With beautiful weather upon us, the EYFS children have been delighting in the joys of outdoor learning, expanding on their topics throughout the week. It is always wonderful to see the children using their skills outside broadening their experiences in many ways.

This week Nursery and Reception parents will have received an invitation to transition presentations from Miss Mustoe, Head of Primary and myself. During the presentations, there will be information on the similarities and differences between the current year group and the next year group for your child. We will also talk about how we are preparing your child for the next academic year.

  • The transition from Reception to Year 1: Monday 26th April, 9:00-10:00 or Friday 30th April, 15:00- 16:00
  • The transition from Nursery to Reception: Wednesday 28th April, 13.30-14.30

We do hope you will be able to make the presentations and look forward to seeing you there.

Isla Gillespie

Head of Early Years

Pre-Nursery

Spot the Dog has helped Pre-Nursery continue their learning about the farm this week. Using the popular dog character by Eric Hill, Pre-Nursery consolidated their knowledge about farm animals, the sounds they make and went on a hunt to see where the animals may be.

Not only has Spot helped us with our language learning he has also been our focus for a mathematical understanding of simple patterns we see around us. Pre-Nursery have delighted in learning about spots and stripes, using our physical arm actions to demonstrate each pattern while learning how to use the pattern words in our play. The children particularly have enjoyed matching spot and stripe patterns and loved creating their own spotty dogs in our creative activity.

Next week Pre-Nursery look forward to identifying mummy and baby animals on the farm and looking at the different homes for each of them using the book ‘Who’s on the Farm?’ by Julia Donaldson.

Nursery

What a wonderful week of discovery and exploration! Nursery delved into the world of bumblebees, singing along to tongue-twisting rhymes and hearing, and writing the letter sounds we hear in the names of our minibeast friends.

Nursery learnt more about the role of the bee in the world, looked at their homes and how they gather nectar to make honey. We tasted it! We felt it! We even had a go at making our own honey sandwiches and described the honey as sticky, gooey and sweet.

In math, Nursery sorted and counted minibeasts groups and used their language of addition and knowledge of math symbols to solve simple problems. They learnt about a very important shape for our bees, the hexagon and now know it has six sides. Using this knowledge Nursery printed hexagon shapes to design their very own beehives!

Nursery are excited to learn more about the numerous minibeasts in the world and will take a closer look at their features and habitats over the coming week.

Reception

This week the children have been having fun learning all about capacity. We used magic potions to compare the capacity of different sized/shaped containers, whilst using language such as full, half full and empty.

The children were excited to make use of the outside classroom, learning about parts of a plant and, also having their phonics lessons there! The children used items found in the garden to form tricky words they had been learning, showing excellent creativity and determination.

We also learnt about the life cycle of a butterfly supported by reading the Hungry Caterpillar. We looked at other life cycles including bees and frogs and got creative my making life cycles using pasta!