discovered that they could change the size of shadows by altering the distance of an object from a torch. Then they looked at how they could change the location of the shadow by changing the position of the torch.

Expressive Arts and Design: Rock It Music brought in ukuleles for the children to play. They strummed along in time to the tempo of the songs.

This project supports children to develop a love of stories and reading. It encourages children to learn, retell and act out familiar and traditional tales.

Communication and Language: The children have used their language to retell stories, create roles and extend narratives throughout the topic. They have particularly enjoyed using shadow puppets to support their storytelling.

Personal, Social, Emotional Development: The Three Billy Goats Gruff gave us plenty of opportunities to showcase our turn-taking. The children were very excited to be the troll and shout, ‘I’ll eat you up!’

Physical Development:  The children filled containers with a variety of spades and spoons, showing good control as they tipped the contents carefully into their intended receptacle. Developing their coordination, core stability and upper-body strength will support writing skills as we they move forward in their education.

Literacy: The children loved making houses for the Three Little Pigs from straw, sticks and bricks. They repeated the refrain, ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in!’ They found that the straw house was the easiest to blow over, but none of us managed to blow down the brick house down, not even the teachers!

Mathematics: We are beginning to match numerals to quantities. The spinner on the interactive whiteboard is a great resource, as we can set it to show numerals, arrays and numicon shapes to give us a range of ways to practise.

Understanding of the World: We had Science Week and Supersonic Sue showed us how to mix polymers to create slime. The children were able to describe the texture as it changed from ‘sticky’ to something ‘like a cobweb’ and finally to ‘stretchy.’

Expressive Arts and Design: In Music, we played along with Miss Scoines on the keyboards, playing labelled notes in time with the songs.

This seasonal project provides opportunities for outdoor learning and teaches children how to care for the plants and animals in their local environment and how to stay safe in the sun.

Communication and Language: We have been encouraging the children to ask questions to find out new information.

T asked: Why do worms live under there?

E asked: How does the bug stick to the wall?

A asked: What do snails eat?

Personal, Emotional, Social Development: The children worked together to make a scarecrow. They took turns adding handfuls of straw into the clothing. They listened to each other’s ideas.

J: We need a head.

E: We can use this shirt.

N: It’s not full yet.

Physical Development:

The children enjoyed role playing the story of Jack and the Beanstalk during PE. They pretended to be tiny magic beans, then they climbed up the bean stalk and moved in different ways to creep into the Giant’s castle to steal a golden egg. Then they ran away when they heard “Fee, fi, fo fum!”

Literacy: The children have written the initial sounds of the vegetables that they planted in the garden to help identify them.

Mathematics: The children have been matching numerals to quantities in a variety of ways, such as: throwing the correct number of beanbags into labelled buckets, putting the correct number of pompoms into labelled bags and matching the numicon to the numbers on a numberline.

Understanding of the World: We planted the following seeds in the garden: sunflowers, carrots, potatoes, sweet peas, tomatoes and beet root. Then we planted mint, lavender and basil seedlings. The children have watered them everyday and watched them to see how they grow.

Expressive Arts and Design:

The children have been mixing, smudging and rubbing pastel chalks to make their own garden inspired artwork.

This project teaches children about the global community to which they belong and explores how living things, communities and climates differ around the world.

Communication and Language: We have use our words to describe the relationship between our classroom and the model we made. The children were able to explain where the table and the carpet were in relation to parts of the room.

Personal, Social, Emotional Development: We looked back over our time in Nursery and the children talked about which activities they wanted to do again and what they were proud of.

Physical Development: We tried moving our beanbags in a variety of ways, such as balancing them, throwing them, skidding them and kicking them along with control just like a range of modes of transport in the world around us.

Literacy: The children were able to make their own timeline of lives, with birth, starting school and their latest birthday as reference points.

Mathematics: We looked a t woven patterns in clothing from around the world. Then the children glued felt fabric onto strips of paper to make their own designs.

Understanding of the World: We have been looking at the weather symbols used on maps to show how weather can be different from one place to the next.

Expressive Arts and Design: We examined the variety of animal prints and patterns that help camouflage creatures in their environments. Then we had a go at creating some by mixing paint and making stripes, spots and waves with the brush.