We are developing our outdoor learning area at the moment so today we decided to plant some flowers in our growing bed. We worked together with our gardening tools to dig over the bed and dig out the weeds. Then we planted some daffodil bulbs which will flower in the Spring. After that we carefully dug holes and then planted lots of Autumn flowers to make our garden colourful. While we were gardening there was lots of talk and we used words such as: bulb, plant, flower, leaf, petal, roots, careful, trowel, fork, spade. We also talked about the names of the different plants- pansies, primroses and bellis. 
We hope you like our colourful garden. Now we are going to learn to take care of the plants and watch them grow. 

This week in nursery, we are learning about Harvest time. Our book of the week is The Little Red Hen and we will be reading lots of different versions of the story and acting it out with our friends. 
We have a fruit and vegetable shop in our role play area so the children can role play being the customer and shopkeeper as they learn to share and take turns. 
Our Maths song of the week is "Way up High in an Apple Tree" and we will be learning to show amounts on our fingers and find one less as an apple falls from the tree. 
Here are some photos of us engaged in our continuous provision so far this week- the fruit and vegetable shop has been very popular so far! 
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In nursery we love making music and there is so much learning involved! Today we took our music into the nature reserve on our welly walk. When we arrived, we discovered that our musical instruments had been hidden all over the area- under the trees, behind the bushes and in-between things. The children had a minute to run around and find an instrument, then bring it back to the shelter to play. We played our instruments fast and slow, loud and quiet and we learnt to play and stop to a signal in our play and stop song. Then we went marching around playing our instruments as we sang different songs including "The Grand Old Duke of York." Finally we sat together and the children chose their favourite songs for us to sing and play to. 

Today for snack the children enjoyed toast. The children learnt how to use a knife safely to spread butter or jam onto their toast. We then cut the toast into different shapes- a perfect opportunity to link snack time to our theme of the week. Here are some photos of the children making and then eating their own toast. See if your child can remember what shape they chose. 

Today was National Poetry Day and in nursery we focused on rhymes. For our group time, we sang and acted out lots of different nursery rhymes together. We used our rhyme puppets and a nursery rhyme book to help us to choose which rhymes we would sing. 
Our focus rhyme for this half term is Humpty Dumpty and the children are getting really good at singing this all the way through now. 

At group time today we all had a go at building models using 3D shaped wooden blocks. We encouraged the children to talk about their buildings using words such as round, tall, circle, square, triangle, rectangle. 

Following the children's interests we had a go at finger painting today. Lots of the children really enjoyed the sensory experience of feeling the paint on their hands but some were not too keen! 
The children were fascinated by the different marks they could make and there was lots of talk during this activity too. One child dipped one hand in blue paint and one in yellow and then rubbed them together. He was amazed that it made green paint. What super learning!

This week in nursery we are learning about shapes so we have enhanced lots of our provision areas linked to this theme. We have different shaped cutters in the dough, shape turtles in the water area, shape stencils and lots of different shaped paper to choose from in our mark making area, shape puzzles and 3D blocks made of different shapes to build with. Today the children have enjoyed exploring different shapes in their play and we have been modelling different shape vocabulary including circle, oval, square, triangle, rectangle, pentagon, hexagon, semi-circle, round, curved, straight, corners and sides. 
See if your child can spot any shapes in the environment while you are our and about. 

For a focused activity today, we all had a go at printing with different shaped sponges. The children learnt how to dip the sponge into the paint and then use pressure to press it onto the paper. Some of us were amazed at the print it left! We talked about the shapes and some children were really confident at naming them. 

Today we enjoyed making chocolate rice crispy buns for our baking activity. We recalled how to melt chocolate from last week and then we used our motor skills to carefully mix and stir the chocolate with the rice crispies. Finally we carefully spooned it into a bun case and left it to set for home time.