Author: Mrs Boulton

As many of you know, I’m leaving St James’ on Friday to begin working at Moortown Primary School (another school in the Sphere Federation) in September. As this is my final post before the end of term, I just wanted to let you all know what a pleasure and privilege it has been to work with all of your children this year. They have been a wonderful class and I feel very sad to say goodbye to them.

We have all learned a lot this year (and that’s including me). The nursery class of 2021-2022 is full of budding scientists, artists, mathematicians, authors, engineers and performers. They are all stars and I have no doubt that they will continue to shine brightly throughout their life at school and beyond. Your children have brought tears of joy to my eyes, have made me look at the world afresh and, most of all, they have made me proud to be their teacher. I will miss each and every one of them.

As I say goodbye, I would like to thank you all for being so supportive over the past year. I hope you all have a very happy, healthy and safe summer holiday ahead.

With all my best wishes,

Mrs Boulton

 

Wow! it’s been a hot one! We’re just sharing a few pictures of what we’ve been up to inside the classroom today: making treasure maps, finishing off our telescopes and fishing for gold coins.

 

 

This week, we’ve been thinking about places we’ve visited on day trips and also places we’ve been to on holiday. We’ve discussed trips to the countryside and to the seaside and thought about what makes them different and why. We’ve talked about the beach and what we may find when we visit the seaside and compared it to walks in the countryside where we usually see lots of animals. In our home corner, we set up an ice cream parlour and took orders for different flavours and we also made some silly ice creams from foaming soap and paper straw sprinkles (not to be eaten, of course). We thought about postcards, what they look like and why people send them from their holidays. We also made our own passports and added a drawing of ourselves and our names so we can travel. At the end of the week, the children created a magic imaginary bus and they all had a go at being the driver. Our steering wheels from a couple of weeks ago came in very handy!

In phonics, we’ve continued to segment words containing 3 phonemes into individual sounds and have also orally blended sounds together to make short words. In maths we’ve been using positional language to describe where a variety of soft toys have been sitting in the classroom.

Next week, we’re all going to be pirates so we’ve started making our own telescopes in preparation to sail the high seas. Maybe we’ll see some magical creatures on our journey or, perhaps, find some treasure… Hoist the mainsail and off we go!

As the temperatures continue to rise and the beginning of next week looks like it will be extremely hot, please make sure you send your child to nursery with the following items: a water bottle, a sun hat, high factor sunscreen (to be applied before nursery) and loose clothing (please note that uniform is optional in nursery).

Many thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week at nursery, we’ve been thinking about how we can keep ourselves healthy. On Tuesday, it was our Sports Day and the children had lots of fun taking part in all of the activities and races. The nursery staff were very proud of their achievements and we really appreciated all the support from parents. During the week, we’ve been making up our own games to keep us fit and we’ve also tried lots of different exercises under the trees in our outside area.

We’ve had many discussions about which types of food and drink help us to grow strong and which types are good for our teeth. There have been lots of new activities in the classroom to help us with our learning: we’ve cleaned and flossed pretend teeth, posted healthy foods into a large mouth and sorted foods into ‘healthy’ and ‘not so healthy’ categories. We’ve matched the correct prices to the fruit in our maths area and also played mini football in our small world area. Our home corner has been a healthy eating café.

At the end of our ‘healthy week’, we made fruit kebabs and the children exercised their fine-motor skills by cutting their own bananas and threading pieces of fruit onto paper straws. Hopefully, everyone will be feeling fit and healthy on Monday as it’s the penultimate week of this academic year!

As the temperatures are set to soar, please remember to send your child to school with a water bottle, sun hat and sun cream. It would really help our staff if sun cream could be applied before the start of the day and then we can help the children to top it up during the day.

Many thanks.

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

 

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

At nursery this week, the children have been discussing different types of vehicles, looking at maps and learning about road signs. To help us understand maps, we thought about our own classroom and made a simple plan of where everything belongs in the room. We worked out how to travel from the internal door, round the classroom and then out through the external door to the playground. We’ve also had fun making our own simple vehicles (lolly stick rafts) and we tested them to see if they would float. We thought about what we would need if we wanted to drive a car or a bus and we made our own steering wheels.

In maths, we’ve been learning about capacity and talking about empty, half-full and full. We used water, rice and uni-fix blocks to help us to understand the concept and we also used different sizes of containers to help us with our measurements.

It’s Sports Day on Tuesday morning so we hope to see lots of parents and carers in the crowd to cheer us all on. Please don’t go to any trouble buying a proper PE kit – a comfortable pair of shorts and a T-shirt (in your child’s team colour) will be perfect for the day.

Things to remember:

Please bring a NAMED water bottle to school and a NAMED hat for the warm, sunny weather.

Many thanks.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

This week, we’ve been continuing with our theme ‘On the move’. The children have looked at maps, sorted different vehicles into the categories of ‘air’, ‘land’ or ‘sea’ and they’ve also described familiar routes around school. We’ve been junk-modelling cars and trains and drawing our own tracks, too. As the weather’s been so hot, we’ve spent lots of time outside conducting experiments. One was to find out how our small cars would cope with different sorts of weather conditions. We tried using foaming soap to represent snow drifts but enjoyed the foam so much that we ended up making impromptu pretend ‘ice creams’ with it! Who’d like some soil sprinkles on theirs?

Last week, we harvested our first crop of broad beans. On Monday, after the beans had been cooked, the children had the opportunity to taste their own vegetables. Some children were not very keen to try them; however, others really enjoyed them (and some even asked for a second helping).

The children have also been looking very closely at their faces using mirrors. We spent a long time talking about all the details we could see, thinking about our eye and hair colour and what shapes our heads are.  After these discussions, the children drew some fabulous self-portraits in pencil.

In phonics, we’ve been continuing to think about initial sounds. We’ve also played lots of games to help us identify the different sounds (phonemes) which make up simple words. Metal Mickey, our class robot, has been eating all sorts of strange things for his dinner including a ‘h-a-t’, ‘c-a-n’ and ‘p-e-n’.  In maths, we’ve been using positional language (such as ‘under’, ‘beside’, ‘behind’) and have also tried to describe a route to our friends. Next week, we’ll be talking about capacity and we’ll be using the words ‘full’, ‘half-full’ and ’empty’ in our learning.

Please remember to name all of your child’s belongings. The current heatwave means that we have lots of discarded jumpers, cardigans and other items to send home at the end of the day.

   

     

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

     

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

We’ve been continuing to talk about different types of transport this week and lots of the children have told us which vehicles they’ve travelled on and where they’ve been to. We’ve looked at plane, train and bus tickets and have been writing our own in the mark-making area. The children have also been thinking about what happens during their day and have been making (and taking) their own registers and planning what they are going to do at nursery. Outside, we’ve been parking the vehicles in numbered bays and designing new petrol pumps. There has been lots of outdoor printmaking, too, and the children have experimented with rolling vehicles down our wooden hill to make tyre-track patterns.

As it’s been extremely hot this week, we’ve had fruit and milk time under the trees for a couple of days to try to keep cool out of the sun. Our beanstalks have started to bulge under the weight of the beans so we harvested our first crop on Friday and, after Mrs Boulton has cooked them, the children can have a taste of their own home-grown food.

The weather looks like it will continue to be warm so please make sure your child brings a NAMED hat and a NAMED water bottle to nursery. Also, it would be great if you can apply sunscreen to your child before they come to nursery in the morning. Any sunscreen brought into school should also be named. Thank you.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

It’s been great to be back at nursery this week. Our new theme is: ‘On the move’ and we’ve been thinking about different types of transport. Some of the children have been making cars and trains from different shaped blocks and bricks and we’ve also had some transport-related number games in our areas of provision both inside and outside. As the last couple of days have been very summery, we’ve taken advantage of the warm weather and have been outside using water to help us learn about letter and number formation and 2D shapes. The children have been making chalked letters and numbers ‘disappear’ by spraying them and painting over them with water. This is an activity you could try at home as it’s good for the development of gross and fine-motor skills. (*For safety reasons, please remember not to re-use bottles which have previously contained cleaning products or chemicals. Cheap spray bottles, which are a different shape and colour to those which contain cleaning products, can be purchased from the gardening section of a well-known budget retailer.)

In phonics, we’ve been segmenting one syllable words like ‘cat’ and ‘dog’ to help us recognise the individual sounds within them. We’ve also been continuing to identify the initial sound in words and have been grouping the sounds together. In our maths sessions, we’ve been talking about ‘our day’ and what we do between getting up and going to bed each day.

Our beanstalks are getting taller (almost as tall as the children) and the beans will be ready to pick and sample soon, as will our coriander. Hopefully, the warm weather will continue next week and we’ll be able to spend lots of time learning outside. With this in mind, please remember to send your child to school with a named hat and a named water bottle.

   

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

   

 

 

 

 

 

Wow! We’ve had a wonderful week, here at nursery. We’ve been celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and hoping our butterflies would come out of their chrysalises. At the beginning of the week we learned all about the Queen’s transport and looked at some of her special carriages. Then, we looked at some of her crowns and special jewels and, finally, we looked at some of her palaces around the UK. The children also had a look at the Union Jack flag and talked about the colours they could see. On Thursday morning, we had a little nursery tea party together and, in the afternoon, the children had a chance to make their own special crowns ready for the big Platinum Jubilee party on Friday.

All week, we have been wondering when the butterflies would emerge from their chrysalises and, on Wednesday, the first one appeared inside the special net cage. By Friday, all of them were flapping happily around the cage and we were very excited to be able to release them into the wild. We took them outside and opened the zip but the change in temperature and the windy conditions meant that the butterflies were reluctant to leave their safe environment. We decided that the best thing to do was to leave them outside and wait until the afternoon for another try.

The big party went really well and we were first on stage to perform our special dance which we had been practising. The children were fantastic and they were helped by some of our wonderful Year 6 friends. So, we send a big thank you to them. It was lovely to watch everyone else’s performances and we really enjoyed our special party lunch.

In the afternoon, we went outside again and found that the butterflies were ready to leave their home. One-by-one, they flew away until the last one was alone. It took a while for this little butterfly to fly out of the cage and it rested on the ground immediately. We all wondered why this had happened… The children decided that it might be tired or hungry so they all gathered daisies to help it to recover. We watched the butterfly feed and, after a while, it had the strength to fly away. It was a magical end to a magical day!

Please take a look at our fantastic photos from this week and we all wish you a very happy Platinum Jubilee weekend.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

     

 

   

  

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

This week, our maths focus has been to understand and describe the properties of 2D shapes. We started off the week by looking at circles, squares, triangles and rectangles and talked about their similarities and differences. The children went on a shape hunt in the outside area and also created 2D shapes from sticks. These activities helped them to gain better understanding of ‘sides’, ‘corners’, ‘edges’ and ‘curves’ and use this vocabulary in their discussions. Lots of the children have been able to  identify 2D shapes in real life and have realised that these shapes can be found in their lunches. One of the children told us that their sandwich was a rectangle  and another exclaimed: “A fish finger is a rectangle shape, too!”

Our class caterpillars have all become chrysalises and we are keeping a close eye on them every day to see what happens next… We have been making more art inspired by our focus book: The Very Hungry Caterpillar and have even been creating our own painted papers in the style of Eric Carle. We have also looked at symmetry this week and used a mirror to understand the concept of both sides being identical.

Next week, we will be doing lots of Jubilee-inspired activities to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. We hope to have lots of fun while we learn.

Things to remember:

• Please bring a named water bottle and hat for your child as the weather is getting warmer.
• Please name all items of clothing as we have lots of cardigans and jumpers to return to their owners at the end of a warm day.

Dates for your diary:

• Thursday 26 May – Jubilee Coffee Morning from 9.15am (please bring your child into nursery as normal at 9am). Further details to follow…
• Friday 27 May – Jubilee Celebration Lunch. Please dress your child in red, white or blue.