Book Week & The Gingerbread Man

World Book Day

Last week was World Book Day and as a school, we used this as our theme all week long.

All areas of our class were book themed...

In our play dough area we used toy hammers, nails, screwdrivers and wrenches while reading fact books about tools.

On our maths table we matched and ordered numbered ducks while reading 5 Little Ducks book.

In our small world tray, we played with the story props from Dear Zoo to help us retell the story.

In the investigation tray we explored mini beasts while reading books about insects.

In our sand tray we measured and counted dinosaurs while reading Harry and his Bucket Full of Dinosaurs.

On our writing table we made our own books.

We invited the year 3 children in to share books with us.

 

 We dressed up as our favourite book characters...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following on from Book Week, we have been reading the traditional tale of The Gingerbread Man.

 

 We retold the story wearing character hats.

We made Gingerbread Men puppets and used them to help us retell the story.

 We designed our own Ginger Bread men on paper and used our plan to recreate our design in our biscuit.

 

 

 

In our busy fingers we really enjoyed making cheerio lace necklaces. It is very fiddly so good practice to strengthen tiny fingers. We practiced our maths by counting how may we had put on our lace. A really good and fun activity to try at home!

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Year of the Dog!

Happy Chinese New Year!

We have been learning about how different cultures celebrate special festivals and this week we have been learning about Chinese New Year. We have been learning that each year is named after an animal in the order that they came in the great race. This year is the year of the dog.

We read a book called Clever Sticks by Bernard Ashley. It was about a little boy who, with a little help from his friends, learned how to do all sorts of things he found tricky at Nursery and helps his friends learn how to eat with chopsticks. We found out that we are all different because we find different things easy and different things tricky but that with practice we can get better and better.

We tried to eat a biscuit with chopsticks - it was tricky but we tried and tried and got better and better. We know that we can get better at all sorts of things (like counting, writing, reading, getting dressed and being a good friend) if we don't give up and just keep trying!

 

 

We found out about all kinds of Chinese new year traditions such as Chinese Dragon dances

 

 

Drawing a Chinese Dragon

Making our own Chinese Dragon

Making a dragon number line, putting the numbers in the right order. Will 10 go in the middle or the end? Where will 5 go? Why?

We have been learning about foods that are popular in China such as rice and noodles. We explored how they felt and used chopsticks to serve pretend meals.

 

We read the Great Race story and learned how the years got their names. We used animals in the water tray and animal cutters in the play dough to retell the story ourselves. 

 

Later on this week, we will be making a Chinese money packet and learn how to join materials for a reason.

 

 We love to share our special books with our friends and look at all the exciting things we've been up to in Nursery this year. We hope our families have enjoyed looking at our books too.

Next week is World Book Week. Please see the Newsletter for further details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

People who love us

This week we are thinking about our families and people who love us and what they do to show they care.


We have listened to the story Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney, which links well to our Goldilocks measuring theme - "I love you as high as I can reach...as high as I can hop...right up to the moon".

Following on from our Goldilocks theme, we have used comparative language when measuring our friends with the large blocks. We ordered the three bears and estimated how many blocks we would need to measure each one, thinking about whether Mummy Bear would need more than Baby Bear and why.  

Some of our Learning Through Play activities:

We have caught numbers in our water tray

We have sorted money of different denominations amongst the hearts.

Making numbers with jewels, sticking the right number of buttons in play dough numbers and counting out raisins to match the dots.

We have decorated hearts while thinking about those we love and the reasons why we love them.

Next week is the half term holiday. The following week our theme will be Chinese New Year and we will be engaging in all sorts of themed activities including making Chinese money packets, using chopsticks, making Chinese dragons and much more besides.

Have a lovely half term break.