Reception & nursery
Forest school
On a Wednesday the children make their way over to forest school with Mrs Penn where they have been developing their listening skills and learning how to keep safe in forest school from not crossing the red rope without an adult to learning about fungi and things outside that are safe and are not safe to touch. throughout the autumn 1 term we have been focusing on the autumn season and recognising the change in our outside environment. We have enjoyed activities such as collecting autumn leaves, making leaf crowns and drawing forest school using autumn colours.
Having fun and learning through our play!
The children have fully immersed themselves in play across all areas of the provision!
Playdough
Our focus at the playdough table has been developing finger/hand strength by using our key exercises: Roll, pinch, press and squeeze while incorporating these skills into play, the children love making cakes with the playdough so every day is a birthday at the playdough table!
Texture tray
We have been exploring a range of sensory experiences at our texture tray from soapy bubbles, sand, cornflour slime and pumpkin guts! with a selection of resources for the children to explore from sea creatures in the blue slime for storytelling filling and pouring with spoons which has stimulated conversations around measuring and quantities.
Small world/block area
There has been some amazing creative work in our small world area and block area. The children have enjoyed building fairy gardens and castles with our small world resources and using our fairy and princess characters to tell stories. Our block area has been transformed into a range of things such as shops, houses, doctors and a park with a slide where we see our children fully immerse into their role play.
- Blowing bubbles and bubble painting
- Scooping and filling
- Who’s been eating my porridge!
- Water play
- We built a slide
- Fairy land
An amazing start to the year in the Nursey
In foundation we have had an amazing start to the year! Welcoming back our lovely nursery children and settling in our new starters into the foundation setting.
Our core books: Dear zoo, Brown bear, Where’s spot.
Songs/Poems: 1..2..3..Bubbles, leaves are falling, 5 little pumpkins
The children have developed great oral memory skills through reciting our stories and poems. They enjoy doing this together in our guided sessions or during their free play with their friends.
National Story telling week 29th January -2nd February
During this week we promoted lots of opportunities to tell and create stories. In the Foundation Unit we used tough trays to enable children to make up story narratives. We promoted role play scenarios and encouraged children to retell well known stories with props. We were lucky to have Mike from Talking turns to come in to create a story with the nursery. This involved children talking about their ideas, listening, acting, dressing up, dancing, playing instruments and being creative!
- Telling a story with props
- Story making
- Porridge bears bowls counting and sharing
Here is a flavour of the Talking turns story telling fun!
- Listening together
- “I think a unicorn”
- the hot air ballon
- Music
- The old man
- dancing and creeping
So much learning and fun!
We are continuing to enjoy so many activities with many learning opportunities and chances to wonder together whilst talking about our thoughts in both our nursery and reception classes.
The reception children are developing their phonic skills ,writing skills and early mathematical skills during small group times and having a fantastic time exploring and extending their skills as they explore the continuous provision both inside and outside.
- writing numerals
- making patterns
- Letter formation
- All aboard!
- Using shapes and writing labels
- A house with hot chocolate. Maths skills were needed to select and place the correct sized blocks
The nursery children have helped settle new children who joined our setting in Janaury 2024 and keenly embraced lots of learning opportunities. These included bringing in baby photos and talking about the things they can do now compared to when they were babies. The addition of real baby items really enhanced the role play. We have continued to enjoy some PE sessions and forest school times. Throughout the nursery sessions adults play with the children and find ways to develop children’s areas of interest; which has included clay work, painting activities and tough tray provision.
- Long gutter tracks created
- “look the same!”
- Sewing a pouch for popcorn!
- Story making
- “Cup” “tea”
- Developing strong upper arms!
- Clay concentrated creativity
- Ordering numerals from 0-9
- caring for babies
Foundation Stage Fun Autumn 1!
This half term has flown by! We have been settling new children into our foundation stage unit. We have been getting to know each other and enjoying exploring our environment inside and outside.
- Caring for our outdoor plants
- Row, row the boat .
- exploring water flow
- Sand pit space
- Learning poems together
- Imaginary play with friends
- exploring movements, colours and paint
- Using different paints
- Exploring clay
- being creative with clay
- cooking: spreading jam
- Water play experimenting with friends
- small block experiments
What an amazing start to our relationship building and learning!
Hollow Blocks Play September 2023

Completing the designs

Designers constructing walk ways

Trains and bus rides

Shops and Cafe time

Builders hammering in nails!
A wonderful start to the school year.
Shadow Puppets Talking Turns Project
- We watch the shadow theatre being built and Michael introduced how to create the shadows.
- We watched the clouds change shapes
- We created our own shadow puppets for Y6
What a WORLD BOOK DAY! We had the pleasure of watching and creating our own Shadow Puppets Show. The shadow puppet show was based on the story , ‘The Man who Cuts the Clouds’. It’s a simple story about a grandad who has an amazing job. He climbs up a big ladder every day with a pair of scissors and he is the reason why sometimes we can spot shapes in the clouds!
Role Play and keeping healthy.
Charlie’s block play; where he created a sequence of washing clothes making a washing machine, a tumble dryer and a washing line, inspired us to to explore why and how we keep ourselves clean and to add resources from the real world to develop our imaginary role play. We have explored vocabulary and enjoyed stories and rhymes to enhance our knowledge and understanding of why we need to keep ourselves and our homes clean but also having lots of fun!. Enjoy some of the images below.
- Charlie’s washing machine
- Pegging out the washing
- Washing machine, tumble dryer and washing line in our role play area
- We added items to keep ourselves clean
- broom and scrubbing brushes
- Washing up items
The children have spent time exploring soap in the water tray and outside. They have learnt the song “here we go round the mulberry bush” and “Miss Polly had a dolly” and enjoyed stories such as “Mrs Wishy Washy”, “The washing line” and the “Big Read bath”!
Michael’s Puppet Creating Morning and Amazing Banana Song
- Peel Banana Song
- Whisk Banana
- Working in pairs to make our puppet move
- Creating our bag puppets
- Exploring emotions through DRAM|A
- JOY
- ANGER