Rabbits & Foxes News December 2016

Rabbits and Foxes News December 2016

We have all had a fantastic December at nursery and have been very busy doing lots of Christmas crafts, preparing for our Christmas show and learning new songs.

Christmas Show

img_0417We had our Christmas show I the second last week in December at our local church. We had our own parts to play and special lines and songs to learn. We made our costumes at home and at nursery and had a fantastic time doing this. We told the story of the first Christmas to our parents, grandparents and other family members. Our show lasted around twenty minutes and then we had some party food and a great time at our Christmas party where we played musical bumps and musicals chairs. We all love to dance and it was great fun.

Later on in the afternoon, ‘Tricky Ricky’, a magician came to our party. Ricky was very funny, we all giggled lots and some of us even got to be his helper and get a special balloon of Rudolph the Reindeer that he made!

Tricky Ricky told us that we had a special guest arriving to our party, it was Santa! He brought us all a gift, we loved seeing him.

Christmas Crafts

We had a lot of fun making our Christmas crafts to take home. Our teacher Angela brought in pine cones to make Angels, we loved this and everyone made one to take home. We also made Christmas trees, by cutting out a paper Christmas tree and adding glitter, sequins and Pom Poms!

img_0432Bird Feeders

We have also been busy making bird feeders for our nursery garden and to take home. We collected plastic bottles from home and we each added bird seed to them, making two holes either side and we put a stick through the middle for the birds to stand on. We spoke about why birds need more food during the winter and what kind of birds we might find feeding on them.

 

We have had a great year again at nursery, making many different models, drawing lots of picture and paintings for our displays.

We have enjoyed many trips to our local parks, Forest Schools, the library, and we even got to go to the zoo during the summer.

We lost some of our friends when they went to school but made new friends that moved down from upstairs.

We are very excited for Christmas but are looking forward to coming back to nursery next year!

 

 

 

Rabbits & Foxes News November 2016

Rabbits and Foxes News November 2016

img_9892Happy Birthday to Adam who turned 4 this month and Leo who turned 3!

We are very sad to be saying goodbye to Annabel and Edith – however we wish them the very best of luck in their new adventures.

This month has been all about Christmas for the Ground Floor! We have been practising for our Nativity which will be on the 15 December. The Rabbits have done a brilliant job of learning their lines, as well as their songs. We have been learning Away In A Manger, Little Donkey, Silent Night and We Wish You A Merry Christmas. We have been doing this by listening to music on the iPad and with Lizzie who plays the piano. We have been working very hard to make our props and costumes – they look amazing!

img_9961As well as our Nativity we have been learning a bit more about the Christmas Story. We have watched videos about the first Christmas and we looked at an animated sequence of the story before then choosing our favourite parts. The children have also been very busy making some Christmas gifts for our family members to take home later on in the month!

The Foxes have been learning a little bit about the weather by discussing what it is like every day outside and how it differs from the day before. The children have also practiced their sorting and fine motor skills by using the sorting bears, leg boards and some of our other ‘junk’ materials.

img_9936We are now concluding our Care Home visits for this year. It has been great cheering up the residents every second week – we can’t wait for the new group to start again in the New Year.

We have also finishing our Forest Schools block at Blackford Pond. The Rabbits have really enjoyed getting really muddy and developing their gross motor skills through many different activities including den building and muddy hill climbing! We also learned about different bugs, birds and how to tie knots!

 

 

 

Rabbits & Foxes News October 2016

Rabbits and Foxes News October 2016

fullsizerender2Happy Birthday to Callum who turned 4 this month!

We have been learning all about Space this month, which has been really interesting. Our core text has been ‘Aliens Love Underpants’. Ash has been doing lots of different activities for this including puppet shows, creating our own patterned underpants and making our own space passports!

The Rabbits have been learning a lot about the Solar System and in particular the Sun. We have been looking at different diagrams of the Solar System and learning about the different planets – our favourites seem to be Mars, Earth and Jupiter! The children are showing an understanding that the sun is at the centre of our Solar System and have enjoyed drawing their own versions of it, making sure to draw the planets at the correct distance from the sun!

fullsizerender3We have also been discussing who we would be taking with us if we were to go to space in order to keep us safe and comfortable, as well as items that we consider essential! The children have been creating lots of rockets using different materials (junk modelling, Lego, objects in the garden etc) and have enjoyed doing some energetic space themed exercises!

As well as this, we have been practicing our name recognition through different games. First the children had to find their name in different areas around the room; then they played Name Snap where they had to pair their names up with each other. Finally, we have been colouring-in our names and practicing writing them on white boards with paint and crayons.

img_9504The Foxes have been focussing on Autumn and their colours this month. They have been on a few trips out to the park to collect various leaves and sticks in order to create some lovely Autumn pictures for our display in the Garden Room. Whilst out and about, they have been discussing which colours they could spot and they are doing very well! They have also been joining in with our Space topic – they have been using tinfoil, paint and paper plates to create their own moons and planets.

fullsizerender1We also had a Halloween themed Zoo Lab visit where we got to meet and learn about snails, frogs, a snake, cockroaches and other creepy crawlies.

The Rabbits have started their new block of Forest Schools. This week we were at the Meadows and Sciennes woods to work on our teamwork skills and to facilitate some boundaries – we all did really well. Next week we will be off to Blackford Pond.

 

 

 

 

Rabbits & Foxes News September 2016

Rabbits and Foxes News September 2016

A big welcome to Aisling this month – Aisling is our Rabbits teacher and is taking over the oldest Rabbits as her key children and the Literacy and Numeracy section of our planning. 

Happy birthday to Zander who is now 3!  

This month on the ground floor we have been focusing on learning about ourselves. We have been doing various different activities that helped us to learn more about our bodies. All the Rabbits learned about some of their organs and their functions, before then using a diagram to stick the organs in the correct place on our skeleton in the Busy Bug room.

img_9075We have also been learning a lot about the importance of healthy eating and making sure that we have been drinking enough water. We then participated in an activity where we created our own ‘Eat Well’ plates. We have learned about the appropriate amount of food that we should be eating and a bit about having their 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day. 

There has been some discussion on different types of families and the children had a turn of drawing their own families in our floor book, which they really enjoyed – they certainly love talking about their mummies, daddies and any siblings that they may have!  

img_9071Aisling has introduced a ‘Sound Monster’ into our Flower Room which just loves to eat things that start with our letter of the week. The children have been searching high and low for items that started with the right letter and sound to feed him with!

We have also been learning how to measure various items and comparing their size. We have been discussing things that are big or small and using a ruler to measure animals on a worksheet.  

We have been really been enjoying our Forest School session at Blackford Pond – so far we have done lots of exploring of the different paths up there and have gotten really really muddy most days! We have gone right up the Observatory where we found a nice wooded area and were able to build a tree swing and a den! Unfortunately the weather was a bit rubbish one day so we weren’t able to go out, but we went to Clambers instead where we did lots of climbing, running and jumping. It was a lot of fun! We have also been enjoying our Care Home visits every second Wednesday, it is always really nice to spend time with the residents and participate in arts and crafts with them. 

img_8950The Foxes have been very busy doing some Autumn themed activities. They started with a small trip to the Meadows to collect some leaves which they then decorated with paint and glitter for our Seasons display in the Garden Room. They have also been making their own hedgehogs! The Foxes have also really been enjoying the various messy items that they have – including jelly, ice, paint, shaving foam, Gluck and water. They have also had lots of energetic play in the garden with bikes and balls!

 

 

 

 

Rabbits & Foxes News August 2016

Rabbits and Foxes News August 2016

The Foxes and Rabbits have been very busy this month! We have been lucky to have such brilliant weather for the majority of the month, so we have been focusing on water play out in the garden. We used pipes, stands, trays and other objects that we found around the garden to build different types of runs to make streams and waterfalls going into several different water trays! Some of the Rabbits enjoyed discovering how much water we would have to pour down the tubes in order to make different sizes of boats flow down the stream of water. We also had lots of messy play out in the garden including shaving foam, paint, rice and different types of pasta which we love mixing up with the sand and water in our Mud Kitchen unit.
bee bot
This month we have been focusing on ‘Summer’. The Rabbits have been taking a record of who has been on a summer holiday and which type of transport they used – we then turned these records into bar charts, once in the garden using different coloured blocks and chalk! The Rabbits have also been making some postcards that are being sent off to the Meadows at Pilrig Nursery. We created our own pictures and envelopes for them and then wrote a message on the back for our friends to read once they are posted. We can’t wait for the children at Pilrig to receive them!

summer pic for bee bot mapWe have also been enjoying playing with a programmable toy robot called Bee-Bot. The children all created a grid for Bee-Bot using pictures of summer trips that the children created; we then programmed Bee-Bot to move around the grid so that he could enjoy as many trips as we do in the summer time. Both the Rabbits and Foxes then enjoyed having Bee-Bot races as well as asking Bee-Bot to move from one child to another – everyone was giggling away as the Bee-Bots carried out their instructions!

This month we have also been going to the Care Home, which has been so much fun as usual! We have been crafting lots of different things including paper aeroplanes (which we flew out in their garden), some beautiful paper flowers as well as some lovely pictures of us to leave for the residents to enjoy. We have also been on several trips out to the park where we have been working together to help our friends on the swings and roundabout. We also had some races one day – this was so much fun!

 

 

 

Rabbits & Foxes News August 2016

Rabbits and Foxes News August 2016

The Foxes and Rabbits have been very busy this month! We have been lucky to have such brilliant weather for the majority of the month, so we have been focusing on water play out in the garden. We used pipes, stands, trays and other objects that we found around the garden to build different types of runs to make streams and waterfalls going into several different water trays! Some of the Rabbits enjoyed discovering how much water we would have to pour down the tubes in order to make different sizes of boats flow down the stream of water. We also had lots of messy play out in the garden including shaving foam, paint, rice and different types of pasta which we love mixing up with the sand and water in our Mud Kitchen unit.
This month we have been focusing on ‘Summer’. The Rabbits have been taking a record of who has been on a summer holiday and which type of transport they used – we then turned these records into bar charts, once in the garden using different coloured blocks and chalk! The Rabbits have also been making some postcards that are being sent off to the Meadows at Pilrig Nursery. We created our own pictures and envelopes for them and then wrote a message on the back for our friends to read once they are posted. We can’t wait for the children at Pilrig to receive them!

We have also been enjoying playing with a programmable toy robot called Bee-Bot. The children all created a grid for Bee-Bot using pictures of summer trips that the children created; we then programmed Bee-Bot to move around the grid so that he could enjoy as many trips as we do in the summer time. Both the Rabbits and Foxes then enjoyed having Bee-Bot races as well as asking Bee-Bot to move from one child to another – everyone was giggling away as the Bee-Bots carried out their instructions!

This month we have also been going to the Care Home, which has been so much fun as usual! We have been crafting lots of different things including paper aeroplanes (which we flew out in their garden), some beautiful paper flowers as well as some lovely pictures of us to leave for the residents to enjoy. We have also been on several trips out to the park where we have been working together to help our friends on the swings and roundabout. We also had some races one day – this was so much fun!

 

 

 

Rabbits & Foxes News July 2016

Rabbits and Foxes News July 2016

IMG_8177This month the Rabbits and Foxes have been enjoying the sun, spending a lot of time out in the garden and also on trips to the park, library and the museum. In the garden, the children have been doing a lot of running, climbing and jumping. They have been really good at taking turns and helping each other when something becomes a little bit tricky.

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We have also been really lucky as we have had two awesome new balance bikes donated to us by The Bike Station. The children have loved the bikes and, to make the best use of them, we even made an obstacle course in the garden. The children designed the obstacle course themselves and set it up with a little help from the teachers. They said their favourite part was the racing as they got to cheer on their friends from the side.

IMG_8221We have also been learning the letters in our name, using lots of building blocks with the letters of the alphabet. The children had to find all the letters in their name and then put the letters in the correct order to spell their name and build a tower. All of the children were very good at this and only needed a little help from the teachers. At the end, some children had really tall towers and some had smaller ones, so we then counted the bricks to find out how many letters each child had in their name.

IMG_2907Finally, at the end of the month, something really exciting happened. One morning, it got very dark outside and we could hear thunder. All the children ran to the window in the Flower room to have a look outside. They said that it started to rain really hard and then they saw a flash of lightning which caused squeals of excitement from the kids. We sat down and explained that, if you are quiet and listen, you will hear thunder and once you hear it, you have to start counting until you see the lightning and this tells us how far away the thunder and lightning storm is. The children did really well at counting and we found out that the storm was a few miles away!

 

 

Rabbits & Foxes News June 2016

Rabbits and Foxes News June 2016

Literacy

This month for literacy we have been finishing off Our Community topic where we all helped to write our own story, which we titled “Jodie Hurt Her Leg”. This is the story we all performed for you for our Summer show! We all did so well in our show, the teachers were very proud and I am sure everyone that came to see it was very impressed too. We spent lots of time learning our lines and character roles and all the song lyrics too. Well done guys!

names in sandFor our new topic of schools, we have begun looking at the alphabet and all the different sounds that the different letters make. To start with we buried all the letters and name tags in the sand and had to dig around to find our own letters and names. This was lots of fun!

 

 

 

Numeracy

Fruit shopThrough “Our Community” topic we were looking at money and how and when it is used. We had regular trips to the fruit shop where we got to use money in a real life setting! We have now moved onto our new topic of “Schools” as we have a few boys and girls going to school this Summer. The children were keen to learn what days we go to school and if it was the same as nursery, so we decided to look at this in more detail with them over the next few weeks. We started by singing our days of the week song and we even got a new chart which we complete every day to help us order our days.

Trips, Baking and Other Areas

LottoWe have been continuing with our weekly trips out; visiting the library and our care home and we have had tennis start up too! We have also been baking lots of yummy treats for snack and for our parties. We had a P1 party this month, where all the boys and girls who went to school last year came back to visit us and tell us all about how exciting school is. This was really good for the boys and girls who will be going to school this year as they got to see some of the things they will be doing at school.

 

Rabbits & Foxes News May 2016

Rabbits and Foxes News May 2016

We would like to wish Frances, Sam, Alex, and Frieda and very big Happy Birthday!

IMG_2459May at nursery has been lots of fun. We have been enjoying practising for our summer show which is our own story ‘Jodie hurt her foot’. We all contributed together to draw pictures, write the story and to choose parts to play in the show. We are all doing so well and can’t wait to show our mums, dads, grandparents and friends our hard work.

This month we were very lucky and got to look after eggs which then hatched into chicks! It was great to see and very exciting for us all to watch. We got to keep the chicks at nursery for a week, feeding them and getting to hold them. The chicks got taken away and to say thank you we drew pictures of our favourite chick and gave them to the man to take away.

IMG_4279[1]Our community topic has now come to an end. We learned a lot and enjoyed going out walks, exploring shops around our nursery and learning what people in our community do. We enjoyed local trips to the fruit shop to buy fruit for our snack, our weekly visit to the Care home and also walks around the Meadows.

We also have enjoyed our 6 week block of Forest Schools and visiting our local care home. It is a very fun experience for us and really does help with our confidence.

IMG_4764[1]As we are losing our oldest children in a few months to go off to school we thought that in June we could focus on going to school. We will make a role-play school where the children can take turns and pretend to be teachers. We will add many new resources and also read a variety of stories about going to school to build our confidence.

 

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We are also having a party and have invited last year’s school leavers to come back and join us to celebrate going off to school. They will share stories and experiences of their first year of school and give us advice.

We are very excited for June to begin, we have many exciting events planned and hopefully the sun will begin to come out!

 

 

Rabbits & Foxes News April 2016

Rabbits and Foxes News April 2016

April has been a very quick month – the Foxes and Rabbits have been very busy and have also been having so much fun!

IMG_7581At the beginning of the month we started our new topic of ‘Our Community’. We have taken the children on several community walks where we discussed the different types of shops we could see in the area. We have organised regular trips out to the local fruit shop where the children were able to pick out fruit and vegetables and then help to pay for them! We then used the food for snacks or baking activities like the yummy blueberry muffins that we made! Carrying on from this, we set up a lovely shop front and cafe in our role play area which the children have really enjoyed. The children can choose all of their groceries and then pay for them with role play money. We have also been learning about where money comes from and the coins/notes that we use on a daily basis. As well as this, we have been writing our own story about the community. The children came up with the whole story – it is very exciting!

IMG_7589We have also been enjoying going to Johnston Terrace for Forest Schools where the children have been exploring this new area and taking a closer look at the different plants and wildlife we can see. As well as this we have been going to the Care Home and Library weekly which the children always love!