The Nest Nursery @ NCS

Autumn 1 2022

Brown bear brown bear what do you see?

This is a core book this term.

Coloured artwork and favourite animals make this rhythmic story the perfect introduction to looking and learning about colours. Each page leads seamlessly into the next and young children will delight in Eric's colourful collage animals and simple repetitive language.

The family book

The Family Book celebrates the love we feel for our families and all the different varieties they come in. Whether you have two mothers or two dads, a big family or a small family, a clean family or a messy one, Todd Parr assures readers that no matter what kind of family you have, every family is special in its own unique way.

Getting to know each other, making friends and exploring the nursery.

This week we have been reading our core book Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?

The animals are all different colours so we have been and talking about the colours we can see, naming them and describing them. We also chose to watch a makaton version of the story to help us learn how to sign the animal names.

In Maths we have been grouping objects by colour, we went on a colour hunt and have been singing lots of songs about all the different colours, one of our favourite songs is below.

Our rhyme this week has been Incy Wincy spider, we have enjoyed singing the rhyme. We have also made spiders out of dough and caught minibeasts using tweezers.

So much by Trish Cooke is our core book this term

This delightful picture book captures the warmth of family life and a significant family event in a young child’s life. There’s a birthday party and lots of excitement but also lots of waiting for the big event to happen. This highly patterned story features some authentic Caribbean language patterns, adding variety, interest and extra enjoyment.

This week we have read the book So much, which is all about a family. We then talked about our own family’s.
In maths we have started to look at different patterns, we sorted socks into groups using the categories spotty, plain and stripy.
We loved our autumn walk and have been talking about the changes we see in the autumn season, like the leaves changing colour and the weather getting colder.

Our nursery rhyme, this week was 5 speckled frogs.

We went on a walk and gathered some natural items to sort in our maths session. We found feathers, pine cones, leaves and acorns. We sorted the items by type, size and colour.

This week we have also sorted shells into groups. We talked about what we noticed, discussing things like size, colour and shape.

Story scribing

Put simply, story scribing is recording a child’s stories for them. It is a really valuable opportunity to support children’s understanding of themselves as authors and to value the creativity and composition of writing – because writing is not just about being able to physically transcribe words. Story scribing is not an alternative to encouraging our children to make marks and write; rather it is a technique to use in addition to or alongside their mark making opportunities. With the pressure of the handwriting, phonics and grammar taken away, children are able to focus on just simply the telling of the story. They are able to become an author rather than needing to be a “writer”.

At the end of a session any scribed stories are shown to the group. The story is read aloud and the children ‘act’ the story.

This week we have read the book My mum and Dad make me laugh. This is a funny story about a family but also introduces the idea of pattern.

We have been talking about patterns in our maths sessions and noticing patterns all around us. We also talked about the different patterns in the story, Mum liked spots and the Dad liked stripes.

This term one of the physical development skills we have been practicing is spreading using a knife. We have spread jam and butter on toast snd crumpets at snack time. We have to hold the knife safely and keep trying even when it’s tricky.

Baking is something we love to do, this term we have made crispy buns, following a simple recipe and taking turns to mix, melt, stir and pour.
We used our new spreading skills to ice biscuits, they were delicious!

We have also loved building dens using sheets, pegs and material. The adults modelled how to design and plan something before building. We had to make a sign for our den so everyone knew what it was.

Chatter bag

Communication and language is a prime area of learning in the EYFS framework, a child’s ability to communicate can affect different aspects of development. These include a child’s social skills with adults and peers as well as the ability to express their own feelings. Children should be given every opportunity to encourage the use of language and communication skills and within our nursery we encourage this through both planned and unplanned activities throughout the nursery day.

We have introduced a ‘Chatter bag’. This is where each week a child takes the chatter bag home to fill with their favourite items and photos. These may be related to their families or anything they feel they would like to share within nursery. During ‘group time’ adults will encourage the children to show and talk about what is in their chatter bag and share it with peers allowing them to ask questions. The Chatter bags cover all aspects of language and communication as it encourages good listening skills as well as communication skills.

Squiggle time

This term we have practiced moving our flappers up and down in a straight line, side to side snd crossing our arms over.
After we have practiced our moves with flappers we then draw our dance with chunky crayons.

Autumn 2 2022

Our first book this term is Leaf Man. Leaf Man follows a group of autumn leaves as they are blown by the wind. I wonder where the wind will take them?