Article 28 (right to education): Every child has the right to an education. Primary education must be free and different forms of secondary education must be available to every child. 

Article 29 (goals of education): Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the
full. It must encourage the child’s respect for human rights, as well as respect for their parents, their own and other cultures, and the environment.

Nursery Gallery & Work 22/23

Sports Day

We have been working very hard over the last couple of weeks to master all the different skills required for sports day. This week we finally got to show off all that we had learned at the main event! We were very excited to compete in our very own mini-Olympic style games and we all let out our competitive sides. We sprinted as fast as we could in the relay race, leaped like crazy in the hurdles, kept very, very steady hands in the egg and spoon race, jumped for joy in the sack race and threw with all our might in the disk throw. We were all very supportive and cheered for all our friends, Mrs Telfer was very impressed with our team spirit. We would all like to say a HUGE thank you to all of the parents and carers who came to support us today, it was lovely to see so many cheery faces in the crowd. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Mini-Olympics

Soon in nursery we will be taking part in sport’s day. We are all very excited to show off our amazing skills to our grown-ups and have begun practising some of the races. We have been brushing up on our balancing skills in the egg and spoon race, practising our jumping in the sack race, sprinting as fast as we can in the relay and throwing with all our might in the disc throw.  We cannot wait for our grown-ups to watch us… we are all hoping they will join in with some races too!

Carter said “the egg is very tricky. Him fell off”

Alfie said “Run. Fast.”

Pet shop

In our role play area we were very excited to find our very own pet shop. We have loved using it this week with our friends. We have taken on the roles of shop keeper and customer, as well as animal support workers and have taken it in turn to take care of the animals in our oet shop. We have enjoyed exploring money and reciepts at the tills, learning some fantatsic animal facts in the shop library and feeding the animals in pets corner.

Learna said “Here is my money, one please”

Lyla said “Kitty is hungry he needs food”

Perfect Pets

This half-term in nursery our topic is ‘Animals’, over the next few weeks we will be learning about a whole host of amazing animals from tiny minibeasts to gigantic blue whales. This week we have started by exploring animals that we might have at home as pets. We read the story ‘Formidable Sid’ which is about a girl who describes her pet very badly and everybody thinks he is a monster but Sid is actually a very cute, fluffy bunny! We thought the story was very funny. We decided that we would all draw our own pets and have a try of labelling them using a word mat to help us.

Ethan said “I am drawing my pet lizard. He is very bumpy with scales”

Rosie said “My cat is fluffy and soft”

Avon’s Detective Agency

As part of our people who help us topic this week in nursery we have been learning all about the police force. We read the story ‘Cops and Robbers’ where we learnt that ‘Gangster Granny’ was on the loose and when we came to school on Tuesday somebody had made a big mess in our classroom! We taped off the crime scene and began our quest for clues to solve the crime. We hunted fingerprints, made wanted posters and crafted our own police badges. Eventually we had enough evidence to conclude that it was in fact ‘Gangster Granny’ who had played havoc with our phonics area, we were very glad to hear that our investigative work had helped the police to capture her escaping down Fordfield Road

Tanya said “I found black fingerprints”

Franklin said “Maybe it was Gangster Granny! She is very naughty”

In the secret garden

We love our weekly visits to the Highfield secret garden. This week we enjoyed some fantastic weather. We went hunting in our garden for signs of summer arriving. We saw: beautiful blossom on the trees, a rainbow of colourful flowers and lots of buzzing bees. We hunted high and low to see what insects we might find; our garden is full of worms, spiders and woodlice! Some of us discovered a tyre obstacle course which we enjoyed playing on with our friends.

Vera said “under here! I see a beetle”

Carter said “you have to jump through the tyres careful”

Fire brigade

As part of our people who help us topic we had a very exciting visit from the fire brigade! They arrived at school sirens blazing in a big, red fire truck: we were all very surprised at just how loud the sirens are! The fire crew talked us through a typical day and described each part of their special uniform. Some of us tried on the helmet they wear and it was very heavy. We each waited patiently (the fire crew were very impressed with how nicely we took turns and praised our team working skills) for our turn inside the fire engine, where we used a special camera that allows you to see in the dark; Mrs Telfer looked funny through its lenses.

King’s Coronation

Last week we celebrated the coronation of King Charles III, We learned what jobs he does to help the country and why he is important. We enjoyed making flags and waved them proudly as we sang the national anthem. We also made our own crowns using lots of sequins and sparkly glitter for a real regal effect.

Lichtenstein

Our artist of the half-term this half –term is Roy Lichtenstein. We have been learning all about the style of art he makes, it is called pointillism. He uses lots of small dots to fill large spaces and make amazing, colourful artwork. We donned our aprons and explored making our own Lichtenstein inspired pieces. We used small paintbrushes and cotton buds to create our pointillism art.

Aisha said “its lots and lots of dots, like this”

Isla said “a policeman. Dots”

Doctor, doctor.

One of our ‘People Who help us’ stories is ‘The Little Ouch’, which we have read in nursery this week.  We discovered that there are lots of different people who help us in hospitals; receptionists, nurses and doctors. We have enjoyed dressing up as doctors and nurses in the Highfield Hospital to help our friends feel better. We have been writing our own prescriptions, exploring light and shadows with the X-ray machine and practising our cutting skills to fill the doctor’s bag.

Carter said “open wide I am a dentist”

Harper said “Sign in here. Doctor is busy”

Jackson said “I can see bones”

Earth Day

On April 22^nd it was Earth Day, we celebrated in nursery by sharing the story ‘The Whale’s Tail’, this is a wordless story about a whale who is sad because of all of the rubbish in the ocean. We discussed what would happen if nobody cleaned up their rubbish and why it is important that we invest in our planet and recycle. We also enjoyed making Earth day inspired art for a whole school display.

Kenny said “The trash needs to go in the bin, the whale is sad”

Ruby said “I recycle at home. The cardboard goes in the blue bin”

People who help us

We have arrived back into nursery after the holidays rested and raring to go; we have started our brand new topic ‘People who help us’. Over the next few weeks we will be learning all about different occupations; such as doctors, nurses and fire fighters. Last week we read the story ‘Clothesline Clues to Jobs people do’, we enjoyed following the clues to guess who might wear each item of clothing for their job.

Alfie said “Yellow fire engine, neenar”

Rosie said “This is what a doctors uses to listen. They wear white coats”

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Our second story focus of our traditional tales’ topic was ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. We enjoyed reading lots of different versions of the story, our favourite was ‘Goldilocks and Just the One Bear’. We designed and made brand new chairs for baby bear by using recycled materials at the junk modelling station. We enjoyed putting our new-found knowledge of measuring to good use and weighed out ingredients to make a big batch of Baby Bear’s ‘just right’ porridge. We even managed to make it extra healthy by adding in bananas and raisins (which are baby bear’s favourite food).

Healthy Heroes

In nursery last week we enjoyed a visit from the local nursing team who helped us learn more about how to keep ourselves healthy by eating lots of nutritious food and exercising. We read the story ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and then we were tasked with sorting the foods he eats his way through into healthy food and less healthy foods. We had fun learning how exercise can impact on our bodies and brains.

Marvellous Mathematicians

Over the last few weeks we have been learning all about measuring. We have discovered that measuring is so much more that big and small. We have learnt that we can measure in lots of different ways: using rulers, jugs and scales. We have had fun learning how to use different types of scales to work out if something is heavy or light.

World book day

We have enjoyed taking part in World Book Day at Nursery. We all came to school dressed as our favourite book characters and brought some of our favourite stories to read. We read the story ‘Mother Earth is weeping’, where learnt all about climate change and global warming. We discussed the things we can do to help our Earth.

Ruby said “we need to recycle the plastic”

Rosie said “we can walk to school”

Traditional tales

This week we kicked off our new topic ‘Traditional Tales’ with the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. We were very excited when we arrived at school on Monday to see our role-play area had been transformed into Grandma’s cottage. We have had so much fun making tea, cooking and cleaning for granny and pretending to be the Big Bad Wolf.

All around the World

In Nursery we have been learning all about England; the country where we live. We started looking first at Sunderland. We looked at pictures of some of the local landmarks and talked about their features. We compared Roker beach to the White Cliffs of Dover and to Portsmouth Beach using LYFTA.

Our beach has lots of sand. This one is rocks – Ruby

Those rocks are white - Arie

We read stories such as ‘Katie in London’ and ‘London Bus’ as we took a tour around London. We saw some fantastic statues, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. We then compared these landmarks to some other famous landmarks in England. We enjoyed using the different construction materials in our classroom to build our own versions of our favourite landmarks.

Mrs Telfer, I made the big wall - Harper

I made it just like this, look! - Carter

We learnt about some of the most popular things to eat in England and enjoyed rolling our sleeves up to make our own afternoon tea: scones, to enjoy at snack time.

I made these before at home - Amelia

Yummy! – Summer 

Green fingers

As part of our ‘In the Garden’ topic we have been learning all about plants and how to grow them. We read stories in our literacy sessions such as ‘The Tiny Seed’ and ‘A Seed in Need’. We discussed what plants need to grow; sunlight, water, air and of course love. At first we thought all plants needed soil to grow too but, we did an experiment in our Understanding the World session, where we sprinkled some seeds onto cotton wool and to our amazement…IT GREW! We also planted our very own sunflower seeds in our keyworker groups and we can’t wait to see which one grows the tallest.

Bella said “cover the seeds up”

Kade said “I think it won’t grow with no soil”

A walk through the enchanted garden

In our PE sessions we have been working on developing muscle strength and coordination through yoga sessions. This week we walked through the enchanted forest and discovered butterflies and dragonflies. We enjoyed moving our bodies and stretching to create butterfly pose and dragonfly pose.

Harper said “Like my gymnastics”

Leo said “This one is tricky”

A visit from the dentist

This week we were lucky enough to have a special visit from our local nursing team, who came especially to talk to use about dental hygiene. We learnt the importance of keeping our teeth clean. We talked about food that is healthy for our teeth and food which is less healthy for our teeth. We enjoyed cleaning some dirty teeth with magic toothbrushes. We also enjoyed listening to a story about Kipper’s visit to the dentist.

Ruby said “chocolate is not healthy for your teeth. Lots of sugar”

Louie said “I clean my teeth at home”

What the ladybird heard

Our story this week is called ‘What the Ladybird Heard’. We enjoyed talking about the different bugs and insects we might find in our gardens or local parks. We crafted our very own ladybirds from playdough and paper plates. We learnt that they have got 6 legs and love to sleep on flowers. We are very excited to learn more about mini-beasts next week and even go on our very own bug hunt in the secret garden!

Ethan said “6 legs and 2 eyes”

Izabela said “Maybe a spider”

Stepping into Spring

Over the next two weeks we will be learning all about plants. We will be reading stories such as ‘The Tiny Seed’ and ‘A seed in Need’. we will learn what a plant needs to grow and we will be planting our own seeds. We cannot wait to watch our plants and flowers grow.

Vera said “I think it will be a beautiful flower”

Amelia said “I might grow a beanstalk”

Amazing alliteration

In our phonics group sessions we have been further developing our speaking and listening skills through the exploration of initial sounds and alliteration. We have enjoyed playing I spy and hunting for objects around our classroom that all have the same first sound. We found cars, clock, cow and counters… they all start with the ‘c’ sound.

Taiwo said “c is for cow”

Kenny said “e is for elephant.”

Shape hunting

In maths this week we have been continuing to explore and investigate shapes. We have been looking at some 2D-shapes and learning some of their properties… did you know a square has 4 sides that are all exactly the same size? In our maths lessons we became shape investigators tasked with the difficult job of hunting down shapes that had tried to disguise themselves as everyday objects! We found triangles hidden in our construction blocks, circles hidden on clocks and squares hidden as books!

Harper said “Circle. Round and round.”

Kiana said “I found a triangle”

A stroll through the seasons

Our story in nursery was called ‘A Stroll through the Seasons’. We delved into this beautifully illustrated picture book to explore the glorious nature of each new season, from spring greenery to dazzling summer sunshine, vibrant autumn leaves and sparkling winter snow. We enjoyed following the journey of a young boy and girl as they strolled through wind, rain, sunshine and snow to explore the wonderful changes that each season brings.

We have also been enjoying reading some of the stories from Nick Butterworth, who is our Author of the term and have loved listening to the many adventures of Percy and his friends as we explored the seasonal changes in Percy’s park.

Ethan said “the leaves change colours”

Delilah said “I like lemonade when it is hot”

Shape sorters

In our maths sessions this half-term we are learning all about shapes. This week we began by looking at some basic 2D shapes such as; circles, squares, triangles and rectangles. We discussed what each shape looked like, thinking carefully about how many sides each shape had. Mrs Telfer was very impressed by how much we remembered. We think by the end of the half-term we will all be experts in shape!

Winter wonderland

This half term our topic is called ‘In the Garden’, we will be learning all about the things we might find in our gardens. This week we delved deeper into winter gardens. We talked about the seasons of the year and how they change. We have been reading the story ‘Here comes Jack Frost’ where we learnt all about how winter changes the landscapes; the trees are bare and frost, snow and ice covers the ground. We enjoyed creating our own Jack frost inspired winter landscapes in our creative area, investigating freezing and melting in our science area and reading lots of winter stories in our reading room.

Kade said "The ice is cold"

Amelia said "Polar bear. He lives next to Santa"

Christmas party

In the last week of term we enjoyed the build up to Christmas. We held a Christmas party in our classroom where we played lots of party games such as; pass the parcel and musical bumps. We enjoyed singing Christmas songs… we think Santa must have heard us as he surprised us with a visit!

We had so much fun!

It’s Christmas!

Christmas has arrived in Avon and Aire class this week. The staff worked in true Elf style to decorate our classrooms and spread a little Christmas cheer. We loved helping Mrs Telfer to build and decorate the Christmas tree and we all had a turn to put the all-important star on the top, we had so much fun! We have also been busy crafting Christmas stockings, practising for our Christmas performance (We think our grown-ups might cry… we are so amazing!) and we have also been working on a surprise that we can’t wait to share with them.

Making a splash!

To continue our nursery rhyme topic we have been learning water themed nursery rhymes. We enjoyed learning ‘The big ship sails’, ‘Bobby Shafto’ and ‘A sailor went to sea’. We explored floating and sinking in our water tray; we loved making big splashed with the heaviest objects…the ones that made the biggest splashes sunk to the bottom of the tray. We made our own sailing boats just like the ones we saw in the animated version of ‘The Big Ship Sails’, did you know a pirate flag is called a Jolly Rodger? We also enjoyed using the playdough to create our own seascapes.

Arora said "me make a boat"

Jackson said "Big splash"

Rhythm and Rhyme

Over the last half-term we have been working really hard in our phonics group time to practise and master the skill of rhyming. We have been practising listening to rhyming words, following rhyming strings and filling in the missing rhymes. Mrs Telfer is so impressed by how much we have improved our skills! This week we blew her socks off by finding two rhyming objects from a larger group all by ourselves!

Children in need

In nursery we enjoyed taking part in Children in Need and doing our bit to support the charity. We enjoyed taking part in lots of Pudsey themed activities, such as making our own Pudsey bear masks and headbands. Our favourite part of the day was making Pudsey biscuits. We carefully poured icing sugar and counted out 7 spots to complete our biscuits, they tasted so yummy!

Ethan said "Seven spots"

Carter said "This will be yummy"

 Flower power

Last week our theme of the week for our nursery rhyme topic, was flowers. We enjoyed learning and singing lots flower and garden themed nursery rhymes, such as, ‘Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary’, ‘Ring a ring of roses’ and ‘Lavender’s Blue, dilly, dilly’. We were very busy exploring lots of activities based around our new rhymes. We made playdough roses, mixed our own floral perfumes in our water tray, continued repeating patterns in Mary’s garden and acted out ‘Lavender’s blue’ in our story tray.

Kenny said “a beautiful flower”

Arie said “It smells like roses”

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day is an important date in the calendar and it is very important for children to learn a little about its meaning, even at an early age. At nursery we talked to the children about the many important people who helped to keep us safe a long time ago. We said that the poppy flowers help us to remember and say thank you to these special people.  We also made our very own special poppies and had other activities in nursery to help us to talk and think about Remembrance Day, such as playdough poppies, printing poppies and observational drawings. We also took part in the two munites silence with the rest of the school.

Harper said “to remember the wars”

Henry said “for the soldiers”

5, 6, 7, 8

Over the last few weeks we have been learning to count beyond 5. We have been using Ten Town to learn all about the numbers 6, 7 and 8. We have practised recognising them on our counting stick, counting them out and writing them. Mrs Telfer is very proud of how hard we have all been working!

Kade said “I made number 6, him has 6 blocks”

Gracie said “Look! 7!”

Leo said “This number is tricky. Round and round”

Firework Fun 

This week was Bonfire night and we learnt all about what Bonfire night is and why we celebrate with Fireworks. We learnt that Bonfire night happens every year because of a man called Guy Fawkes. We also discussed why it is so important to be very careful around fireworks and bonfires and what might happen if we don’t follow the fire safety rules set by the fire department. We enjoyed exploring with paints and glitter to make our own firework display pictures; we found the best ways were to use tubes to print and marbles to roll paint onto dark paper before sprinkling with glitter to add to sparkle effect. We are very proud of our masterpieces! 

Rex said “wow!” 

Harper said “look, pretty glitter” 

Tanya said “This is so fun!” 

Kiana said “I’m going to see some fireworks with my mammy” 

Autumn stay and play 

This week we were very happy to invite our grown-ups into our classrooms for our very first stay and play of the year. We had so much fun showing them our amazing learning! We enjoyed completing Halloween themed craft activities with our special adults and made things such as paper plate pumpkins and spooky playdough spiders. We also loved showing off our special pink learning books full of all of the fabulous work we have completed during our first half-term at Highfield: we think our grown-ups were very impressed!  

Gracie said “Look mammy that’s me” 

Remi said “Lots of special photos” 

Aine said “my mammy here” 

Halloween Spooktacula 

We were very excited to arrive back to school after the half term to find our classrooms all decorated for Halloween. We enjoyed reading spooky themed stories such as ‘Room on the Broom’ and ‘Pumpkin Soup’. We had so much fun carving our own pumpkins, scooping out the seeds and then using the flesh to make our own versions of pumpkin soup, just like the characters in our story. We also used some pumpkins and coloured water to make our own potions, just like the witch in ‘Room on the Broom. Some of our magic potions could cast spells to turn people into frogs!  

Ethan said “I’m making lots of yummy soup!” 

Leo said “I am almost through to a hole” 

Kade said “Ziggy zoom now you a frog”  

Black history month

As part of black history month we have been reading the story ‘Handa’s Surprise’. We learnt about the lifestyle of an African family. We discussed the similarities and differences between Handa and ourselves. We talked about things like hairstyle and skin colour as well as clothes and jewellery. We made different coloured playdough and carefully picked the right tones for our own skin. We also enjoyed improving our fine motor skills to thread our own African jewellery.

Harper said "pretty necklace!"

Kenny said "I need brown" 

Kiana said "I am light brown, this one is not right" 

We enjoyed finding out about the different climates in Africa and the types of food they grow and eat. We practised our chopping skills to cut up some exotic fruit from the Handa story; pineapple, mango, guava, oranges and apples to make and taste our own fruit salad.

Our Families

Continuing our all about me topic, we have been busy learning all about houses, homes and family types. We enjoyed experimenting with different materials and tools to build our own homes, we particularly enjoyed using the wooden blocks and foam ‘cement’ to build our structures. We also made our houses using lolly sticks and carefully drew each member of our family inside. We enjoyed telling our friends about all of the special people who live with us.

Let’s make faces

As part of our ‘All About Me’ topic we read the stories ‘All about feelings’ and ‘Let’s make faces’ in class this week. We talked about our feelings and how our faces can help us to communicate our feelings and emotions to our friends and grown-ups. We all discussed what might make us feel happy and practised making our best happy face, we talked about things that make us feel sad and made our faces look sad. We also talked about the things we can do to help our friends if we notice they are feeling sad, scared or angry. In our 2s room we passed around a feelings puppet and discussed the different faces we could see in our story ‘How are you feeling?’.

Ruby said “play with them”

Tanya said “big smiley happy”

Isla said “He sad. He lost his mammy”

Fantastic phonics

This week we have been continuing to practise our listening skills in our phonics sessions. We have been listening to our alphabet song, listening to the letters at the start of our name and listening to lots of different animal noises. We have listened for farm animal noises and sang ‘Old McDonald had a Farm’. We have also been busy crafting our very own listening ears which we wore to our outdoor phonics lesson in the garden: while we were there Mrs Telfer set us the challenge to see how many different animals noises we could hear. We heard; a crow, a pigeon, a dog and a seagull, we practised copying the animals to make the noises ourselves and we were all very good!

Jackson said “Birdies”

Ethan said “A dog is barking”

All about Families

Last week our story of the week was called ‘All about Families’. We discovered that not every family is the same. In our story there was a little girl with 2 mammies, a boy who had 2 daddies and twins who had lots of brothers and sisters. We discussed our own families and talked about who was special to us. We drew and painted pictures of all the special people we lived with.

Izabella said “Mammy, Daddy, me”

Ralph said “This my mammy. She is smiling”

Delilah said “Daddy in the garden”

Marvellous Maths

Over the last few weeks in our number focused group time we have been learning the numbers 1, 2 and 3. We have enjoyed using number blocks and ten town to help us remember what these numbers look like and how to write them. Mrs Telfer has been impressed with our lovely singing in maths too, our favourite counting songs to sing are “5 little ducks” and “5 little Monkeys”.

What makes me a me?

As part of our ‘All About Me’ topic, we have been reading the story ‘What Makes Me a Me?” this week in class. We have enjoyed using mirrors to paint self-portraits, taking care to match the colours for our eyes and hair. We have also been discussing all the things we like to do that make us special and unique. We practised our cutting skills to make personalised collages of our interests.

Jackson said “lots of Lego”

Delilah said “I like to paint”

This week we have been practising our listening skills in phonics. We went to our school garden with a checklist of sounds we might hear. We tried very hard to listen carefully for each of the sounds and find them on our sheets. We even heard some sounds that were not on our list!

Kade said “aeroplane

Henry said “birds tweeting”

Remi said “Oh alarm!”

Our First Week at Nursery

This week we were all very excited to start our journey at Highfield. We have enjoyed meeting our new teachers, making new friends and exploring our new classrooms. We had lots of fun playing with our new friends, learning to share and chatting with our classmates. We have also come up with our very own set of classroom rules and we are busy making a display in our classroom to help remind us everyday how to be a respectful and responsible member of our school.

Ruby said “I am drawing my mammy!”

Amelia P said “fix it up, screw, screw, screw. It is hard to turn”

Tanya said “I love my new school, it is so much fun!”