This week in the classroom...

18th July

It’s hard to believe that we are quickly approaching the end of our summer term. This of course is an exciting time, where some children from our class prepare to move into the Reception class, whilst others begin to recognize that they are now the ‘big’ nursery children and start to take responsibility for helping the younger children and acting as great role models.

Our oldest children were so excited on Wednesday as they visited their new classroom and worked with Mr. Rogers on ‘Pirate’ themed activities. They came back into nursery full of what they’d been doing and looking forward to the next phase of their learning journey in September.

Through the week, we have been involved in some of our favourite activities. We have shared the stories of ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen and ‘Peace At Last’ by Jill Murphy. Both of these stories have repeated phrases that the children can say together and provide opportunities for them to use their voices to create sound effects. You might like to share them at home over the summer break. The ‘Bear Hunt’ story is also fun to act out, especially outside. You might even have the chance to put on wellies and stamp through oozy mud!

The older children have been looking out for familiar letters in the environment and in books. They each have a name card which they can take home at the end of term and use to copy their name. If your child is confidently copying the letters, encourage them to begin to remember which they need to write first and then next. It is important, that the children learn the correct letter formation as they start writing. You can find out how to support your child with this on the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds’ web site, Just click on the ‘For Parents’ tab at the top of the page and scroll down to see ‘Reception Autumn Sounds’.

Below, I have listed some other web sites that you may find helpful to give ideas of how to keep your little ones happy and busy over the summer holidays. I hope you have fun trying something new together whether it’s baking a cake, finding mini-beasts, spending time discovering a new story or planning a family picnic.

• Cbeebies i-player -especially ‘JoJo and Gran Gran’, ‘Numberblocks’, ‘The Musical Story of the Gingerbread Man’, ‘Down on The Farm’, ‘Teeny Tiny Creatures’,

         ‘Mr. Maker’ ‘Sing With Cbeebies’ and ‘Oti’s Boogie Beebies’.

• Carnival Of The Animals – Aquarium played by Lang Lang. You Tube.
• Wake Up Shake Up’ song-You Tube
• Games- Free online games for kids 0-6 CBeebies-BBC

11th July

This week, the children have been thinking about holidays by the sea and using their descriptive language to describe the seaside environment. To help give a greater understanding of what a beach may be like, we watched an episode of Jo Jo and Gran Gran. This showed how you can make sandcastles and what can be found on the beach. It also showed a video of the sea as the tide came in and went out, washing away the castles. We explored making some shapes and castles in the sand outside, and found the rain also broke them and washed them out of shape.

The children have also had an opportunity this week to explore using magnets in the fishing game. We talked about how the magnets ‘attract’ and practised naming the different sea animals as they were caught. This also provided lots of counting practice and we talked about who had caught ‘more than 3’.

To support the children’s listening and appreciation of music, they listened to a piece of music called ‘The Aquarium by Saint Saen’. We used our hands and bodies to move like fish to the music. Sometimes we could hear different instruments and watched a video of the piano and orchestra as they played the piece. We talked about the sounds they could hear and used some of our own instruments to create our own under the sea music. You can watch the video here.

The older children have continued to explore the story of ‘Rosie’s Hat’ by Julia Donaldson and Anna Currey. We talked about what things we might pack in a bag to take to the beach and I modelled how to write them in a list so we wouldn’t forget anything. The children then wrote their own lists, drawing a picture and listening for the first letter of the word they wanted to write. This group, have also begun to practice linking phonemes to the letters ‘s’, ‘a’ and ‘t’. I wonder if you could find any objects at home that start with these letters?  Listen for the first phoneme e.g. sock, soap, snake, apple, ant, tiger, teeth, tin.