Nursery
Hello and welcome to Nursery!
Autumn 2024
The Nursery children have settled in beautifully to their new surroundings and have been busy playing and exploring, learning and making new friends.
They have met the first one of the Beech Hyde positive mind animals – Independent Rhino. All the children have a self-care target and are working towards them, to become more independent.
The children have enjoyed their Talk for Writing text – Rosie’s Walk. They have been learning about routes and positional language and have recreated the story in PE with Mr Drake. They enjoyed making the windmill from the story, by following a set of instructions, using a cup, tissue paper and lolly sticks.
Our overarching topic for Autumn is All About Me. One activity included looking at what makes them unique, such as the different patterns on their fingertips. They made patterns of swirls, loops and arches.
A real highlight has been meeting the school guinea pigs and learning about how to care for them.
This half-term ended with Superhero week. They made cuffs, a superhero night scene and learned a superhero song. Their learning was shared in the whole school sharing assembly.
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Summer 2 2024
It has been lovely finding out about the children’s memories of being a baby. We talked about what they could do now, compared to when they were a baby. We had a special visitor, Mrs Dodson, who visited with her daughter Daisy. She talked about babies, what they need, and what they can do. The children thought of some brilliant questions including how fast can she crawl and how much milk does she drink.
Nursery enjoyed reading The Hungry Caterpillar and learned about the life cycle of a butterfly. The children made their own life cycle using different types of materials including pasta.
They also made a model mini-beast recreating it out of play dough or other materials.
On a lovely sunny day, the children enjoyed water play learning about the term capacity using the words full, half full and empty.
A science investigation around how materials change allowed the children to see how bread changes when heated. They were set a challenge to make a tent from both bread and then as toast.
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Summer 1 2024
Nursery read the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and enjoyed recreating it in PE with Mr Drake.
Each group then planted a bean and estimated how tall it would be using multi-link cubes.
Nursery had a visit from Mrs Jelfs who came to play the harp, just like the one in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. The children all had a go at playing it.
After looking at a painting by Vincent Van Gogh called Sunflowers, the children used their colour mixing skills and their fingertips to make their own Sunflower painting.
Nursery had another musical visitor – Mr McCabe, a musician, who brought his guitar. He sang songs and they danced to 'You’ve Got a Friend in Me' from Toy Story and 'I Wanna Be Like You' from Jungle Book. They all had a go at strumming on his guitar.
On a lovely sunny day, the children learnt all about different forces. Outside, they pushed, rolled, and bounced balls then explored how to make them go faster and slower.
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Spring 2 2024
Nursery went ‘Around the World’, complete with a passport, and visited four countries. Whilst in Mexico, they tasted tortilla chips and guacamole and did some Hojalata tin art.
In Italy, they made fresh tagliatelle/spaghetti pasta. In Australia, they enjoyed Aboriginal dot painting and in Turkey they built Ephesus using different construction blocks. They presented their learning in a whole school sharing assembly and were very brave.
Our new Talk for Writing text is The Enormous Turnip. First, they acted out the story and joined in with the repetitive refrain. The children innovated the story, imagining different characters pulling up different vegetables. They drew some amazing pictures of their ideas.
During Science week, there were a number of exciting activities including dinosaur excavation, dinosaur salt dough footprints, an environmental walk around Beech Hyde School and making a collage of the Scientist Carl Linnaeus.
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Spring 1 2024
We are very excited to say that our letters to Santa did reach Lapland delivered by Mr Jones and the Easyjet crew. This is a picture of the aeroplane in Lapland!
The children are enjoying the Talk for Writing Text We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and have made sensory story maps to help retell the story, along with the different actions. We are now busy innovating the story making our own version – We’re Going on a Treasure Hunt.
Each week, Nursery enjoy a PE lesson with Mr Drake in the school hall. Recently they explored going over, under and through the different apparatus.
This term, we have started learning the phase 2 sounds and graphemes, following the Little Wandle phonics programme. Nursery love bringing in objects for the sound box as well as practising the graphemes in different ways, such as on the interactive whiteboard.
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Autumn 2 2023
It has been wonderful to see how the children have fully immersed themselves into life at Beech Hyde Nursery.
Our new Talk for Writing Text, Kipper’s Birthday. was enjoyed by all. The children planned their own party for Kipper, wrapping presents, making cup-cakes, decorating bunting and enjoying party games and dancing.
There has been a variety of activities linked to our overarching topic – All About Me. Nursery made their own Picasso style ‘wonky’ portraits. Then they worked in groups to make an abstract collage of Picasso’s ‘Woman in a Hat and Fur Collar’ using a range of different materials such as wool, straw plastic and paper.
To help the children learn about different occupations, we had visits from two parents who came to talk about their jobs. Mr Dodson, a former GB gymnast and now an elite coach entertained the nursery children. He showed them TV footage of the GB Women’s double mini trampoline team who recently won gold at the World Championships in Birmingham. They were joined by the Year 6 Sport’s Ambassadors who asked some fantastic questions. Mr Jones, a pilot with Easy Jet, dressed in his uniform, talked about how he became a pilot and where he flies too. We are hoping he will take our letters to Santa all the way to Lapland!
Fun French Friday is a hit and the children have been learning classroom commands, instructions and weather phrases and recently presented their learning in their very first whole school sharing assembly. Bravo!
The build up to Christmas is underway and Nursery have made tree decorations, Christmas cards and are preparing for their first Nativity with Reception class – Baarmy Bethlehem.
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Autumn 1 2023
The Nursery children have settled in beautifully to their new surroundings and have been busy playing and exploring, learning, making new friends and becoming more independent each day.
They have met the first one of the Beech Hyde positive mind animals – independent rhino. All the children have a self-care target and are working towards them.
The children have enjoyed their Talk for Writing text – Rosie’s Walk. They have been learning about routes and positional language and have recreated the story in PE with Mr Drake. They thoroughly enjoyed making the windmill from the story, by following a set of instructions, using a cup, tissue paper and lolly sticks.
There are lots of opportunities for the children to choose their own activity inside or out, during Child Initiated Learning. The role play area has been very popular set up as a home, but has just changed to a doctor’s surgery. The lovely space outside has some play equipment which supports the children’s gross motor skills. We have just planted some daffodils so will look forward to watching them grow in the spring.
