We are developing the strength and skill in our fingers this week by exploring the "tap a shapes." The children have loved this activity and there has been lots of engagement! They have been challenged to use the nails and hammers to hammer the shapes into the cork board and have really gained confidence already. Some of the children have even been arranging the shapes to make their own pictures. 

We have a new curiosity case in nursery this week. Inside we have put some unusual objects and we are encouraging the children to use their observational skills to look carefully and talk about what they can see. This is great for developing language skills. 
On Friday, we will open the case and find out what it is. 

Our new book of the week is Dear Zoo and we are using this story to support our learning about wild animals. Today we read the story together and we focused on the words "fierce" and "perfect." We have added these words to our wow word tree and we hope the children will start to use them in their speech. 
We have been learning the names of lots of wild animals and have been clapping out the syllables to help us say them correctly. We have also learnt how to sign the animals using Makaton. 
In our provision so far, we have used popoids to create our own animals, worked together to build some animal jigsaws and played with our small world animals. We have also been reading lots of books with our friends. 

In nursery, we are learning that technology is EVERYWHERE! In our home corner, we have mobile phones and cameras that we can use in our role play. The children are great at pressing the buttons to take photos, pretending to make phone calls and play games, swiping across the screen. 
In our music area, we have access to a CD player and we have been learning to press play and stop to listen to our music. 

Wow! We have had some amazing learning in nursery over the last couple of days. The children have created a "dinosaur swamp" from cornflour gloop! Firstly they spooned cornflour into a tray, then added powder paint and water. They mixed it together and were amazed to see what happened and how the mixture changed. This was an amazing sensory experience and some of the children loved the feel of the gloop on their hands!
Some of the lovely language the children used during this activity included: soft, wet, sticky, runny, dripping, dropping, melting, hard and slimy. They were fascinated by the texture and noticed how the gloop changed from runny to hard as they moved it with their fingers. The children also learnt about colour mixing as the powder paint was added and mixed to make different colours. 

A very popular activity in nursery this week has been one to use our funky fingers to develop our fine motor skill and strength. We have used tiny little pegs to clip onto the back of dinosaur shapes to make the spikes. It was very tricky to press the pegs to open them so there was lots of perseverance as the children did not give up until they could do it! There was also lots of counting involved in this activity as the children counted their pegs and compared them to how many their friends had got. 
What a lot of learning and such great concentration from our Shooting Stars! 

Our new theme for learning this half term is Amazing Animals and each week we will be learning about different types of animals. We have begun our learning this week with a focus on dinosaurs. 
Today we introduced the theme by talking about the names of different types of dinosaurs and we read the book "Bumpus Jumpus Dinosaurumpus" which introduced us to lots of different types of dinosaurs. We spoke about how dinosaurs lived a long, long time ago and we learnt the word "extinct." We also looked at some dinosaur bones and found out these were dug up after being buried for millions of years! 
In our small world areas, we have lots of model dinosaurs to explore and we also have lots of fiction and non-fiction books on the theme too. In the play dough area, the children have been using their hands and fingers to mould and shape the dough to create their own dinosaurs. Here are some photos of us learning together in our provision so far this week: 

Welcome back to a new half term of fun and learning in nursery. 
As today is Pancake Day, we have read the story "Mr Men and Little Miss Pancake Day" and we have talked about why we have pancakes. The children enjoyed tasting pancakes for their snack and most children ate all of it! They were very popular! 
We have also begun to learn a new poem:

Mix a pancake, stir a pancake,
Pop it in a pan,
Toss a pancake, fry a pancake, 
Catch it if you can!

Over the week we are going to practise reciting the poem with actions and then perform it on Friday. Please look out for a video of the children performing the poem! 

What a fantastic half term of learning we have had in the Shooting Stars! We have loved our "Magical Storyland" theme and the children have been so excited to learn about a new story each week. 
Here is a photo of our Learning Journey display which showcases our learning over this half term. The children have been able to look back on this to re-cap their learning and recall what we found out previously, This will be added to our nursery floor book so the children can continue to re-visit it and talk about their past learning as we begin our new learning journey next half term. 

In order to celebrate the end of our Magical Storyland theme, we have enjoyed a lovely Bedtime Story day today. All the children and staff were invited to come to nursery wearing their pyjamas and bring their favourite bedtime story book to share with their friends. 

We turned the lights off and played lullabies as the children entered nursery and they shared their stories with their friends as everyone was arriving. During the session, the children loved snuggling up under blankets and reading books by torchlight.

We also had lots of lovely story times as a class and different grown-ups read their favourite stories too. Miss Hodgson read Stick Man and Miss Overton read The Night Pirates. 

We even enjoyed a spot of pyjama yoga which was very relaxing and great for our physical development. 

Finally we all snuggled up with a hot chocolate and a gingerbread man and listened to the story of "Can't you Sleep Little Bear." 
​What a wonderful celebration of books and reading- WE LOVE BOOKS!!