Handa's Surprise

This week we have been reading Handa's Surprise. The children have helped to make trees and African style huts for a small world set up in our tuff spot, painting cardboard cylinders brown and using paper mache on bowls. I printed and laminated the characters from the story and stuck them onto small wooden blocks.
Click this link for character pictures African Surprise cut outs

Sequencing The Hungry Caterpillar story

The Hungry Caterpillar is such a great story for sequencing -days of the week, life cycle of the butterfly and the increasing number of  food items the caterpillar munches through. To encourage sequencing skills we make a giant caterpillar using cheap paper lampshades which are painted green and red, by the children.

We then add the days of the week in order along its body. From each day of the week we hang each of the food items. (made by myself from felt ) This is the website I printed the days of the week from.
Days of the week labels  backed onto card and laminated.

The children love to stand below it and retell the story using the props hanging above their heads.

One of our crafts to compliment The Hungry Caterpillar story we have been reading in nursery, was for the children to print their own caterpillar. We used sponge daubers like this  amazon -sponge daubers with ready mixed green and red paint.

The children then added legs and faces with black paint using paint brushes.

The Hungry Caterpillar

This half term our Topic is Minibeasts. A favourite with both children and adults alike. We began our topic with The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

The children love how the tiny caterpillar becomes fatter, then changes into a beautiful butterfly. The story lends itself to lots of sequencing, counting and language work. To compliment our Minibeast topic we have ordered pots of tiny caterpillars from this company over the last few years-Insect Lore  and  released many beautiful butterflies into our Nursery garden.
Our caterpillars are wrapped safely in their cocoons and we are waiting patiently (as patiently as 3 year olds can be) for our new butterflies.

Christmas Small World

In our tuff spot tray we have put fake snow felt, some wooden buildings from Tts and some Christmas Happyland playsets. We have added poundland battery operated tea lights. Looks pretty festive!

We're Going on a Bear Hunt.

This fortnight we have been reading We're Goin on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen.

 I have to admit it is not one of my favourites but it is loved by the children. Usually we act it out with the children outside but the weather has been bad -some good snowstorms though! So we set it up inside.

In the home area we set up the bed in the corner. Then we led the story through the nursery.

 

Through the long grass. Swishy swashy, swishy swashy.

 

 

Through a deep cold river. Splish splash, splish splash.

 

Through the thick oozy mud, Squelch squerch, squelch squerch.

 

 

Through a big dark forest. Stumble trip, stumble trip.

 

 

Through a swirling whirling snowstorm, Whooo oooh, whoo oooh

 

 

Through a narrow gloomy cave. Tiptoe tiptoe.

 

 

I can't show you the photographs of the children in their bear headdresses telling the story as they followed the path through nursery but great fun was had by all!

Nursery environment

Mark making area

I thought it might be nice to show some pictures of our Nursery environment. All the photos have been taken with no children in them so are very tidy. While the Nursery is in session it is a totally different matter.

These pictures show our mark making area although we have notepads, clipboards, diaries, blackboards etc all around the Nursery. As you can see we have the children's writing after reading Room on the Broom. All writing is valued -even those little scribbles.  

 

 

On the writing shelves to the left we have writing pencils, coloured pencils, thin crayons, chunky crayons, scissors for right and left hand, Beryl broad felt tips and Beryl chunky felt tips.

     On the middle shelf we have alphabet and number strips, rulers, hole punches, paper clips, sellotape, treasury tags, a basket of 2d shapes and a basket of notepads, diaries and post it notes.

     On the bottom shelf we have white paper, coloured paper, tracing paper, envelopes, stencils, clipboards A4 and A5. To the right of the area we have 3 baskets which contain shaped paper, alphabet mats, and larger paper. Often we have writing material like invitations, pencil control sheets, sometimes colouring sheets -yes colouring sheets, although we hide them when advisors come to visit!