Blackfell Primary School

Meet Our Nursery Friends!

Welcome to Nursery! We have all enjoyed our first week in Nursery and we have all had lots of fun. We have been exploring our new outdoor and indoor environments as well as learning routines and making lots of new friends. We have all settled in very well and are having so much fun! Take a look at the activities we have been taking part in this week.

Superhero Chatterboxes!

We have enjoyed making some Superhero Chatterboxes at home with our parents and carers. We brought these into school and shared the contents of them with our teachers and friends. We had to choose our favourite superhero and explain why we liked them and why they were a superhero to us. Some of us chose Spiderman and Paw Patrol characters as our superheroes, whilst others chose our Mammy's, Daddy's and other family members. We all think it is important to have a superhero in our lives - to look after us and to be our friend.

What Is Voting?

In Nursery we have been discussing voting and what it means to vote. We are learning how the the voting system works through choosing a book on a morning when we come into Nursery. We have to put a conker in the bowl next to the book which we would like Miss Forrest to read later in the day. The book with the most conkers in their bowl is the winner and they have the most votes. We are really enjoying choosing a book to read everyday. 

Party Invitations

Elliott has enjoyed handing out his birthday party invitations this week. He is really excited to see all of his friends at his 4th birthday party. 

Autumn Wreaths

We have had lots of fun making Autumn wreaths for our creative area display. We were given a cardboard wreath template and collected our own leaves for our homework. We then were given PVA glue from our teachers and had to stick our own leaves and Autumnal materials onto our templates to complete the wreath. As a final touch we chose the glitter colour which we wanted to use and added glitter to the wreaths to make them all sparkly. We were very good at making these independently! 

Halloween In Nursery

We have had lots of Halloween activities going on in the areas in Nursery this week. In the water area we have enjoyed making witches and wizards potions with the purple water, conkers, spiders and mice. In the playdough area we have used cutters to make bats and pumpkins. We have used pumpkin templates in the writing area to draw around and make pumpkins. We have also enjoyed having a Halloween party in the home corner with our friends.  

Firework Pictures

We were very good at using a fork, paints and glitter to make some firework pictures in our creative area, with Miss Clark. After making these pictures we took them home to show our parents and carers as we were very proud of them.

Sharing A Story By The Christmas Tree

One afternoon in December, Miss Forrest took the Nursery children who stay on and afternoon and the Reception children and we sat around the Christmas tree. Miss Forrest read a Christmas story to us called, "Sproutzilla!" We really enjoyed the story and thought that it was very funny.

Our First Visit To The Library

We really enjoyed our first trip to our school library in Nursery. We had a great time looking at all of the different books that are available for us to share with our loved ones. We each chose a book to take home to share with our grown-ups. We cannot wait to go back every Friday morning throughout our time in Nursery!

Self Registration

We have been learning to self register this week within Nursery. When we come in, after we have hung our coats and bags up and put our water bottles away, we take our peg picture off our peg and place it on the correct group registration board - depending on whether we are in Miss Forrest's blue group or Miss Clark's yellow group. When we do this, it means we are present in Nursery today. At the end of the Nursery day, we take it back off and put it back on our pegs, ready for the next day. This helps to show our teachers who is in and who is off that day.

Making Faces With Playdough

We have been developing our playdough skills this week by making our faces with the dough. We have practiced skills such as moulding, rolling, pinching, flattening and pinching. We have made our eyes. nose, mouth, ears and hair using face templates. 

Writing In The Sand

In Nursery this week, in our mark-making area, the children have been copying patterns into sand in the writing area this week. They have enjoyed using their fingers to make these patterns. 

Play Dough Skills Development

This week in the dough area we have really been focusing on developing different skills needed when using the play dough. While children are busy rolling, poking and squishing dough, they are building strength in the little muscles in their fingers and hands. These same muscles are used for later skills such as cutting and holding a pencil with a pincer grasp. The children chose a skills card independently and practiced that skill using the dough. They practiced a range of skills including; flatten, spiral, cylinder roll, press, twist, squeeze, roll and cut. 

Spooky Yoga!

During the week of Halloween, our PE lesson involved us doing spooky yoga. We carried out a range of movements alongside a spooky, Halloween story. At the end of the Halloween yoga we done a skeleton dance. We have lots of fun doing yoga!

Remembrance Day Poppy Biscuits

After sharing a power point all about Remembrance Day, we made poppy biscuits in order to help us remember the soldiers which fought for our country during WW1. We used digestive biscuits and decorated them to make them look like poppies - using red icing and chocolate buttons. We then sat together on the carpet area and enjoyed eating our biscuits together with our friends.

Our First PE Lesson

For our first PE lesson our focus was on spacial awareness and developing our ability to work within a small space. We completed a range of different movements such as walking, running, side stepping, walking backwards, skipping and crawling. Whilst doing these movements we had to keep our heads up and watch where we were going so that we did not bump into our friends. We then practiced throwing and catching a ball with a partner and then as a group - our focus was to say our friends name before we passed the ball to them as this is an important part of playing sport. 

Transient Art Faces

This week in Nursery we have enjoyed making our faces using a style called Transient art. This means making your face out of natural materials such as pine cones, sticks and leaves. We went out on a nature walk first to gather the materials outside on the school grounds. We then took the materials back to our classroom and enjoyed making our own faces using the natural materials. 

Superheroes!

Some of our Nursery children are enjoying dressing up as superheroes in our role play area within Nursery. We have a range of costumes and the children are enjoying being Spiderman, Superman, Ironman, Batman and Captain America!

Pumpkin Soup

Some children have enjoyed making pumpkin soup in Nursery to fit in with our Autumnal theme. They have used orange water and added ingredients such as leaves, acorns and conkers. They have served the soup to their friends and described what they think it would taste like. They've had lots of fun being cooks in the water area!

PE - Mythical Creatures

Our PE lesson this week was all about mythical creatures. In our warm up we had to pretend to be a unicorn, dragon and fairy whilst moving around the hall. 
Unicorn: Trot around the hall, looking proud and tall.
Dragon: Hold arms out and flap them to fly around, breathing fire as we go.
Fairies: Fly around gracefully and spin and turn.

We then completed the following actions with a bean bag;
Sitting down, imagine the fairy is flying as we passed the beanbag from hand to hand.
Pass it from hand to hand around our torso and head.
Throw the fairy up to head height and catch it.
Standing up. Imagine the fairy is flying around our body - as we pass the fairy from hand to hand around our waist and under our legs.

Lastly we played a game called 'hide the fairies'. We had to put our beanbag down in a space and travel around the room by jogging, skipping, hopping and spinning - avoiding the beanbags on the floor. When the teacher called ‘the dragons are coming,’ we had to quickly find a fairy (beanbag) and hide it by lying down with our tummy covering the beanbag. 

This lesson helped develop our spatial awareness skills and and our wide finger catching grip when catching the beanbag.

Bonfire Night

To celebrate Bonfire night this week we have had a firework themed Nursery. We have practiced writing our letters in glitter and have also copied patterns from a selection of cards with our finger to remind us of the colourful fireworks we will see in the sky this week. We have also enjoyed exploring our firework sensory bin where we made lots of noises with different materials and enjoyed touching and holding them. We have also discussed how to stay safe around fireworks during our circle time to remind us on how we can stay safe and enjoy the fireworks safely.

PE - Dung Beetles!

In PE this week we have been pretending to be dung beetles rolling our poo (ball) around the hall. We were developing our ability to roll a ball to a target. We started off the lesson with a warm up where we had to travel around the hall in a variety of different ways; skipping, hopping, sidestepping and walking backwards. 
We each were given a tennis ball and we had to find a space and sit next to our cone. Whilst sitting we had to push the ball around a cone using both hands without losing control of the ball, like a dung beetle would. We practiced going in one direction around the cone and then the other. We had to use our fingertips to push the ball. We then had to use one hand to push the ball around the cone. After we had to stand with two feet together and push the ball around our legs.
We then played 'dung beetles on the move' where we had to roll the ball along the floor a short way before chasing after it to pick it up. We had to bend down low and step forwards when we rolled. We had to make sure we had a straight arm, swinging it past our bottom and our hands had to be pointing towards where we wanted the ball to go.
Lastly we played 'bury the dung' where we had to use the cones already laid out and we had to roll the ball to hit a cone. If we hit the cone we got to keep that cone. We had a competition to see who could collect the most cones.