Article 28: 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. Discipline in schools must respect children’s dignity and their rights.

Article 29: 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.

Article 31: Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities

Nursery Gallery & Work 23/24

Seasons

Last week as part of our ‘In the garden’ topic we read Nick Butterworth’s series of books, ‘A year in Percy’s park’. We read four different Percy the park keeper stories which took us on an adventure through the seasons in Percy’s park. We started our journey in Winter with ‘One snowy night’ and learned all about hibernation and how animals survive in the cold winter months. We ended our adventure with the story ‘After the storm’ which saw Percy and his friends battling against the windy Autumn weather. After reading each of the stories we discussed what each season looked like; in the winter was cold and snowy, spring was wet and soggy, summer was hot and sunny and autumn was windy. We helped Percy sort lots of different objects and clothes into the four seasons so that next time he faces the wet or windy weather he is more prepared!

Summer said “flops for the summer”

Lorenzo said “cold and snowy”

Its Christmas!!!

Christmas has arrived at nursery this week! We were all so excited when we arrived at school on Friday to find our classroom had been decorated. We all loved helping Mrs Telfer build and decorate our class Christmas tree and spent so much time carefully placing the tinsel and baubles onto each branch… we think it looks beautiful!

Archie said “wrap the tinsel here”

Charlie said “the star goes on the top”

Decorations were not the only thing we found in our classroom… we also found a mystery letter! The letter had been left with a big red post-box on our writing table. When we read the letter we discovered it was from Santa himself! The letter talked about all of the lovely things Santa has watched us doing in Nursery this year and asked us to write back with our Christmas lists. We loved looking through magazines and catalogues for inspiration and have written our replies in our very best handwriting!

Lucia said “I asked for a barbie dream house”

Isla L said “I asked for a dolly”

We have also been working very hard over the last few weeks to make our crafts and practise our singing for the Christmas performance. We cannot wait to surprise our grown ups on Monday with all the lovely things we have made and blow them away with our fantastic singing in our first every Highfield showstopper. Get your tissues ready!

Under the sea rhyming

Last week, in the final week of our nursery rhyme topic, we took a dive into the deep blue sea, we looked at rhymes such as ‘Once I caught a fish alive’, ‘Five speckled frogs’ and ‘A sailor went to sea’. We enjoyed exploring all things oceanic. We learned about different animals that live under the sea… did you know, some sharks never stop swimming, even when they sleep!

Lennon said “a big shark!”

We made our own under the sea landscapes at the playdough table. We used pipe cleaners, gems, small world animals and shells to create our masterpieces.

Colby said “look the sea”

Aurora said “I hears the waves”

We also loved experimenting with print and colour mixing to create bubble printed fish. We carefully pushed bubble wrap into different coloured paint and layered the colours to create some amazing rainbow fish!

Bella said “he has lots of colours”

Sadie said “Fish”

Children in Need 2023

Last week we celebrated Children in need, we all came to school dressed in our Pudsey clothes. We read the story ‘Pudsey’s great fundraiser’ to learn all about the importance of helping others and being kind. We also read the story ‘Pudsey bear and the lost bandana’, in this story Pudsey loses his favourite spotty bandana and searches high and low before his friends help him to find it again. We decided that we would like to make Pudsey a new spotty bandana. We used digestive biscuits, icing sugar and sweets to create our spotty masterpieces and we even managed to sneak some maths in too by carefully counting out five coloured spots! They were so yummy!!

Ring games

In PE this half-term we have been learning lots of different yard style ring games. Our favourites are ‘Doggy, doggy, where’s your bone?’ and ‘Stick friend go for a ride’. We must use our listening skills and turn taking skills in these games and guess where the hidden object has gone. We have also enjoyed using the parachute and colourful balls to learn our friends’ names and our colours.

Remembrance Day

Last week in nursery we learnt lots of different floral themed nursery rhymes. It was extra special this week because it was also Remembrance Day. We enjoyed reading stories and rhymes about the war, we particularly enjoyed reading ‘Hector’s Hero’ and ‘Poppy Day’. We learnt that poppies are very important and people wear them to remember all the fallen soldiers. We all made our own poppy pictures by experimenting with print using sliced apples. We also took part in the two minutes silence to show our respect.

Archie said “him is scared of the white bombs”

Aurora said “for the soldiers”

Daxton said “red and black”

Ready to rhyme

In our phonics sessions we have moved onto aspect 2 rhyming words. Over the next few weeks we will be learning about all things rhyming! We have learnt that rhyming words are two or more words that sound the same, this is because they nd in the same sound, like cat and hat. This week we have been playing lots of games to improve our listening skills.

Colby said “cheese, trees”

Archie said “cat and hat”

Fabulous five

In maths we have been learning our numbers to 5. We are now putting our new skills to the test and are doing some super tricky counting. Not only do we have to remember what each of the numbers look like and identify the number card, but we also have to count out from a larger group to match our number! Mrs Telfer is very impressed with our super counting.

Lennon said “I have four bears”

Lyla said “one, two, three, four, five”

Nursery rhymes

Our new topic for the half-term in nursery is ‘Nursery Rhymes’. This week the theme was spiders, we have learned the rhymes ‘Incy Wincy spider’ and ‘Little Miss Muffet’. We learnt that there are lots of different siders, some are very small and other are very big. We know that a spider has 8 legs and lives in a web that they spin themselves, did you know that some webs take a full day to make? We have enjoyed making our own playdough spiders, crafting spider webs with paper plates and string, creating creepy crawly spider handprint paintings and using some of the 2d shapes we have learnt in maths to draw our own spiders.

Haneen said “Oh no! It’s a spider”

Daynie said “spider”

Our very own Bob the builder 

Over the last few weeks we have been eagerly awaiting and watching with great anticipation as Mr Hibbert rebuilt our broken decking. We have enjoyed becoming architects and drawing up plans for what we though the new decking would look like, we have donned our high vis jackets and hard hats and build miniature models of the decking in our block area and we have even built large models in our outdoor construction area. Mr Hibbert even let some of us help with the final few screws! We were so excited to attend the grand-opening of the fantastic new decking last week and have absolutely loved playing on it ever since.

Archie said “him is building it a square”

Colby said “it big”

Summer said “Cut the ribbon. Yay!”

Autumn Stay and Play

Last week we welcomed our parents and carers into our nursery classrooms to take part in our Autumn stay and play. We had so much fun showing our grown-ups where we like to play and telling them all about our friends. We enjoyed completing lots of different activities with our families. It was lovely to see so many of you in the classroom and we would like to extend a huge thank you to all who attended the sessions!

Louie said “mam look playdough!”

Neve said “we build the blocks in here”

Houses and Homes

As part of our ‘All about me’ topic we have been exploring different types of houses and homes. We have read lots of stories such as ‘In every house on every street’ and ‘This is our house’ where we have learnt that houses are made up of more than just bricks and mortar. We discovered that houses can come in lots of different shapes and sizes! We loved learning about the types of houses in other countries around the world… did you know that in Germany there is an upside-down house? We took inspiration from these unique houses to roll up our sleeves and don our tools to build our own amazing house designs.

Lennon said “the roof is the floor!”

Aurora said “me is building a princess house”

Making faces

This week we have been reading the story ‘Let’s make faces’ which is all about using unusual objects to make different faces. We have enjoyed using this story to explore how our faces change when we feel different emotions. We experimentes with colours, mixing them together to make colours to represent different emotions. We used mirrors and practised making sad faces, happy faces, angry faces and scary faces. We collected natural materials from our secret garden and used them to make our own abstract faces just like the artist Guiseppe Arcimboldo. Did you know that he even used fruit to make faces!

Haneen said “smiley face”

Alfie said “funny eyes”

Terrific Ten Town

We have been learning all about numbers in our maths group time. We have been using ten town to learn about numbers to 5. So far we have learnt about; 0, 1, 2 and 3. We have impressed Mrs Telfer with how good we are at remembering what each number looks like! We can even find things in our classroom that show different representations of these numbers. We are very excited to learn about Freddie Four next week!

Lennon said “Number 3”

Archie said “Three holes in this”

Grace said “Three things for Thelma Three”

Marvellous me: inside and out

We have been continuing our ‘All About Me’ topic in nursery by reading the story ‘Marvellous me: inside and out’. In this story we discovered more about what goes on under the surface of our skin. We have learnt about how our skeletons are made up of lots of individual bone and how these protect our organs. We have discussed why it is important that we look after our bodies and keep our organs healthy. We talked about how we can stay healthy by eating fruit and vegetables, by doing exercises and by getting plenty of sleep.

Clyde said “head”

Koby said “My heart is beating super-fast because I was running”

Aurora said “I like tomatoes. They are healthy”

All About Me

This week in nursery we have kicked off our first topic ‘All About Me’. We read the story ‘What makes me a me?’ where we learnt all about what makes us special and how we are all unique. We learnt that we all have different skills and that we all like different things. We have enjoyed accessing lots of fun and exciting activities such as; playdough people making, making collages to represent ourselves and practising our name writing skills!

We also rolled up our sleeves and got our painting pallets out to create wonderful paper plate self-portraits. We used mirrors to carefully investigate each of our features to ensure we used the correct colours to represent our skin, eyes and hair. We think they have turned out amazing and so does Mrs Telfer. You can see our paper plate gallery in our classroom.

Welcome to Nursery

This week marked a very exciting time for us…the start of our academic adventure at Highfield Nursery. We have had so much fun getting to know our teachers and making new friends. We have loved exploring in our classroom, around the school, in the secret garden and of course in the soft-play. Our teachers are so impressed with how well we have all settled into the new routine and cannot wait to see what this year will bring for us all. We see lots of exciting times ahead!