In Acorns Nursery this term we have enjoyed getting to know new faces and have started with the year exploring the topic ‘All About Me’,  exploring our body part names and our senses, our likes and dislikes. Interlaced with this we explored the changes of the Seasons and Harvest time and finished with how people might celebrate Halloween.

For maths we looked at the concept ‘big and small’ by comparing feet and hand sizes. We compared piles of conkers to discuss who has more or fewer. Everyone wanted more conkers! We counted conkers and compared quantities to numbers. We played a Hedgehog game and counted the spikes and tried to guess the number of dots on the dice. We measured ourselves and looked at the concept of ‘tall & short’.

We got creative painting portraits of ourselves, made pictures with leaves, used pine cones to make hedgehogs. We made more leaves for our ‘Book Nook Tree’ to reflect the changes of the season. 

We have had lots of funky finger activities that include, chopping apples, using tweezers and scissors, mark making with dry wipe pens to decorate our grown ups faces or to give animals stripes or spots. We moulded play dough of a variety of colours and scents and enjoyed dough discos. We mixed and poured rice, pasta and conkers. We played with sand and water.

We got up close and personal with food, exploring how Bread was made with the ‘Little Red Hen’. We ground corn into flour and baked flatbreads. We looked at vegetables that can be harvested in the UK and looked at Harvest time in another part of the world and tasted fruits from the story ‘Handa’s Surprise’. We chopped up apples and made and tasted apple juice.

During Forest School we have had a wonderful time exploring the forest in all weathers. Some weeks we’ve had lots of rain and mud, other days glorious sunshine and the children have embraced it all. We’ve made faces using natural materials and dough, wands using sticks, wool and leaves, made magic potions and found so many points of interest. The tyre swing has been a particular favourite.

All the children participated in ‘Show and Tell’ introducing their favourite topic, their family!

All the children have been exploring how we show we are listening and use the visual guide of our listening beanstalk to think about our body language to show we are listening.

Everyday we sing nursery rhymes, we’ve been playing listening games and have tried to match the instrument to the sound, we’ve enjoyed playing with musical instruments but also listening to music from different genres. We’ve played some of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and the children have explored moving to the tempo, working out if it’s fast or slow and working out whether it makes the music seem happy or sad. For Black History month we explored different genres of music by black musicians and moved to the music… exploring similar Themes. The Black history month has linked to our topic ‘All about me’ and how we are all different, how we like doing different things, are good at different things, have different hair, eye or skin colour and talk about how being different makes us special.

Physical development has involved lots of going on the bikes, being in the garden and climbing over equipment. The children have been practising their balancing by building bridges and walking over them and we’ve used the apparatus in the school hall for PE sessions. We have also been practising our catching and throwing with a witchy theme, pretending to throw ingredients (bean bags) into a cauldron. 

Our last week at school saw us observing the changes when we mixed bicarbonate of soda and vinegar together and describing what happens. 

We have read a variety of different books in line with our topics but also regularly choose  library books to take home to share at home.

Longvernal Forest Nursery enjoys full access to the school's two Forest areas. We are lucky enough to have our own Level 3 qualified Forest School practitioner. Come and visit us to explore our purpose-built indoor spaces plus our extensive grounds, 50 tonne sandpit and talk to the team about our play-based Early Years curriculum.