This week, the Chicks had a wonderful time learning through play, exploration, and creativity, inspired by our focus story I’m the Fire Engine Driver by David Semple. The children explored colour mixing in a variety of exciting ways, using paint, shaving foam, and toy cars. They discovered how red and yellow make orange, and red and blue make purple, showing great curiosity and excitement. These activities also supported their physical development by strengthening their arm

This week we have been learning about the celebration of Ramadan and Eid. One of our families celebrates Eid and they were kind enough to come into nursery and share more about the different traditions that are associated with the celebration. We learnt that people don’t eat during the daylight hours and break their fast with a date. We also learnt more about prayer beads and mats and the children were fascinated, taking turns to sit on the mat and ‘make a wish’ using the bea

This week our Topic Book was My Mum Is Fantastic by Nick Butterworth; a warm and cheerful children’s story about how amazing mums can be. The child describes all the wonderful things their mum does, from helping and caring to making everyday moments fun. The story shows that mums are strong, kind and full of love. With simple words and bright illustrations, the book celebrates how special mums are. This week the children have been celebrating their Mummies and talking about

This week we have been eagerly anticipating and preparing for Bring Mummy to School Day. The children designed and independently created their own Mothers’ Day cards using techniques that we have previously learnt and used that the children have been keen to revisit. We have been so pleased to see how well the children have been able to recall the steps needed for designing the flowers on the cards.  We also enjoyed a lovely visit to the library on Northcote Road. The childre

This week the Fledglings have enjoyed a wonderful week celebrating World Book Day. The children brought in their favourite books to share with their friends throughout the week and we loved reading them together. For our Art Project we designed our own books. The children discussed different ways stories can start and end and collectively we decided on ‘Once Upon a Time’ as our beginning and ‘They Lived Happily Ever After’ as our ending. The children designed the front cover,

The Chicks had a wonderful first week back at 345 Nursery after the holidays and the Green and the Pink Chicks loved their topic story, The Goodnight Garage . All the children showed great interest in the various vehicles such as the fire engine, the road sweeper and the marking lorry. The children enjoyed lots of fun activities related to the vehicles and extended their vocabulary. We were so impressed with how cleverly the children created their favourite vehicles out of pa

The Fledglings were in bright spirits after arriving back after half term and enjoyed sharing their Half Term Holiday News during our Focus Time activity. It was great to hear about all the exciting adventures they had. This was also a great way to contniue strengthening their working memory and recall skills as they shared pictures, discussed their activities and answered questions. Sharing our activities in this way creates a wonderful link between what the children do at h

Our learning this week focused around the Lunar New Year celebrations and the children were fascinated by the images and utensils in our Asian themed restaurant. They enjoyed sharing their experiences with trying different foods and many of loved sharing how much they enjoyed eating sushi! Our Year of the Horse art activity was a big success as the children created marbling printed horses which they decorated with looped paper manes and bridles.  We also introduced and explor

This week’s Topic Book was Elmer and Wilbur by David McKee for the Pink and Green Chicks. The children thoroughly enjoyed listening to the story of Elmer and Wilbur helping Rose find her herd. In the story, Grandpa Eldo asks Elmer and Wilbur to help a young elephant find her way home. They are very surprised to discover that she is pink – no wonder she is called Rose! However, an even bigger surprise awaits them when they reach her herd, as every single elephant is pink too.

This week the Fledglings have been exploring the work of Salvador Dali and have created their own versions of the clocks from his famous work ‘The Persistence of Memory’. We used clay for our clocks, rolling and pressing the numbers into the clay. Once it was dry we added colours using watercolours. We can’t wait to show our work in our upcoming Art Exhibition.  During our Outdoor Learning Day we ventured a little further afield as we explored the common for our Fauvism photo

The Fledglings have been looking at the work of Vincent Van Gogh this week and focusing on still life paintings. The children here focused on selecting and mixing the right colours to achieve the desired effects in their work and it was great to see their enthusiasm and care for the work they are creating.  We also enjoyed a wonderful trip to the Secret Garden at Finton House and we loved using the Mud Kitchen equipment in our play to make muffins and cakes. We then took this

This week at 345 the Chicks have been exploring two different Topic Stories. The Green and Pink Chicks have been reading Penguin by Polly Dunbar all about a little boy named Ben who gets a new Penguin but Ben struggles with his emotions when Penguin doesn’t do everything that Ben wants him too. The Chicks talked about how Ben was feeling and even took photos of their own happy, sad and angry faces.  The Orange and Purple Chicks were focusing on our Classroom Principles using

The Fledglings approached our Artists Topic with enthusiasm as we looked at the work of Giuseppe Arcimboldi. They loved looking at the details in his paintings and seeing which types of fruit and vegetables they could identify before using printed pictures to create their own fruit and vegetable portraits. It was so much fun and the children were very creative with their ideas. We are looking forward to sharing these with our families during our Art Exhibition. Bark rubbing w

This week the Chicks were engaged in a lot of fun activities related to our Topic Story The Three Little Pigs . They constructed houses out of different materials, collected lots of sticks on the common and counted the sticks and the bricks. In other activities they sequenced the pictures of the story, retold the story using the story spoons and enjoyed the messy play where the children constructed houses out of the shaving foam, foam bricks, straw and little sticks.  Our Art

This week the Fledglings have explored the Topic Book Max and his Magnificent Mistake, which focused on how we can learn from our mistakes and foster a growth mindset. The children throughly enjoyed the story and loved making kites for our art display.  We were excited to welcome Mr Alex back for our Music lesson and learn some new songs. One of our favourites this week included actions which involved body percussion which strengthened our coordination and bilateral integrat

The Orange Chicks had a fantastic week filled with busy learning, creativity, and fun! Throughout the week, the children explored a wide range of activities that supported their development across all areas of learning. Our new starters have been settling in very well and it has been lovely to see the existing children make them feel at home as they joined the nursery, sharing their toys and showing them where to hang their coats.  At the Round Table and messy tray, the child

It was lovely to welcome the Chicks back into Nursery after the Christmas break and to welcome our new starters to the classroom. The children enjoyed being back and exploring a variety of activities that were set out for them. They particularly enjoyed playing with the diggers in the sand, helping Bob the Builder tidy up the builder’s yard. The children also worked collaboratively with the Magnatiles, constructing some wonderful creations such as houses, towers, garages, and

It was lovely to welcome the Fledglings back after the Christmas Holidays and the children were very excited to be back seeing their friends and teachers. Although it was a short week we managed to squeeze a lot of learning in. We began by introducing our Person of Interest, Louis Braille, for this term. We will learn about his life and the contributions he made. The children were fascinated when we introduced the concept of the Braille code and we can't wait to discover more

This week was full of magical Christmas activities. In the 'Elf Workshop' the children wrapped the presents and practiced their cutting skills with the children scissors. The highlight of the week however was definitely the Christmas Concert which was a huge success after the children practicing so hard. The parents and the teachers are so proud of all the Chicks. On Tuesday the Art Folders went home full of beautiful pieces of art the children created during this term. On Fr

This week, the children enjoyed a rich variety of learning experiences both indoors and outdoors. They developed their communication and language skills through story building, retelling familiar tales and acting out the Nativity using props and characters. The children also explored early literacy through drawing and mark-making. Their fine motor skills were strengthened through activities such as cutting and mashing avocado, spreading shaving foam on 2D shapes, stacking Uni

The Fledglings have enjoyed a busy week exploring the Topic Story ‘ Petal and Nettle and the Best Birthday Ever ’.  We throughly enjoyed this story and the children were able to see what went wrong. They loved pointing out what Petal had done wrong and offered suggestions for what she should have done instead. The theme was included in their Free Play and we refined our fine motor skills as we made cakes with the playdough.  We began introducing digraphs in our Phonics Focus

The Fledglings had a great week back after half term. Our Topic Story was ‘Little Red’ a retelling of a traditional tale and the children loved exploring different elements of constructing, retelling and acting out the story. One of the highlights was during our Outdoor Learning Day where the children took turns to use the costumes and pretended to be the different characters as well as adding their own elements and combining stories.  In the classroom we have been developin

This week at 345 the Chicks have been looking at shape. Our Topic Story, ‘We Love Each Other’ by Yusuke Yonezu used two of an animal to make a shape, for example, two birds together created a heart. The Chicks were really engaged in the story and while making their shape collages in Art they enjoyed naming the different shapes.  We have used our Fine Motor Skills to chop playdough during Free Play and vegetables during our cooking lesson. We have also been working together an

This week we have enjoyed learning about the celebration of Diwali. Our Topic Story Shubh Diwali explained some of the traditions and customs people who celebrate Diwali follow and why this celebration is important. We took inspiration from their Rangolis in Art as we used colourful shapes to create our own patterns.  The highlight of the week however was our visit to the Secret Garden at Finton House. We enjoyed the bus journey, recalling the safety precautions from previou