Teaching and learning
Nursery
Our Nursery class are taught by Miss Quartermaine with plenty of help from Mrs Kazem, Miss Newton, Miss Lucy and Miss Catherine. Our days are busy and full of fun, laughter and learning.
Class Update
Monday 30th March- Online Nursery
Good morning Nursery. I hope you are all well and have enjoyed your first week of Online Nursery.
This week we will start to think about Easter and Springtime. I have a little Easter Video collection for you to watch from the BBC
You can see how the children in this video celebrate Easter usually. Of course, things will be a little different for us all this year, but I’m sure many of us will be doing something lovely in our own homes.
Once you’ve watched the video clips you could have a go at the following activities:
- Make your own cross and decorate it with craft materials, or make one from lego and decorate it with some of your blocks etc.
- make your own craft Easter Egg by cutting an egg shape and decorating it with craft supplies.
- Make yourself an Easter garden with your toys or create one outside if you have a garden. Have a look at the one in the video for ideas.
- Have a look for signs of spring outside, you could go in your garden if you have one, or look from a window with an adult helping you. Take a picture of the things you have found and send them to me via email. You could draw a picture of the spring things you have found too.
Later in the week, we have some more stories to look forward to and lots of lovely activities to keep you all busy.
Have a lovely day!
Friday Audio shows
Friday 27th March - Online Nursery
Friday is usually Star of the Week Assembly and Gymnastics with Lauren.
Our Stars of the Week this week are all the parents! Well done for surviving the first week of homeschool. I salute you!
Today you could be making your Easter Bonnet if you’d like to take part in the virtual parade. More info on this from Mr Schumm’s posts. If you want to make one, but not be in the parade, you can send me your picture.
You could practise your gym shapes- tuck, pike, straddle and see if mummy and daddy can do them too!
Next week, we’ll have a few craft activities for Easter. See if you can gather the following items-egg box, glue, washed egg shells, paper or card, toilet roll tube.
Now we have a cosmic yoga class and there’s another radio show and story coming in the next post.
Thursday 26th March - Online Nursery
Morning, hope you are all okay and have been able to enjoy the sunshine somehow.
Today we have a bit of maths to do. You’ll need a dice and a collection of duplo bricks, or something similar that you can stack. There’s a dice in the home learning pack. This is a game for two or more players.
Firstly, make a collection of bricks. Each player takes a turn to roll the dice and then adds the correct number of bricks to their tower. The key learning here is being able to collect the correct number of bricks from the larger group.
After that (or before, if you prefer) there’s a shape video to watch. Perhaps you can then have a shape hunt and see if you can find any of the shapes around your house.
Here’s a video example of the game and our shape song.
Wednesday 25th March - online nursery
Hello, I do hope your week has been okay so far.
Many of you seem to have been busy building bridges for the Billy Goats- good work! I’ve also seen a lovely picture from one of our friends based on Charlie and the Chocolate factory, have you all been tuning in to Schumm of the day? I’ve seen some pictures from France and some pictures of homemade cars. Keep them coming it’s lovely to hear from you.
Wednesday is usually music and PE day in Nursery. Here’s today’s PE lesson from Tumble tots and today’s music lesson from the BBC.
Story of You Choose
Tuesday 24th March - Online Nursery
Hello,
I hope you all had a good day yesterday and enjoyed the story of the Billy Goats Gruff.
Today, you can continue work on your Billy Goat activities that were set out on Monday online or sent home in your learning pack.
You could also have a go at writing your name. There’s a guide for the grown ups on our class page.
Try logging into My USO today and having a go at Rollercoaster ordering. Log in via My USO, choose Busy Things, choose the pink man EYFS, choose the Elephant (Nursery set up by school.) Once you are in you’ll see some games pinned to the top of the game area for you. Let me know if you have difficulty getting in!
Don’t forget that you could also be making an Easter Bonnet for the Virtual Bonnet Parade!
Hope you all have a good Tuesday.
Monday 23rd March - Welcome to Online Nursery
Morning, welcome to our new online Nursery.
This week we are going to base our work around the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. Many of you will have the story at home, so you can read your own copy, or you can explore the story in one of the following ways:
Once you’ve enjoyed the story, you have a pack of activities that you can choose from. There are puppets to cut and make, pencil, control sheets, counting, shapes to cut, colouring. All sorts of things to keep you busy for the week.
Here are some other activities you could do:
- Build a bridge using some of your building toys. i.e duplo, if you’re feeling really creative you could build one over a bowl of water.
- Draw a picture of the billy goats and the troll
- retell the story from the book- with toys or using some pictures from your pack
- act out the story with your family
- use some junk materials to make a bridge
- use loo roll tube and paper to make a troll
- if you need to be getting on with some screen based activities, don’t forget to try out ‘my uso’
There’s no hurry to complete anything and all activities are optional. Don’t forget you can email me pictures of anything you’ve done., or just say to say hi! They’ll be some videos coming later this week and a few more ideas of things you can do at home.
Take care,
Miss Q
Guide to name writing
Here’s a little video tutorial on name writing. I’m sorry about my dull voice in the video, it’s not boredom, it’s terror of being filmed!
Whilst we are all at home, you could be practising this up to once a week, if you have time. The most important thing at this early stage in your child’s development, is having a go, rather than getting it right.
Hmmmm, I think I should get this video sponsored by hand cream- they’re a bit dry!
20/03/20 - What a week!
What a funny old week it’s been! At Nursery we’ve been merrily playing and working our way through the week, just like we always do, except with a few less of us than usual. You wouldn’t know there was anything else going on in the world.
The children have been an absolute blessing to be around because nothing gets in the way of play for little people. And that’s something to remember over the coming weeks, play is really important and necessary to their development, so if ‘all they do is play’ their learning will continue to develop.
In an attempt to help you out and to find my inner teenager (She must still be in there somewhere) i’ll be acquainting myself with the world of modern technology and posting updates on our blog everyday.
All work for Nursery is entirely optional. It’s here if you want/need it. There is absolutely no pressure to do anything. However, we may be off for a while and need something to keep ourselves entertained.
Let me know how you are all getting along. I’d genuinely love to hear from you. You can send me pictures, videos, messages etc to my usual email address and please don’t hesitate to get in touch with queries about accessing our home learning. I’ll be checking in with my email on my usual working days.
Take care of yourselves and hopefully we’ll all be back at school before we know it.
Simple Playdough Recipe
Here’s how to make really quick, no cook playdough. Keeps little (and big) people occupied for ages!
You will need:
- 2 cups (measuring cup, mug, beaker) of plain flour (you can usually substitute with any kind of flour, but only need bog standard plain stuff-so save your posh stuff in case we all have to learn how to make bread!)
- two tablespoons of vegetable oil (again, most oils will substitute, including baby oil, melted coconut oil etc)
- 1/2 cup of salt
- 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar, if you have it (if not, skip it out.)
- 1 or 1.5 cups of boiling water (obviously the adults need to do this bit)
- a little food colouring (if you have some, if not skip it.)
Method:
- mix flour, salt and cream of tartar together in a bowl (everything dry is mixed first.)
- add oil and any food colouring to the boiling water, then mix it into the dry ingredients (everything wet is added now.)
- stir, stir, stir- until everything is combined and sticky- remember it is hot!
- let it cool a little, enough so you can knead it.
- knead, knead, knead! This is vital to form the correct texture. Keep going until you have the perfect consistency.
- Now play (and try not to think about the mess!)
Tips:
- if your dough is too sticky, see if more kneading is required. If not, add a little more flour, a little at a time.
- if it’s too wet, add more flour in small increments.
- you can add in all sorts of things to make your playdough more interesting- cocoa powder (chocolate dough, mmmmm), herbs, spices, essential oils (nice calm lavender!)
- you can use most tools that are safe for children from the kitchen- an easy garlic press is great for playdough hair, just remember to wash it before any residue playdough sets hard!
- if you have a garden, you can add in leaves and sticks for some fun nature play. Leaves will print nicely into dough.
- if you make a successful batch and want to share your creations, email me.
- playdough might be a tad messy but it’s very good for developing hand-eye coordination, helping the muscles we need for writing and fine motor skills.
- it’s often quite a calming activity when we are feeling emotional. A lot of our children tend to naturally gravitate to dough when they are upset.
A message from Miss Quartermaine
Hi Everyone,
This will be the place to find our digital Nursery school whilst we are closed.
I’ll be setting our class learning on here every week, you can pop by and see what we are doing. If you want to share things with me, you have my school email, i’ll be checking in there to see what everyone is up to.
They’ll be some links coming later to direct you to home learning.
Take care everyone,
Miss Q
Pancakes
Ahhh, Pancake Day! The day where one adult in the Nursery has to mix batter and toss 26 pancakes. It was such fun, if a little sticky and sometimes a little smokey!
On Monday, we all designed our own pancake and thought about the toppings we would like. Then, on Tuesday, we got to make them. It was a tough choice- chocolate, honey, cream, blueberries, bananas, sugar, lemon. We pretty much all came up with our own unique combo and Miss Quartermaine flipped and mixed until we all had a pancake to eat and Miss Catherine helped up put on our toppings.
We read the story of Mr Wolf’s Pancakes. It was so funny and had us giggling all week. It has a bit of a surprise ending and we loved it.
Aside from all the pancake shenanigans, we we’re learning about ourselves. We looked carefully in the mirror and drew ourselves , trying to use the right colours. We drew our families and chatted about our parents, brothers and sisters and what they are like. There are no secrets now. We all know what you get up to at home!
Today we’ve been very busy. We did our first assembly and two of our friends got their Star of the Week certificates. We also had two birthday boys to sing to. After that we had gymnastics. Miss Lauren is so pleased with our progress we are going to start learning handstands and cartwheels next week.
We were so amazing in assembly and gymnastics that we had a special Friday treat of a biscuit! Yum!
14/02/20- Three Little Pigs
This week we’ve been enjoying the story of the Three Little Pigs. We’ve huffed and puffed our way through several different versions and decided which ones we liked best. Most of us are quite gruesome and enjoy the version where the pigs are eaten and then the wolf falls in the hot water at the end.
We are, of course, at the end of another half term (already!) We’ve been working hard in gymnastics with Miss Lauren. She’s been teaching us to do forwards rolls, hop over benches and dance with ribbons. You’d be amazed at how much progress we make with our gymnastics skills over six weeks and by the time we reach Year Six we’ll be doing all sorts of flips and turns in the air.
31/01/20- Chinese New Year
This week we have been learning all about Chinese new Year. Ao Ran’s mum brought in some wish tags for us to record our wishes on and hang on a plant. Lots of us wished to run faster, some of us wished to hug our mummies more, some children suggested they’d like to spend more time with granny. Lots of lovely ideas all round and great to learn about a tradition from Beijing. Ao Ran and his family had also made us a lovely window decoration to hang up in the Nursery.
We looked at Chinese writing and attempted our own form of Chinese calligraphy. We all had a go at writing rat in Chinese, not as easy as it sounds!
Next week we’ll be reading the story of Red Riding Hood.
Friday 24th January- Who's Been Eating my Porridge?
This week we read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We were scandalised by Goldilocks’ behaviour and thought she was very cheeky to walk into a house without being invited. We were intrigued by the word ‘nosy’ and discussed what it means.
We’ve used our story to explore concepts of size and practised using size vocabulary- big, medium and small.
We were introduced to lots of new vocabulary this week and practised hiding bears according to instructions. All our instructions contained prepositional language that we had to listen carefully to in order to understand the instruction. For example, hide baby bear under something.
Next week we will be exploring Chinese New Year.
Friday 20th December- Run, Run as Fast as you Can
This week saw a much more confident and probably, taller group of children return to class. It’s amazing how much we change over the course of the year and once our teachers had stopped exclaiming, “haven’t you grown,” we got down to the serious business of playing and learning.
Our story this week was The Gingerbread Man. It was great fun and we all helped to read the story. We were a bit sad that the fox kept eating him. When we read a different version, one of the children said, “well, I hope that fox is good today.” Alas, he was not and the poor old Gingerbread Man was eaten again!
I might add that when we made our own real gingerbread men we had no such empathy for him and we all gobbled him up, just like that sneaky fox!
