We had an amazing time this week, preparing for Sports Day by making our flags and using the globe to find out where the countries are. We were so proud to represent our countries and carry the flags as we took part in the different events for our very own Valley Commonwealth Games, we hope you all enjoyed it too.

We have had a wonderful week in our outdoor area enjoying the lovely weather. We enjoyed taking part in our Rainbow Challenge, talking about what we had observed using the binoculars and magnifying glasses. We have collaborated to build structures and make up games with the equipment. Nursery and Reception are now mixing outdoors, so we are enjoying learning how to use new equipment and make new friends.

This week in Nursery, we have been introduced to our new Power of Reading book. A big present appeared in our Nursery classroom on Tuesday and we wondered what could be inside - “a toy kitty because it looks big”, “a doughnut” or maybe “a dinosaur because that box looks as big as a T-Rex”. We listened carefully to our friend when we worked with a talk partner. There was a label on the front, “It’s got a name on. It’s got a T”, we recognised some of the letters on the label. Finally, we were able to open the present and found out that it was a shiny yellow bucket, just like the one in our new book Billy’s Bucket.

We had great fun on Wednesday when we all came to school dressed as people in our community who help us. Nursery was busy with builders, vets, teachers, doctors, nurses, police officers, bakers, fire fighters and many more, all talking about their occupations and what they do to help others. Whittle class have also enjoyed baking biscuits like the main character, Astrid, in our Power of Reading book Astro Girl.

This week in Nursery, we have been looking at places of interest on our Valley maps and talking about the route that we would take to get there, such as ‘forwards’, ‘straight ahead’, ‘turn’, ‘left’ and ‘right’. We have also been observing the class ladybirds, talked about how to care for them and enjoyed drawing ladybird pictures. This week we have been using the water colour paints. We now paint with increasing complexity and detail; just look at our amazing Peter Rabbit paintings!

We are enjoying our Power of Reading book, What the Ladybird Heard and this week in Nursery, we had an exciting delivery. Some ladybird larvae arrived for us to look after and learn about. We have enjoyed looking closely at the larvae in their vivarium (the special name for their pot) and reading about what is going to happen to them as they turn into ladybirds. We talked about being careful when we hold the vivarium and making sure we don’t disturb the larva too much. We will keep a close eye on them over the next few weeks to see how they change.

We have been enjoying our learning in Nursery this week! We have been using our new stage area to sing and make music. Our challenge was to try and sing an entire nursery rhyme or song to our friends! We have also been playing musical instruments with increased control, trying to follow the pulse of a song. We have enjoyed making own own nature crowns using natural materials that we gathered, and using different materials freely to create our own blossom pictures.

We have been enjoying our learning in Nursery this week; we went on an Easter Hunt! We searched the outdoor area for Easter objects, using positional language to describe where the things were hidden. We counted how many each time and made marks to resemble numbers on our checklist.

This Week in Nursery, we have been noticing changes in chocolate! In our afternoon Science lesson, Whittle children rubbed their hands together to warm them up. We then popped a chocolate chip in our palms and observed what happened. Some chocolate chips started to melt and others disappeared completely, apparently they ended up in tummies… On Thursday, we melted chocolate using the microwave and saw that it turned from hard, solid blocks to a pourable, drippy and runny liquid. We used the chocolate to make Easter nests and popped an egg on the top!

We have been enjoying our learning in Nursery this week! We have been exploring different types of seeds in the seed investigation station, as well as touching and smelling herbs in the water tray. The activity allowed us to explore with a range of our senses. We have been using tools for a purpose to create flowers with the playdough. First we rolled the dough, then we pressed the cutter and finally we used the scissors to make snips around the edges. We used our sequential language of ‘first’, ‘next’ and ‘last’ to talk about what we were doing. We enjoyed looking at the real daffodils and tried to draw what we could see; creating lines and shapes to represent the daffodil.

It has been lovely to be back at school this week and to celebrate Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) together. We have been mixing up flour, eggs and milk in the home corner, enjoying the touch and smell of lemons in the water, making playdough pancakes and Whittle made and ate their own pancakes on Tuesday afternoon.

This week in Nursery, we have enjoyed shopping at the new farm shop, we have drawn pictures of our favourite farm animals and learnt new collage techniques to make pigs. In Whittle class, we enjoyed using all our senses to explore natural materials from the farm, we thought the horse shoe felt “cold”, the straw was “so soft” and the wool “it smells disgusting!”.

We have been enjoying our learning in Nursery this week! We have been using new mathematics equipment to talk about and explore 2D shapes; we used it to combine and make bigger shapes. The activity elicited lots of maths language to describe shape using informal language such as ‘sides’, ‘corners’, ‘round’ and ‘straight’. When playing in the role-play area, we have been noticing print in the environment and using it purposefully when pretending to read from the menus. We enjoyed exploring the new equipment on the playdough table. We pushed and pulled at the levers and buttons and were able to talk about the forces that we could feel.

This week in Nursery, we have had a wonderful time learning all about China and how they celebrate Chinese New Year there. We explored noodles, dry and cooked and talk about the differences; we went out for a meal at the Golden Dragon restaurant and looked at the menu to decide what to have; we made noodles and dumplings with playdough; and were amazed watching the traditional dragon dances and even had a little go ourselves!

This week a different resource was available in the Discovering Room, the Sensory Path. The children have worked collaboratively to create interesting new routes. They used their arms to balance along the path so they didn’t fall and organised themselves, deciding where they should start and waiting their turn in the line. They are becoming more independent in taking off and putting their shoes back on the correct feet.

The Nursery children have been enjoying their learning in the outdoor area! We have been developing our fine motor skills by making snips around the edges of leaves or cutting them in half. We have also been making our own ramps in the small world area. This encouraged us to think of our own ideas and collaborate with our friends. The activity elicited lots of maths language about the length and weight of the wood pieces that we used. When we played with the ramps we were also investigating and talking about forces. This week we also used our Power of Reading book as a provocation in the mark-making area. We made marks and gave meaning to our marks as we drew trains, maps and pictures from the story.

The Nursery children were so excited take part in our rocket experiment! This week they decorated rocket casing and we took them outside to make them shoot up into the sky. We showed the children a range of resources and asked them to predict what they thought would happen. We encouraged the children to watch the bubbles and listen for the popping sound as the rockets flew up into the air!

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This half term in Nursery, we are thinking about the forces around us. This week we have been exploring floating and sinking. We made predictions about what might happen to each object and then put it in the water to test. We also learnt that the past tense of sink is sank, not sunked or sinked.

The children have loved being back at school this week and seeing their friends. We had a brilliant time on our Santa Hunt and were very grateful to the PTFA for our prizes at the end. We loved dancing and playing games at our Christmas parties and are looking forward to a lovely Christmas with our families. We hope you all have a lovely holiday!

Nursery were so excited to come into school on Monday and talk about the snow. We took the opportunity to go on a Winter walk and talk about the weather around us. We listened to the snow crunch under our feet, spotted animal tracks that had been left and wondered which creature they belong to and talked about where the snow came from.

The Nursery children were so excited to see the reveal of our new outdoor role-play area! The Valley Café serves some refreshing hot and cold drinks and delicious biscuits daily. The children can eat in or take-away if they prefer. We are learning to understand that print has meaning by reading the menus. We are also playing with other children to extend and elaborate on their ideas in order to develop some complex storylines in our play.

Over the last few weeks, we have been exploring lots of colour mixing opportunities in Nursery. We have been very impressed with the children's language and understanding. They have mixed blue and yellow food colouring and described the new colours they have created, not just as green, but turquoise and teal. They talked about the peach colour they made by mixing yellow and red block paint onto ice. They also compared their colours by using the words lighter and darker.

On Thursday 11th November, Nursery children took part in activities as part of Remembrance Day. We watched a short film called ‘Poppy’; a beautiful animation that sees war as experienced by animals. Next, we made our own poppies to wear and remember the day. At 11 o’clock we were so proud that all Nursery children were quiet and respectful in joining our country observing two minutes of silence. We enjoyed listening to Mr Hildich playing ‘The Last Post’ and we talked about the importance of this piece of music. Lastly, we engaged in a range of poppy-related creative activities throughout the rest of our day.

This week in Nursery, we have been thinking about our new Valley Value for this half-term, Collaboration. We know that this means working with our friends and that Reciprocal Ruth, one of our Building Learning Power superheroes, is really good at this. We have been putting it into practise by sharing resources, showing our friends how to do things and creating role play scenarios together.

On Thursday 21st October, Nursery children took part in activities as part of Black History Month. We watched a short film called ‘Love Hair’; a beautiful story that explores identity and culture. It sparked children’s conversations about similarities and differences between themselves and their friends. Next, we explored the instruments. We used the rainmakers to make swishy rain sounds and the drums to make different sounds, beating fast and slow rhythms and using flats of hands and fists to change the sounds that we produced. Lastly, we listened to some African music and accompanied the music with our own sounds of the rainmakers and the drums altogether!

This week in Nursery it has been all about the pumpkins! We explored them, cleaned them, scooped the insides out, made our own out of playdough, made marks in scratch art pumpkins, listened to stories about them and learnt a song about one.

On Friday 8th October everybody was invited to wear yellow to show that there are times when we all struggle with our feelings. As part of Mental Health Day, Nursery took part in a range of activities to encourage them to talk about and manage their feelings. The children loved joining in with the morning yoga session! Throughout the day the children were encouraged to talk about the things that make them feel happy. Some recurring themes of happiness were: “mummy makes me happy”, “daddy makes me happy”, “playing with my toys makes me happy”, “singing and dancing makes me happy”. Later we talked about how to calm down; some children mentioned that they have learned to breathe when they need to calm down, so we taught this skill to everyone! We ended our Nursery session with a lovely meditation activity as we lay down with our eyes closed and focussed on our breathing. It was such a wonderful day!

In Nursery, we had fun becoming immersed in our Power of Reading book. We are reading We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury and had a bear hunt of our very own! We walked through the wavy grass, over logs as our forest, used cotton wool as our snowstorm, through the oozy mud and finally the cold water. We talked about how the textures felt on our feet and enjoyed recreating the story back in the classrooms in the Small World. We weren’t scared and we might go on a bear hunt again…

We are delighted to share some photos with you to show how well the Nursery children have settled! We are so proud of the way that they move around the setting with awareness and control. They are all curious to explore new activities and experiences. They are now showing an interest in each other, as they begin to form special friendships and continue to learn each other’s names. Please visit the website on a regular basis to see weekly uploads of the children’s adventures in Nursery.

Nursery have had a wonderful first full week at school. We are all enjoying exploring our new environment and making lots of friends. Whittle have been superstars at lunchtime and are following the routines with confidence.