What a great start Nursery have made to 2022! It has been lovely getting to know all the pupils and we also welcomed 5 new children who have really settled in well.
This half term our topic is Space. We have been reading the story Whatever Next! where baby bear makes his own rocket and travels to the moon.
Week 1
The children enjoyed acting out the story with their own rocket, space helmet and took some food with them.
The children talked about and drew what they would take with them in their rocket. The children chose some interesting items to take including sausage rolls, scrambled egg and their ‘elephant cuddly’.
We started to talk about the moon and we watched a video of astronauts boarding the rocket and we got to listen to a story read by an astronaut in Space, her hair was all over the place! We talked about how her hair was flying around, as was she, because there is no gravity in space. We enjoyed watching how Tim Peake drank from his water bottle in Space, we had to watch it a few times as it’s so amazing.
To finish our first week we started our Astronaut training by taking part in some Space yoga.
Week 2
This week some children chose to paint the characters from the story and some children used resources to make their own rockets for the astronauts.
We talked abut 2D shapes and made rockets using and naming the foam shapes and/or paper shapes.
This week we looked at the moon in more detail and we discussed the holes that are called craters. Some children chose to be creative, making their own moons, rockets and aliens using playdough.
We continued our Astronaut training, this time we went on the playground equipment practising our balancing skills. We also watched gravity in action as we threw balls in the air and watched as they fell to the floor because of the gravity on Earth.
Week 3
This week we got to look through a telescope. The children enjoyed looking and exploring the telescope and we talked about how sometimes you can still see the moon in the daytime but unfortunately we couldn’t see the moon as it was just too foggy ☹ Instead the children looked at a starry night scene on the IWB. A few children then used the ‘junk modelling’ to make their own telescopes.
As well as learning about the moon we discussed the owl from the story and we talked about how some owls are nocturnal but not all of them. The children learnt this means they sleep in the day and wake up at night, the opposite to us as we are classed as diurnal. As part of our learning about owls we made our very own ‘Owl Toast’ using fruit to make the features of an owl including wings, beak and large round eyes. The children thought the owl toast was “delicious”.
To finish our third week we revisited craters on the moon. We watched a video of what happens when a space rock hits the moon and the children were amazed. We talked about how some craters are big enough to fit the whole school in! To show the formation of craters in action the children dropped rocks on to the shaving foam moon and watched how they left a ‘crater’ just like on the real moon.
Astronaut Training was an agility assault course this week. The children liked being timed using a stopwatch and tried to be faster each time.
Alongside our topic based learning the children have been busing in Maths and Phonics.
Maths
The children have been learning and practising the skill of subitising. Subitising is when you can see an amount (up to 7) and know how many there is without counting, just like we do using a dice. The children matched numeral to dot arrangements, matched to how many fingers on a hand, to how many cubes in a tower and in lots more ways.
Phonics
We have been thinking about sounds we can hear in the environment and sounds we can make with different objects and instruments. The children had to listen very carefully on our listening walk and when we played a game of ‘Guess the instrument’.
In preparation for writing we have been strengthening our muscles during our daily Doodle Sticks sessions. The children enjoy making shapes to music with their ribbon sticks and finish the session making marks on paper which prepares them for writing and forming letters of the alphabet.
