After the Christmas holidays the children settled back into nursery and enjoyed playing with their friends. The children were busy developing their fine motor control, building threading cutting and mark making.

Our topic for this term is ‘Winter’. We have read the story Little Penguin Lost where the children learnt about penguins and made their own penguin using empty toilet rolls and enabled us to talk about the different features of a penguin. We also used pastels to draw a penguin and used cubes to help with our counting skills when we were measuring the different sized penguins. The children have also been busy learning lots of new skills in mark making, using paint and the messy play area.

The children had lots of fun learning about Chinese New Year. The children watched a video about how families celebrate Chinese New Year. In their busy learning they had fun exploring the noodles, having a go at Chinese writing for their own personal red envelope, making dragons and dressing up. They also learnt about the animal race and how each year is named after a different animal and had their own race outside.

The children also took part in RSPB Big Birdwatch. We talked about the birds which we may see in our nursery garden, the children could name magpies, blackbirds, robins and wood pigeons. During busy learning the children painted pictures of their favourite birds, they selected the correct colours and added details to their paintings. In our group time we talked about how the birds need help to find food. The children were eager to help the birds and make bird feeders, they had fun rolling balls of lard in bird seeds and used Cheerios to make hanging feeders. The children then went outside and hung up the bird feeders. The children then used their binoculars they had made to spot any birds and then completed a bird watch tick sheet to identify which birds come into our garden area.

In nursery we joined the whole school in supporting the NSPCC Number Day. We added lots of number themed activities to the environment. During group time we talked about the numbered clothing the children were wearing and each group sang a number rhyme using the props. During busy learning we set each group a challenge to find the hidden numbers and take them back to their group areas. We later sat down to count the numbers each group had found. The frog group were the winners finding 20 hidden numbers. The children had such a fun time exploring all the activities.

The children were very surprised to discover a baby penguin in nursery. The penguin was in an umbrella and looked very sad. They found a story book too ‘Lost and Found’ after reading the story we are sure the penguin is looking for the boy in story. We helped the penguin by making boats, we tested our boats to see if they were sturdy enough for the penguin some of them sunk and some of them stayed afloat. We also received a letter from the boy in the story saying that the penguin had not made it home. We thought we could make a lost poster to help the boy find the penguin.

This week the children have been learning about Valentine’s Day, we created our own art work inspired by Tim Dine for the front of our valentines cards. We also made love heart jam tarts which were really yummy. Later on this week we learnt about Shrove Tuesday and why some people may celebrate it, Mrs Senter made pancakes and even flipped them. We invited our grown ups into nursery for a pancake brunch where we could choose our own toppings for our pancakes, they were yummy. Later on we completed a pancake race with our grown ups.