In our class we strive to establish an Early Years environment which provides for all its pupils, a happy and secure environment in which to learn and be cared for. It is a place where every child is recognised as an individual and is helped to understand that they have great value in being themselves

The Early Years curriculum

In our classroom we consider ‘Characteristics of Effective Learning’ which promote positive attitudes to learning, an enthusiasm for knowledge and the confidence to become successful learners. 
Characteristics of Effective Learning

• Playing and Exploring
• Active Learning
• Creating and Thinking Critically

The prime areas are:

• Personal, social and emotional development (self-regulation;managing self; building relationships)
• Communication and language (listening, attention and understanding; speaking)
• Physical development (gross motor skills;fine motor skills)

The specific areas are:

• Literacy (comprehension; word reading; writing)
• Mathematics (number; numerical patterns)
• Understanding the world (past and present;people, culture and communities; the natural world)
• Expressive arts and design (creating with materials;being imaginative and creative)

Our Learning

• Nursery Autume 1 Overview.pdf
• Nursery Autumn 2 Newsletter.pdf
• Nursery Spring 1 Newsletter.pdf

• reading_with_rwi.pdf
• support_pre_writing_skills (1).pdf
• dough_disco.pptx
• speaking_and_listening.pdf
• Promoting Independance.docx
• EYFS 3-4 Years Learning Objectives.docx
• eyfs-dev-matters-2020-ages-3-4.docx
• Nursery Spring 1 Maths Block 5.pdf

This week we have been learning about farm animals and how they live, we have milked a cow, sheered a sheep and read some amazing stories. We have even been hunting for a phonic sounds in the stories. We have made some amazing farm animals through fun crafting and using different resources.

We have been out exploring our village and the parks in our village, we have had lots of fun.

We have been learning about the ocean and all the things we find in it, we have been playing pirates and drawing treasure maps.

We were given a unique opportunity to use all our senses in a hands-on experience in handling some exotic and household pets. We are currently learning about different types of animals in different countries this gave us a chance to ask questions and be inquisitive. Talk about what we could see, using a wide vocabulary and begin to understand the need to respect and care for the natural environment and all living things.

Harry “Look at me holding this big tarantula I am so brave.”
Benjamin “This snake is so warm and heavy.”
Irka “What is inside the tortoise’s shell?”
Felix “This is the best lesson ever, I love animals.”

We have got some vets in the making!

We have been enjoying learning new sound and going for a hunt for sounds around our school.

In Maths we have been looking at the number 2 and 3, we have been finding them all around our school.

This week we have been looking at and comparing Africa to England, we have been looking at the animals that live in Africa and the traditional dresses of some of the tribes that live there. We have made grass skirts and rain sticks. We also made African donuts called Mandazi they where delicious.

What a build up to Christmas, we enjoyed some Christmas crafting, where we made decoration for our loved ones and for our classroom. We also made some special decorations for the tree we donated to Boston Spa Methodist Church. We enjoyed a lovely walk down to the church to have a look at all the trees, especially our tree and decorations. We had an indoor snow ball fight and got our Acting Head Teacher, what fun! We also visited our local retirement home, where we sang some Christmas songs for them and sat and did some Christmas colouring with the residence. And we could not end Christmas without a jolly Christmas dinner, with crackers and singing and a visit from Santa.

It would not be Christmas without the story Gingerbread man and making and eating Gingerbread men.

We enjoyed one our favourite magical stories this week of Aladdin we also dressed up as Jasmin wearing bhindi's and remembering the festival Diwali.

One of our favourite classic stories for Christmas had to be Stickman. We enjoyed making our own little stickmen out of twigs we collected and also making music with sticks and tin cans.

We have begun to make some new friends, explore and play in our new classroom as well as the outdoor play area.

We have enjoyed exploring marking making in our out door classroom.

We love to develop our gross motor skills and this is through P.E and play. We love to be outdoors and always will be regardless the weather useless we are told otherwise.

Our nursery Library is up and running for books to be taken out, we also visit the school library. We change our books each week and love taking them home to share with our grown ups.

I enjoy developing stories using small world equipment like animal sets, dolls construction. I like to role play with my friends and tell them familiar stories I enjoy.

We had so much fun exploring the schools grounds! We went looking for bugs and carried out some tree rubbing. Then we talked about the different bugs and textures we had found.

We have been making new friends and learning about them.

We had the pleasure of visiting our orchard and picking our own apples and pears, after a really good wash we got to eat them, they where so juicy and delicious.

We have been learning about each others families! We have been looking through photos and talking about who is in our family and where the photo was taken. We have also been making conker families and peg families.

We enjoyed the story of Supetato and enjoyed creating pieces of art work using vegetables.

This week we have really enjoyed the winds blowing the conkers off the tree, we have been making lots of things with conkers including soap. We started by smashing the conkers with big stones, we then added the smashed conkers to warm water. Then we used conkers treaded through on string to stir and dunk in and out of the water. It was lovely to see the water swirling around making a brilliant concoction. We where amzed watching as the agitationof the water made it soapier.

This week we have learnt the sound 'm' and we have being practising writing it and the first letter of our name. We enjoy mark making and can make make every where and any where, using anything and everything.

We created our own puppets out of socks and put a puppet show on tell stories about our families.

In maths we have been looking at colours and sorting, we have been exploring colours inside and outside our classroom. We are able to find and name colours. We can sort and we can explain why we have put things into groups.

This week we have found different ways to mark make and been very creative. We have made super hero capes, we used food colouring on rice cakes which we where allowed to eat after as a treat. We have also enjoyed creating fireworks with paint and coloured chalk on our play ground.

We visited Box Tree Court this week which was was so successfully they want us back. We sang 5 nursery rhymes so beautifully and then we read the residents a story. We where then able to walk around and have a little chat with the residents. Box Tree Court offers independent living with access to onsite care for people ages over 55, with 44 apartments available for rent and shared ownership. We walked there and back taking in road safety and listen to instructions. We can't wait for our next school trip.

This week in P.E we have been working on our balance, our arm strength and our forward rolls, with practise we are mastering our forward rolls.

We have really enjoyed learning about harvest and autumn, we enjoyed collecting leaves and taking about the change in colour. We loved exploring our investigation tray which was full of all the things will collected around our school and on walks with our families.

This week we have had so much fun developing our gross motor skills using tricycles, scooters and bikes.

We had an exciting week this week, we went on a school trip to some local allotments where we were able to harvest some vegetables, fruit and herbs. We dug up some potatoes, pulled up some radishes and rhubarb sticks, picked some raspberries and cucumbers, cut some mint, sage and chives. We tasted the raspberries some where sweet and some where sour, we where also able to take a radish home to taste with our grownup.

In maths this week we learning the concept of an ABAB pattern, we are using colours, some of us are being more creative and using what we can find around our classroom and school to create a pattern.

This week we have been strengthening our fingers using our finger gym, and mark making on rice crackers again because we enjoyed it so much. We used lolly pop stick and different flavoured and coloured condiments. We also tasted these sauces and spoke about what we liked and disliked using new vocabular.

We enjoyed bouncing our way through our P.E lesson this week, this helped us build our muscles in our legs.

In maths our topic is still sorting, we have been sorting in colours and in categories of toys.

In nursery Halloween has started early and we are enjoying using all our senses to explore this topic, we have been making worm and bug pies, looking for frogs and snakes in swampy waters and sieving through red sand . We have been learning new Halloween nursery rhymes and dressing up as witches we do the best witches cackle. We also had a visit from our local dentist to show us how to look after our teeth especially at this yummy fine time.

In Maths for the next 2 weeks we are learning about size, we are focusing on large/big and small/little.

This week we have been reading the story Room on The Broom, following on from Halloween, we brought in photo's to show our friends what we dressed up as, and also photos of our carved pumpkins. We enjoyed reading the story and pretending to be witches. We made some magic potions and spells using worms and insects.

This week we have been looking at why we wear poppies, we learnt that we wear poppies to remember all the soldiers who fought in the war for us. We wear red poppies to remember all the soldiers who died and survived. We also learnt that we wear purple poppies for all the animals who helped in the war and who died. We made a wreath out of our red hand prints. We then took a walk down to the Boston Spa war memorial where we laid it. We where also lucky to have Mr Simons come and talk to us in nursery about when he was a soldier. He brought in photos of himself and also some medals for us to look at.

This week we have been celebrating Diwali in nursery with Mrs Wilkinson because she is Hindu and celebrates Diwali. We learnt why Diwali is called the festival of light and what is involved in celebrating her festival. We made a Diya and created some Rangoli patterns. We did some high energy large movement dancing called Bhangra, and Mrs Wilkinson created some henna patterns on our hands.

We have really enjoyed reading The Three Little Pigs, we have made houses out of sticks, straw and bricks. We have experimented with lots of different mediums to create pieces of art and mark make. We are all becoming amazing artist, this week we loved using clay.

We really enjoyed our dance class where we went on a journey and saw some animals. we moved our bodies to the rhythm and beats.