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Holy Cross Catholic Primary School

'Living, Loving, Learning Together'

Nursery

Welcome to Nursery!

 

The children in Nursery are taught by Mrs Pinchi and are supported by Miss Ward. We hope that you will visit this page often and find it useful in keeping up to date with your child's learning experiences.

 

Mrs Pinchi and Miss Ward

 

 

 

 

Below is a guide to what we will be learning in Nursery this week. If your child does not attend Nursery please use this as a guide to support their learning. There are also recommended websites on the Covid Support and Arrangements Page. As the week goes on I will add photos of the children engaged in the activities below. 

Our end of year party 🥳

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We love musical chairs!

We love party games 🎉

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We are such good movers!

Party time!

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We love to party with our friends!

We love to dance

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We are such good dancers!

A garden party to say goodbye and good luck!

Afternoon tea

The children have observed the caterpillars making cocoons and turning into butterflies. 🦋🦋

We released our butterflies.

We said a prayer for our butterflies.

This half term the children will be reading ‘The Bad Tempered Ladybird’ by Eric Carle. We will be learning all about different insects and their life cycle. The book will give us the opportunity to discuss social skills and ways to get along with our friends. 

The Bad Tempered Ladybird by Eric Carle

Last term the children planted beans, potatoes, mint and strawberries look how they have grown!

We’ve got green fingers!

We love to dance.

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The children enjoy watching different ballets and operas, this week we were watching the Nutcracker.

We’ve been busy in the home corner!

Building the city!

We’ve been painting the Bad Tempered Ladybird, we looked carefully at the pictures from the story book.

The Bad Tempered Ladybird

Insect facts 🦟

Dressing up

Sketching ladybirds

Hairy Phonics

Painting aphids

Looking for aphids (green fly)

Friendships

Taking on a role as grandma 👵

In maths we have been learning to use ordinal numbers, first, second, third etc., also first and last.

Who is first in the race? 🏃‍♀️

Playing with shapes

In phonics Nursery 2 are learning to recognise the letter ‘l’ they are also learning to segment words to hear sounds. Please remember to share your child’s reading book on the Rising Stars website. Help the children to read words by saying each sound and blending the sounds together. 

Nursery 1 are developing their listening and language skills by learning nursery rhymes and songs. 

This week in Nursery we will completing the next part of our bean diary and also planting some sunflowers and sweetpeas. 

In Maths Nursery 1 will be learning all about number 5 and will matching the number to the correct quantity. While Nursery 2 will be working with numbers below 10 comparing quantities saying if there is more, less or the same. 

Our new RE topic is all about friendship and we will be discussing what makes a good friend. 

Nursery 2 are working so hard in Phonics and can now hear the initial sounds of words. We are starting to sound out words very slowly so that we are able to hear some middle and final sounds too. 

Nursery 1 are enjoying their phonics activities learning to keep a beat with the musical instruments, using the pots and pans on our outdoor stage. 

We love literacy

We wore numbers for ‘Number Day!’

We use our imagination in small world play.

We paint the flowers in our garden. 🌹 💐

Look at our bluebells

Keeping busy in the sand and water.

Gymnastics 🤸‍♀️

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This week we have been learning to do forward rolls.

Forward rolls

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What a super roll!

Super Gymnastics

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We love our gym lessons!

Snuggling up with a good book 📚

The children in Nursery 2 are now recognising letters and are beginning to read some words, so please remember to share your child’s reading book on the Rising Stars website. https://www.risingstars-uk.com

 

Phase 2 phonics

Super Phonics Nursery 2

Phonics

We are learning to appreciate different music and are enjoying the opera Lakme, especially the Flower Duet. I think we have some budding opera singers waiting to be discovered. 🎶

Lakme

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Listen to our opera singing 🎤

The children have been planting bean and keeping a bean diary.

Planting beans

Bean Diaries

The children have settled back into Nursery and have shared their holiday news. This links nicely to our RE topic ‘Good News’ where the children will begin to talk about how they feel when they have good news to share. In Literacy we will be reading the story of Jasper’s Beanstalk by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen. This book tells the story of Jasper trying to plant his bean and grow a Beanstalk. The children will be looking at different seeds and finding out how we can look after our plants as they grow. In phase 2 phonics the children will be learning the letter 'c' you can see these lessons with Read Write Inc on YouTube. In phase 1 we are learning to hear the sounds in words through games. In maths this week we are matching numbers to quantities. Please see photos from gymnastics.

News

News time

Jasper's Beanstalk

Gymnastics

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The children are becoming more confident in gymnastics.

Gymnastics

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We can move in different ways.

Gymnastics

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We love gymnastics 🤸‍♀️

Our Easter Egg Hunt

We found chocolate eggs!

The Easter Bunny left us chocolate!

We love Easter 🐣

Happy Easter!

Easter Breakfast

Gymnastics 🤸‍♂️

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We enjoy warming up!

Learning to roll

This week we will continue to learn about Easter and Spring time. We will make Easter nests and go on an Easter egg hunt. We will also have an Easter breakfast and disco, look out for photos later in the week. 

An Egg and Spoon Race

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The children were really good at balancing their eggs! 🥚

On your marks get set go!

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The children enjoy being out in the sunshine 🌞

Happy Easter!

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We were all winners!

Easter Egg Hunt

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We made a basket and then went on a Easter egg hunt.
This week the children will begin to learn about Spring and Easter. We will watch https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/lets-celebrate-easter to gain an understanding and we will look for signs of Spring in our garden. 

Spring songs

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The children have been learning all a out spring.

Easter Time 🐣

🐣 🐤 🐥

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The children have been learning Easter songs.
In maths the children will be looking at the number zero. We will be learning that zero means nothing and that there isn't anything there. We will learning where zero sits on a number line. 

Happy Birthday!

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We had two birthdays to celebrate today! 🎂🎉💃🕺
This week in Nursery we will be completing our topic 'Supertato.' The children will design their own superhero, they will plan, draw and then build using different materials. The children will listen to the sounds in the word 'superhero' and write some of the sounds they hear. 

Mixing Paint

In Phase 1 phonics we will continue to embed rhyme and will play 'What's in the box' taking out the rhyming words tap, map, cap and nap. There will also be words that don't rhyme and the children will identify words that rhyme, making a rhyming string (a list) of words with the same endings. 
In phase 2 phonics the children will be learning to read and write the sound "o" see Read Write Inc on Youtube to gain an understand of how to say the sound.

Building with different materials

Look out for photo's of our gymnastics lessons!
For art and literacy the children will be making Easter cards and writing their name inside. Look out for some photo's later in the week.

Supertato

In maths we will be learning to use and understand the vocabulary longer and shorter. The children will explore items in the setting that are different lengths. 
In phase 1 phonics we will continue to recognise rhyming words, playing 'Bertha the Bus' putting words that rhyme on the bus. 
In phase 2 phonics the children will be learning to recognise and write the letter 'g.'
In RE the children will make a Lenten tree to add signs of growth and love, by sharing, caring and helping.
Look out for pictures of our gymnastics lessons.

Gymnastics

Movement

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The children enjoy the games in gymnastics.

Gymnastics

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The children are also learning to roll and balance.

World Book Day

Nursery 2

Happy Birthday 🥳

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We had another birthday to celebrate this week!

Dancing and Singing

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The children celebrate 🎉

Gymnastics 🤸‍♀️

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This week we have started gymnastics!

Gymnastics

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The children loved learning to roll, hop and jump.
This week in Nursery we will be starting a new topic in RE and we will be look at  'Growing.' We will be planting seeds and watching the seeds grow into to plants and flowers. We will also be thinking about how we are growing, getting taller and stronger. We will read the book 'Once there were giants' by Martin Waddell. 

RE

RE.....Once there were giants

Planting and growing

In maths we will be exploring weight by picking up objects and understanding the vocabulary of heavy and light. 
In phase 1 phonics the children will continue to recognise rhyme by playing 'Pass the bag around the circle.' When the music stops the children take a card out of the bag and place it in the middle of the circle. The children repeat all the rhyming words and begin to hear that the end sounds are the same and so the word rhyme.

Phase 1 phonics

In phase 2 phonics the children will be learning to read and write the letter 'p.' We teach the children using Read Write Inc and these lessons can be found on Youtube. 

Phase 2 phonics

In Literacy we will be reading the book 'Superhero Mum' by Timothy Knapman. The children will discuss how our Mum's are superhero's as they work so hard to care, love and look after us. 

Superhero Mum

In PSED we will be looking at feelings and emotions the children will be working on a display for Key Stage 1 library. Photos to follow later in the week.

Happy Birthday’s

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We have had two birthdays today! What a fabulous afternoon we have had! 🥳

Party food 🎂🍰

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We enjoyed our party food! 😀

Happy Birthday! 🥳

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We had a fun afternoon with our friends!

We love 🕺 💃

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The children loved to dance to the music!

Happy Birthday!

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Party Games!
This week Nursery 2 will be set a new reading book using one of the Rising Stars online reading schemes. Well done to the children who have read their books and completed the activities. I noticed some children had received a gold star, well done to those children and thank you parents that are supporting their children with reading! 
We will celebrate 'World Book Day' next week when all the school return. The children will be able to come to school dressed as their favourite character from a book. 
This week in RE it will be the last week of our Gathering together topic and we will be discussing what we do best together as a group. We will finish our lovely wall display so look out for a photo later in the week. 
In maths this week we will be looking at 'more' and 'less' using different groups of items around Nursery eg., Who has more cars who has less?  Who has more water in their cup and who has less? Who has more block and who has less?
In phase 1 phonics we will be playing 'Silly Soup,' we will have a number of picture cards that rhyme and a few none rhyming cards. The children will take it in turns to put a rhyming card into the 'Silly Soup.'

Silly Soup of Rhymes

In phase 2 phonics we will be learning to recognise and write the letter 'n.'
We will read the next part of our story 'Supertato' and discuss the role of superheros. We will discuss who are the superheros that we know? We will talk about the different people in the community that can help us eg, doctors, nurses, police, fire fighters, teachers and priests. We will discuss these different occupations and what the roles involve, the children will discuss if they would like to be a superhero and which one they would like to be? 
In Art we will use paint to print with different vegetables looking at the patterns and shapes the vegetables make. Look out for some photos of our art work as the week goes on. 

Vegetable Printing vegetable 🍅 🥦🥕

This week we will use the app Hairy Phonics on our iPads to trace around the letters and say their sounds.  

The daffodils are out!

This week the children will begin their new class text Supertato by Sue Hendrix and Paul Linnet. The story will support an understanding of; people who help us, problem solving, it will also link to Spring, with opportunities to plant and grow vegetables. There are lots of versions of this story on YouTube, that you can share with your child if you don’t have the book. We will read a small section each week unpicking the story so the children learn the new vocabulary and understand its meaning. This week we will explore the vegetables named in the story (the characters). We will add vegetables to our home corner and our water tray. This will give the children the opportunity to handle, play and become familiar with the names of vegetables.  

Supertato 🥔

In RE we will continue with our theme ‘Gathering’ and the children will think about and make a list of all the times that we gather together. The children enjoy group activities and playing with their friends, look out for photos later this week. 

Being Together

Collective Worship

In maths we will continue to develop our understanding of capacity, using the water tray. We will develop our mathematical vocabulary, encouraging the children to speak in full sentences using the words; full, empty, more, less and the same.
For phase 1 phonics we will play ‘what’s in the box?’ The children will each take a picture card out of the box. Each picture will be a rhyming word; fox, box, socks, rocks, clocks etc., the children will become familiar with rhyme. 

What’s in the box?

This week In phase 2 phonics we will go over the sounds that we learnt last term to recap before moving onto a new sound next week.

This week in Art we will be making play dough and then modelling it into vegetables, looking at the shape, texture and form. The children with then mix colour to paint their model food. 

For literacy and physical development the children will be learning to hold their pencils correctly and then draw a selection of vegetables labelling their pictures with the initial sounds they hear. 

There are lots of opportunities for the children to explore and choose their own activities and play, look out for photos as the week goes on.

Riding Bikes 🚲

Building with blocks

This week the children will be celebrating the Chinese New Year. We will be reading the stories and watching  https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/chinese-new-year

The Dragon

The Lion Dance 🦁

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We watched the Chinese New Year Video

The Lion Dance

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We made a Lion costume

Our Lion Costume

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We had fun dressing up

The Chinese New Year 2021

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We had lots of fun!
In Maths we will continue to learn the vocabulary involved in size and position with a focus on small, bigger, biggest, front, behind, on and under. 
In phonics Nursery 1 will continue to develop their listening skills with a focus on Chinese music and instruments. 
Nursery 2 will continue to with phase 1 phonics as well as phase 2. We will play a game called 'Bertha the Bus' the children will take an object from the bus and will say the name and then decode the word. In phase 2 we will be learning the letter 'i'.

Phonics Phase 2

We will complete our story Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell and Helen Oxenbury. The children will retell the story discussing the events and the characters  feelings. This will link nicely in supporting our Personal, Social and Emotional development. 
This week in RE we will start our new topic ‘Gathering’ where we will explore being together with others. Look out for photos of the children playing with their friends and working together.

Singing together 🎶

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The children enjoy playing the musical instruments and singing together.
In maths we will be looking at size and working out which objects are bigger or smaller. 

Ordering objects by size

Small, bigger and biggest!

In phonics Nursery 1 will be playing ‘Follow the sound’ where the children have to repeat the sounds they hear, using percussion instruments. 

 

Keeping a beat

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The children are able to hear the beat and copy it.
In phonics Nursery 2 will be learning the letter ‘t’
The children will continue reading the story of Farmer Duck and will discuss the plan that the animals have for the farmer. 
This week in RE we will be reflecting on our topic and thinking back at the different celebration we have taken part in. We will celebrate the end of our topic with a class party, look out for photos as the week goes on!

Party time

Our Farm Display

This week the children will paint their favourite farm animal looking carefully at the shape and features of the animals. The children will add texture using different materials and mix paint to create the desired colour. 

Painting Farm Animals

The children will continue to compare shapes with a focus on triangles. Using wooden blocks and every day objects the children will learn about the properties of shapes. 

A hunt for triangles

For phase 1 phonics the children in Nursery 1 will continue to develop their listening skills through musical instruments. The children will explore playing the instruments in different ways such as quietly and then noisy! 

Children in Nursery 2 also enjoy taking part in phase 1 phonic games and are learning to decode words to hear their sounds. We will play 'Silly Soup' taking an object out of the pot and speaking like a robot saying all the sounds of the object. 

Silly Soup

For phase 2 phonics the children will be learning the 'd' sound.

Phase 2 Phonics

This week as part of our Personal, Social and Emotional Development, the children will be reading the book Blue Chameleon by Emily Gravett (variations of this story can be found on YouTube). It will provide discussion about making friends with others who may be different from ourselves. In RE we will be continuing our theme of Celebration and looking at the story of Mary and Joseph taking Jesus to the temple, to thank God for their baby boy. 

 

Our RE Lesson

Building a Temple

In phase 1 phonics, Nursery 1 children will develop their listening skills by replicating a beat, using musical instruments. You can do this at home by clapping or using pots and pans. In phase 2 phonics, Nursery 2 will be learning to hear and recognise the letter 's'.

Phase 1 Phonics

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The children were able to copy and keep a beat.

Early Mark Making

Phase 2 Phonics

For maths this week we will be learning to identify and know the properties of a rectangle. The children will learn that a rectangle has four straight sides of which two are long and two are short and that it has four vertices. The children will compare it to other shapes and go on a shape hunt looking for rectangles. The children will continue to count objects and match quantities to numbers. 

Rectangles

Playing with shapes

In our farm topic the children will learn that young cows are called calves, sheep are lambs and horses are foals etc., The children will use collage and paint to create a picture of a farm animal. The children will also draw a farm animal looking closely at the features and shape. The children will learn to hold their pencil correctly and practise forming some initial letters from animal names.  
This week the children will continue to think about the celebrations that have taken place over the past few weeks with Diwali and Christmas. As part of our RE lessons the children will start to identify items that relate to celebrations such as decorations, special clothes and food etc., 
We will start to read our topic book 'Farmer Duck' by Martin Waddell and Helen Oxbury and we will look at all the jobs the animals have on a farm. The children will learn that the sheep give us wool, the cows milk and the chickens eggs. 

Life on the farm

The children will begin to learn how to mix paint to make new colours. We will mix red and white to make different shades of pink, to paint the pigs on the farm. 
For Personal, Social and Emotional Development we will discuss the people who help us in our community. We will talk about the doctors, nurses, fire fighters and police and the important role they play in keeping us safe. We will link this to our farm topic and also talk about the role of the farmer in providing food. 
In phonics Nursery 1 will continue to practise their listening skills by playing Mrs Pinchi's box. The children will have to listen carefully to the sounds inside the box and guess what they are. Nursery 2 will learn to recognise the sound 'a' and will practise hearing sounds in words. The children use Read Write Inc and these lessons can be found at https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/read-write-inc-phonics-guide/ 

RWI Phonics

Mrs Pinchi’s Box

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The children are playing Mrs Pinchi’s Box and have to use their listening skills to recognise the sounds inside my box.

Listen carefully

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The children were able to hear the sound of the teapot lid

Phase 1 Phonics

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The children were able to guess other items too.
In maths the children will be learning to recognise and know the properties of a square. We will learn that squares have four straight sides and four vertices (corners). We will compare squares to circles and discuss the differences. We will go on a shape hunt and note what objects are square and circles. We will also be matching numbers to quantities, using numbers from one to five. 

A shape hunt

We found square objects around Nursery and we counted the straight sides and the vertices.

Comparing squares and circles

The children have settled back into Nursery well this week. If your child is unable to attend Nursery then please look at this page regularly to access the curriculum at home.
The children have been discussing ways in which we celebrated Christmas. This links nicely to our new RE topic 'Celebration.' Talk to your children about reasons to celebrate and what we do to prepare for a celebration. The children in Nursery have been planning a return to Nursery Party and have been busy making lists and party planners. Please see https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/type/festivals-celebrations#filter

Back to Nursery Party

Our new topic for this half term will be based around the book Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell and Helen Oxenbury. This text will help the children gain experience of other environments that may be different than their own. You can hear different variations of this story on YouTube.

Farmer Duck

This week we are learning the names of the different farm animals and where they live on the farm. The pigs live in the mud, the cows and the sheep in the fields and the ducks on the pond. 

In phonics this week Nursery 1 are playing a fun game called 'Mrs Pinchi's Box.' Inside my box are a number of familiar objects that make sounds that the children should be able to recognise, such as rustling paper, snipping scissors, wooden blocks knocking together etc., The children have to  use their listening skills to guess what objects are in the box. 

Nursery 2 are learning the sound 'm' please see www.ruthmiskin.com or YouTube for Read Write Inc home learning. 

Phase 2 Phonics

Phase 1 Phonics

Last half term in maths the children were learning to recognise numbers from 1 to 5 and knew that five objects represented the number 5. In maths this week the children are learning to recognise and know the properties of a circle. The children are learning that a circle is curved and round and this helps it to roll. The children have been looking for circles in the environment. We will also continue to look out for numbers from 1 to 5 and objects that represent these numbers. 

Exploring Circles

Look who drove by school today!🎅

Making Reindeer Food 🦌

The Nativity

The Christmas Story

Today Nursery 2 have been singing Christmas songs. There will be a video added to the website over the next week, please look out for this. We thought we would take the opportunity to photograph the children in their Christmas jumpers, listening to Santa’s message. The children had a wonderful day and their singing was fantastic! Well done everyone! 🎅🎄

A message from Santa 🎅🎄

The Elf on the shelf

Owl Babies

The children have been reading the story of The Owl Babies and have been finding out all about owls. Most are nocturnal and hunt for food at night. We found out that there are different types of owls and they have different habitats. The owls in our story live in a hole in a tree with their owl mother. The children made a lovely display for the wall with paintings of the owls. They also collected leaves to add to their picture for the tree. 🍂 🦉 🍁

Physical Development

The children have been developing their gross motor skills and finding different ways to move.

Friendships

Water play

Water play is so important in developing the children’s motor skills. It also supports children’s understanding of capacity as they begin to understand the concept of full and empty. 
Autumn 🍂 🍁 

The children noticed all the leaves that were now on the floor in the garden and asked where the leaves had come from. We looked at the trees around school and could see that the leaves had blown form the trees. The children enjoyed collecting the leaves and talking about the colours, shapes and sizes. We also used the leaves in our maths activities; sorting, counting and making patterns. 

A Leaf Hunt 🍁 🍂 🍃

Making Leaf Prints

Leaf Crowns

Learning about Judaism

Making Music

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The children have been learning to play the musical instruments.
The children have been learning all about being Baptised and how our name is very special. 

Rumble in the Jungle

The children have been learning about different environments, comparing home and school. Now we are looking at environments far and wide, including ‘forests and jungles.’ We are learning about the types of animals that live in a jungle and what their habitats might be like. The children have been reading the book Rumble in the Jungle by Giles Andreas. This book has lots of large bright illustrations to help us paint our own animal pictures. It also has lots of rhyming words which are fun to learn and say!

Making Jungle Animals

We made a giraffe 🦒 out of everyday materials.

First we covered a milk carton with glue.

Next we stuck on yellow paper.

Then we added a tube for a neck.

After we added a small box for a head.

We finished by painting the markings on the body.

Making a Crocodile 🐊

We chose a long box.

Then we covered it with green paper and paint.

After we added paper teeth and eyes 👀 

We are building a Lego jungle and painting jungle animals 🌱🦓🌿🐅
We like to look for jungle animals in our books. I like to draw my favourite animal...a giraffe 🦒 

What’s outside?

Exploring our environment

Making Play-dough

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The children have been making their own play-dough
First you need two scoops of flour

Next

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Add water

Then

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Mix the flour and water

Then

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Add food colouring.

After

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Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

Outdoor movement

Developing our fine and gross motor skills

Thank you so much for emailing in your beautiful family photos. I will be looking at them with the children next week and then adding them to our class display. If you have not sent in any photos yet, there is still time. The children love to talk about  their families and share their experiences. 

 

Making friends

Self-portraits

We love our books!

Tea Time

The Fairy Garden 🧚‍♀️

In the den