Nursery

Hello and a huge welcome to our class webpage.

Our Nursery staff team are: Miss Quartermaine (M,Tu,Th,F), Mrs Lowery (W), Miss Ahmed and Mrs Hardy.

Our children have lots of fun, here you can find out what’s been happening in Nursery this week.

Class Update

13.6.25 - Whale week

We have be learning all about whales. We read some fun books: Young Zoologist Humpback Whale, Snail and the Whale, and The Unexpected Visitor.

We were also busy learning some 3d shapes: cube, cuboid, pyramid, cylinder, sphere.

In our play time we all printed our own T-shirts, they look fab! They took us a very long time and we worked really hard on them. We can’t wait to show you when we’ve all finished, just a couple of friends still to go. Please remember to pay for your t-shirt on Parnetmail!

 

Loads more fun to come next week and we get to meet the new little nursery children that will join us next year!

6.6.25- Welcome back!

We’ve had a lovely first week back. We had some new toys to test out our fine motor skills. We got some small Lego, Zoobs and a marble run- all instantly popular and in hot demand this week.

It was so lovely to see all our friends again and we played really well together.

We have started our new topic: The Ocean. It was very exciting, this week was all about coral reefs and tropical fish and other creatures that visit the reef. Mrs Lowrey had some real coral for us to explore.

Next week we will be learning about whales and printing our own t-shirts.

Excitingly we have a new singing teacher, Mr Evans and the children are currently having a lovely time singing Superworm together- nothing like a nice easy request from Nursery!

16.05.25- Chicks or not chicks!

Well, we were hoping to hear the peck, peck of tiny beaks, but we didn’t. Those eggs have stubbornly refused to hatch!

Never the less, we learnt about what should’ve happened and had lots of fun in the process. Our favourite books of the week were: Six Little Chicks by Jez Alborough and Triangle by Mac Barnett.

For our activities this week we made some chick life cycles, painted our names on big paper and played some counting games.

At carpet times we have been learning the sounds i, n, p and some 2d shapes; square, circle, triangle, rectangle, rhombus, hexagon, semi circle and oval. We’ve read lots of stories and sung lots of our favourite songs.

On Friday we celebrated Zambian and Zimbabwean culture and looked at some photos of some Zambian Nursery schools, Victoria falls, some animals that live there and some markets. We ate a tasty lunch and practised carrying babies on our backs.

Lots of Ladybird fun next week!

09/05/25 Tadpoles and Frogs

Just a quick round up this wee as we’ve been very busy hanging out with the grandparents this afternoon!

The week was mainly frog filled and we had a great time learning about frogspawn, tadpoles and frogs! We drew some brilliant pictures for you to see in our books. We had a great laugh reading some funny frog related stories: We are the Wibbly, Tadpoles Promise and Tad.

We had a look at some shapes this week too: squares, circles, triangles, rectangles, hexagons, ovals, rhombuses.

 

Have a fab weekend!

02/05/25 - Brilliant Bees!

This week we have had a wonderful time learning about bees and all the amazing things they do. We focussed mainly on honey bees and found out some really interesting facts (Miss Quartermaine once went on a bee keeping course, so there was lots to learn!)

Here’s our facts:

• Honey bees have two tummies, one is for honey (Miss Quartermaine thinks we might have two tummies: one for meals and one for snacks, the snack tummies always seem to be empty!)
• Each colony has a queen, the queen is the biggest bee and the mummy of all the bees. Her only job is to lay eggs and she can lay 2000 a day. The queen can decide what gender the larvae (baby bee) will be.
• Boy bees are called drones and the don’t do any jobs! How rude!
• Most girl bees in the hive are worker bees, they start working from the day they mature into an adult. First job is cleaning, second job is nursing the babies, third is being a builder, forth is standing on guard at the hive, fifth is foraging when you get to fly away and look for nectar.
• Forager bees find flowers and then go back to the hive with the nectar and pollen and do a waggle dance to tell the other bees where to find them. A long dance means the flowers are far away, a short dance means they are close.
• Bees spit the nectar to another bee in the hive and they spit it to another, as it travels through all the honey tummies it becomes thicker and makes honey.
• Once it’s ready they pop it in a hive cell and some of the other bees have to flap their wings to make it the right temperature.
• 1 teaspoon of honey is the lifetime’s work of 12 honey bees- don’t waste honey!
• Once the queen bee is coming to the end of her life, she makes a new queen and the worker bees feed it Royal Jelly to turn it into the queen.
• (we didn’t learn this bit, this is a fact for the adults!) A new queen flies away from the hive and all the boy bees chase her in the hope of helping her make eggs. Unfortunately, if they are successful in their quest, they meet a very sticky end! She returns to the hive to lay the eggs and game over for the poor boys!

Aside from the wonderful world of bees we started learning some phonemes (letter sounds i.e. phonics) This week our sounds were: M, A, S and we also started learning to blend sounds together in words. We played a game called Red Robot where we listened to the instructions i.e. touch your h, ea, d and had to blend the last word together to work out what it was.

25/04/25 The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Dear all,

What a lovely first week back! We’ve all been really pleased to see each other and had lots of fun reacquainting ourselves with the toys. We have some new baby dolls, some hot wheels cars and a new, much needed, base plate for the Duplo. Duplo is a hot favourite at the moment and we can often be found in groups working on a large construction.

Aside from all the fun times playing, we have some exciting new learning for the half term. Our new topic is Life cycles and we have been learning about caterpillars and butterflies this week.

We found out that the process starts with an egg, out pops a caterpillar, it then makes a chrysalis and has a good sleep before emerging as a butterfly.

We have been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and deciding which of the foods he eats is our favourite. Lots of takers for cupcakes, less for pickles!

Excitingly we have some live caterpillars on the way and we’ll set them up a home in class once they arrive. We also have some chicken eggs in our incubator and are hoping for some little hatchlings later in the term- how exciting!

 

 

04/04/25- Tigers and Easter Eggs

Dear all,

Last week we missed our weekly blog as I was off running the Arts Café. Thank you so much to all of you who came and saw our work.

We made some fabulous tiger pictures last week too. They’re all ready to go up on display in class. We’re having a bit of a change around and all our Arts Day things will be going up too, so lots of lovely new art work to see soon!

This week we have been busy  Indian block printing our Easter cards and then finishing them off with our craft supplies. We also made some beautiful collaged eggs.

We’ve read lots of Easter books and had a very exciting hunt to finish off the term.

Hope you all have a lovely half term and Easter.

21/03/25 - even more art and a world tour

This week we have a real mix up of things to do. We continued with some art work as we’d really enjoyed watching Clair Rossiter drawing a soldier and we needed to have a go too!

We also started some top secret Mother’s day work- shhh!

For our mathematical learning at the moment we are talking about routes and how we get to school by using directions such as, turn, straight on, go, forwards etc.

For our world tour we have been finding out about Palestine, Brazil and the USA. With lots of yummy food and activities. Thank you so much to everyone who came in to see us and share some food and learning!

14/03/25 - Arts Week

Beep, Beep, It’s Arts Week, we’ve been making London Buses. We had a fabulous time, though it was a bit frustrating having to wait for the red ink to dry overnight! But, patience wins the day and the next morning we made the wheels and the windows and decided who was on board the bus.

There was, of course, much singing of the Wheels on the Bus because it is almost impossible when you are 3 or 4 (or a nursery teacher) to refrain from singing whilst you are making a picture.

We’ve been reading No, Nancy No by Alice Tait and laughing at all the naughty things Nancy got up to in London.

Thanks for sending in your pictures of days out in London, we loved looking at them. So much fun!

We loved looking at Clair Rossiter’s work online and we really enjoyed her assembly on Friday morning. Next week we will all have a go at drawing a Clair-style soldier.

Clair has a fantastic illustrated map called the Curious Map of London and it was so much fun to see all the things she had drawn. You can have a look here!

On Friday afternoon we even managed to squeeze in some London themed block printing and we all made a little bag to keep some of our bits in.

You can come and see all of the fabulous artwork on Friday 28th March in the school hall.

 

07/03/25- Europe

The last two weeks have been a fantastic adventure around Europe for Nursery. This week we found out about the Netherlands and particularly enjoyed seeing the tulip fields and windmills.

We had Vinnie’s mum pop to school to read us a story a tell us about Germany. We played a brilliant party game where we had to try and eat a pretzel off of a string.

Tuesday was pancake day, so after finding out about Germany it was time to whip up a batter and get the crape makers out. The pancakes were delicious.

Mrs Lowery and Miss Quartermaine taught us about Spain and showed us some of the foods we could eat on holiday and some of the places we could visit.

Thursday was World Book Day, so we took a day off from our travels and had a wild time in our costumes and read lots of books.

On Friday we had a very busy morning. First up was gymnastics and straight afterwards we had a story telling workshop. We had a brilliant story all about a story tree. After that we needed some free time so we enjoyed the beautiful sunshine in our garden.

Next week is Arts Week and we are learning all about London. Don’t forget to send me your pictures of your children out and about!

28/02/25- What a busy week!

This week really excelled itself for being jam packed, I can’t quite believe it was only one week!

We are learning about the world this half term and all the heritage of our class. Almost every child in the class has a connection to another country, so we are busy learning about all the places we have family and friends.

We kicked off the topic with a visit from Jarvis’ mum who taught us some French words, told us some interesting things about France and brought in some home made madeleines which were delicious! Jarvis showed us how to do Heads, Shoulder, knees and Toes in French which was a lot of fun. In the afternoon we had a French snack café and tasted brie and baguette.

Next up, we had Redver and his mum who taught us all about St David’s Day. We had a look at some leeks and daffodils, made some lovely daffodil pictures and tried on some traditional clothes. Lela brought in her knitted sheep and Welsh dolly to show us too. And, we all got a flag which we really enjoyed waving and took home at the end of the day.

To finish off the week we had a very exciting visit from the police. They were going to bring the horses but, sadly, they were not well enough to come, so instead they brought the van and lots of cool stickers and we all had a turn at driving or sitting in the van pretending to catch baddies. We also tried on the handcuffs and hats.

All in all a fab week.

07/02/25- Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Dear all,

We had lots of run reading the story of Goldilocks and the Three bears. We read a few different versions and decided which one we liked best. Obviously we needed to make porridge and top it with yummy things. I think blueberries and raisins were the top choices.

We’ve spent quite a lot of time in the kitchen this week! We also made some delicious chocolate biscuits that were still warm as we went home, so we took them for our after school snack.

On Fridays we have started a salad club where some of the children help out in the Nursery kitchen and help to prepare our salad for lunch.  It’s amazing how much salad we will eat with our lunch when we help to make it!

Hope you all have a fab weekend!

 

 

31/01/25 - Chinese New Year Malaysian style!

Dear all,

 

This week we have been learning about Chinese New Year in Malaysia. What a great country to learn about!

We found Malaysia on a map and talked about how it’s not all joined together on one piece of land. We had a think about how you would get across the sea to get from one side to the other. Some of the children thought they might be able to swim, they’re obviously much better swimmers than me!

In terms of Chinese New Year, we discussed how it is celebrated by the Chinese community in Malaysia and looked at some of the customs and culture of the festival.  We found out that they make a dish called Yee Sang which is shredded vegetables and fish. The most fun thing about this is that you get your chopsticks and toss the salad into the sir to mix it up and then eat it together. We made our own mini version with shredded carrots and cucumber and discovered that its actually quite hard work to use the julienne cutters to make it. However, we had loads of fun and really enjoyed eating it together. never has so much salad been scoffed in one lunch sitting!

We watched Miss Quartermaine make the noodles because that was a bit hot for little fingers and then we helped make the sauce; three spoons of honey, three of soy sauce and three of lemon juice- stir well. We added these to our Monday lunch and scoffed the lot with a side of school-dinner lasagne. we were well stuffed on Monday!

One important part of Chinese New Year is to make your house clean, ready for the celebrations. So we washed the Chinese bowls ready to put them in the home corner for the week.

We had a very special visitor- Lela’s mummy came to read to us and tell us about Chinese New Year in Malaysia. Although they don’t celebrate at home, Lela’s mum had lots of friends that do, so we found out lots of interesting things. Thanks for visiting!

All in all we had a lot of fun and we’re looking forward to next week when we will be reading Goldilocks and The Three Bears and having a porridge cafe!

See you next week!

 

 

24/01/2 Traditional Tales

We’ve had a very busy few weeks: lots of fun with traditional tales. We read lots of different versions of Little Red Riding hood. The jury was out on which version was best. some of us liked the scarier more traditional one and some of us preferred the less scary one.

Next up was the gingerbread man. We built some traps and successfully trapped some rogue gingerbread men that had been spotted running around the Nursery.

This week was all about Billy Goats and the mean old troll that loved under the bridge. We’ve had fun retelling the tale and using our troll voices.

For mathematics we have been busy counting groups of object sand labelling them with numerals. Or looking at numerals and counting out the correct quantity. The mean old troll had a tax on his bridge and we had to help the billy goats pay the correct amount to cross the bridge. It was very important to get it right or the troll would eat them!

We’re really, really good at rhyming now, so much so that most of our lunch times we are sitting at the table thinking up daft rhymes. We are just refining our skills ready to move on to something new.

13/12/25- ITS CHRISTMAS!!! (Well, nearly!)

This week Christmas has been in full swing. Your little elves are buy making lovely Christmas things to bring home at the end of the year. You’ll have to wait until next week to find out more!

We have been busy continuing with our rhyming learning this week. we read some great stories: Unicoorn Noonicorn and moo Cow Kung-Fu cow. Both very entertaining!

No number of the week this week. Instead we have been learning to subitise. What???? Well, it really means being able to look at a small group of objects and know how many without counting. So there’s a fancy maths word for those of you that don’t know it- subitise!

 

Of course the main event this week was having you all in for Christmas lunch and to show you our Nativity film. What a treat that was! It was so lovely to see you all and didn’t the children do well.

06/12/24 Stick Man

We had a fabulous week reading the story of Stick Man. I think it’s safe to say we can all recite the whole book now.  We made our own adorable stick men from real sticks and craft materials.

Once our stick stick men were finished, we made chocolate ones from mini rolls and matchmakers, sadly no photos to show you as the children ate them almost as fast as they made them!

Our number of the week was 5. We’ve been learning to recognise the numeral, counting five objects, sequencing numerals 1-5, and, most impressively, using both hands to find lots of ways to make 5 i.e 2 fingers and there fingers is five etc.

Our Early Phonics skill is rhyming and we’ve been reading Octopus Socktopus and playing willoughby wallaby woo to learn words that rhyme with our names.

 

Have a fab weekend!

29/11/24- Nativity madness and Owl Babies

Well, this week feels like two rolled into one! Perhaps it was because we kicked off our week with making our nativity. We’re a bit different to the rest of the school and we don’t do a live performance (mostly because it turns out to be an embarrassing solo from me and no one wants time off work to hear that!) So we got creative and we dress up as all the nativity folk and we each filmed a little bit of the story. The whole thing then gets stitched together and made into a mini film. Very entertaining indeed!

Please check parentmail to book a ticket to our Christmas Lunch/Film premiere!

So that felt like one whole week in itself. The following days saw us return to our topic learning and we read the story of Owl babies and did lots of lovely owl based activities.

Miss Ahmed got us all counting and we had to feed the correct  number of things to each baby owl. Miss Maye had us all in the creative area to make some lovely owl pictures. Miss Lowrey worked her magic with loo rolls and craft items and Miss Quartermaine was firmly on Christmas duty!

Our Number of the week was 4. Get spotting when you are out and about!

Our words of the week were; owl, wings, beak and feathers- give yourself 10 points every time you fit those into conversation this weekend!

Have a lovely weekend and hopefully we’ll be seeing most of you at the Christmas fair.

22/11/24- Say Hi to Hedgehogs.

Dear all,

This week we have been learning all about hedgehogs. Our words of the week were spiky and prickly. We read a fantastic picture book called; Say Hi to hedgehogs which and some fabulous hedgehog facts and some lovely pictures.

In class we produced some really lovely hedgehog art. We made clay hedgehogs and painted pictures of hedgehogs. All of them have a lot of character and you’ll be able to see them if you visit class on Tuesday morning to see our books.

We have been working hard at our counting skills and numeral recognition and many of us are now confident at recognising numerals 1-3. Sock Monster always comes along to our maths sessions and we’ve been teaching him to count accurately and helping him to learn his numbers too.

 

 

15/11/24- Autumn

Dear all,

This week we have been learning about autumn and gathering some autumn treasures for a lovely autumnal activities. We found some beautiful leaves at school and we used them to make leaf rubbings and prints.

We’ve been talking about what happens in the autumn and what the trees do and how they look. Though, obviously the British weather did it’s own thing and was a bit more summer-ish.

Our word of the week this week was; crunchy and we looked at some Crunchy autumn leaves. I wonder what you can find at home that is crunchy? We found leaves, breadsticks, cornflakes and a few other things at school.

Our Number of the week was two and we all enjoyed stomping along to the number of the week song. We sorted objects into groups of 2 or not 2 and we taught sock monster how to count to five, making sure that he got all his numbers in the right order and he gave each item a number.

Miss Ahmed did a fantastic job of getting everyone to decorate their Diwali Diyas and they are all looking fab.

Miss Maye did a wonderful maths session with us and we all enjoyed colouring in some numbered ducks and sticking them on the river in the right order.

On Friday we all had our first ever school photos and we were amazing at lining up and sitting for our pictures. I’m sure you are all looking forward to seeing them.

Have a lovely weekend and remember if you are out and about we need some sticks!

08/11/24 Diwali and Spanish day

Dear all

What a week! We’ve been so busy that the half term holiday is just a distant memory. This week we have been learning about Diwali and how Hindu’s celebrate their special day.

We had a look at some clay diyas and made our own from some lovely terracotta clay. They’re still drying out, but hopefully they’ll be ready to paint next week. We tried our hand at Rangoli patterns in the garden, I’m not sure we quite captured the beauty and symmetry of traditional Rangoli, but we were very creative and enjoyed the experience!

We had a look at some traditional Indian clothing which was very colourful and sparkly. Eloise and Ivy modelled the top and skirt and Henry and Frankie had a very good go at walking in the adult-size sequined high heels! It was very hard to part with the sparkly clothing because it was so beautiful.

Then on Friday we joined the whole school with Hispanic day and we found out all about Spain. We decided we would like to visit the beaches and some of the Moorish “castles” that we found on Google Earth. It was the busiest of busy days as we watched a Flamenco show at 9am, went straight to gymnastics from there and then went to a flamenco workshop where we strutted our stuff and very much enjoyed the stamping and clapping bits.

24/10/24- Hooray for Fish

This week we have been having fun with the story: Hooray for Fish. It’s lots of fun and has lots of made-up fish for us to spot; scary fish and ele-fish have been very popular.

We made some brilliant books with our own fish pictures in which was great practise for our pencil skills.

Then, we made mixed media fish pictures so we can make our own aquarium display in the classroom. We explored acrylic pens and drawing inks to create our fish. Lots of fun and quite a few messy hands!

It’s been a brilliant half term and we’ve had so much fun together. after the holidays we will be learning about: Diwali, autumn, hedgehogs, owls and Christmas.

18/10/24 - Eat Up Gemma

This we we read the story of Eat Up Gemma. It’s a story all about a baby that wont eat up until he big brother thinks of a good trick to get her munching. This led to lots of baby themed play in the home corner and lots of thinking about our favourite foods.

In the story, baby Gemma feeds her chocolate biscuits to the pigeons! So on Monday we made the most delicious chocolate biscuits and the pigeons of Shepherd’s Bush were not so lucky because they were so tasty we ate them all!

Thank you for all your donations for cooking- much appreciated. The classroom smelt amazing and everyone was instantly very hungry the minute we could smell them. If you fancy baking at home we used this BBC Good Food Recipe

They were super simple to make and the children really did get involved with all the stages of the recipe (and the eating!)

Later in the week, we practised our knife skills and chopped (and ate) lots of lovely fruits, just like Gemma in our story. The fruits even got their portraits painted and we have some lovely watercolour fruit pictures.

As a school we have revised our Behaviour Policy and simplified the school rules to three very simple rules to understand:

• Be Ready
• Be safe
• Be kind/respectful (the wording here depends on the age, in Nursery we use Be Kind)

We have been learning these three very important rules this week and discussing how we can show teachers that we are ready for learning, show our friends that we are kind and show everyone how to use things safely.

On that note, have a lovely weekend! I’m sure we are all READY for it!

 

04/10/24 - We're Going on a Bear Hunt

This week we have been reading the fabulous; We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. We set up a real bear hunt in the garden and stomped through the mud and felt the (fake) snow etc, mercifully there was a teddy bear in our cave rather than a big scary brown bear.

We then excelled ourselves in the cooking department and made the most amazing lemon drizzle cakes. They were so delicious we scoffed most of the first one for our pudding on Tuesday and then tucked into the second on Wednesday.

We’ve started work on our ‘Special Books’ these are special by name and special by nature, it’s where our teachers stick all our photos and keep some drawings etc. This week we made lovely handprints so you will always be able to remember how little our hands were when we started nursery.

                                          

20/09/24- Brown Bear, Brown Bear

Dear all,

We had a fab week reading the story of Brown Bear, Brown Bear. We enjoyed working out which animal was next in the book and remembering the sequence of the story.

We did our first little learning activity this week. We all had our own photos to cut out and stick into a book and we turned it into our own version of Brown Bear, Brown bear. But, instead of animals we are the stars of that story.

Some of us did a brilliant job of cutting out and some of us are quite new to using scissors. If you would like to have a go at some more cutting at home, see our weekly email for advice about choosing the right scissors.

We also started learning a few numerals and practised a bit of counting.

We have learnt lots of new songs; 10 Elephants, Five Speckled Frogs, Little Peter Rabbit and many others.

13/09/24 Our first full week

Wow, we managed our first full week at school. We have had lunch every day and we’ve done so well. Roast chicken was probably the most popular dish of the week and the strawberries and cream for pud!

In class we have been learning to listen to a story together. We read ‘Where is the Green Sheep’ and all enjoyed finding all the different sheep in the book. Spoiler alert: the green sheep is always asleep.

We’ve also had our first PE, Music and Gymnastics lessons and we did so well.

06/09/24

Hello and welcome to the start of our weekly updates. this is the place to check and see what we’ve been doing each week and if the teachers have survived!

This week we made an excellent start with our first three days. We had a great time, not too many tears (long may that last) and most of the wees and poos landed in the toilet! so all in all, pretty good!

We’ve been exploring all the toys in the classroom (literally ALL of them, tidy up was an epic job!) and getting to know each other.

We’re looking forward to lots of fun this coming week with our first full time days.