Now we have reached the end of the half term, our learning journey for our "Watch it Grow" theme is complete.
Here is a photo of our completed display with lots of wonderful learning! This will be taken down and added to our class floor book so the children can look through it and talk about their previous learning experiences with their friends. 

We are very excited in nursery as our butterflies have finally emerged from their chrysalis. On Monday, we noticed there was one butterfly, yesterday there were three and today we have noticed that all five have emerged. The children were enthralled watching them dry their wings and gain the confidence to fly. At group time, we added some sugar mixed with water and some fruit into the net and some children noticed the butterflies tongue come out as they landed on the fruit. We are going to keep observing them over the next couple of days and then set them free in the nature reserve so they can fly away. 

Today the children were amazed when we visited the nature reserve for our welly walk as everything had grown so much since last time! We explored with our magnifying glasses and binoculars to see what we could find. We also loved playing hide and seek and chasing through the long undergrowth! 

We are really developing our observational skills each day as we look carefully and talk about what we can see happening and changing in our growing area. 
This week we have noticed that our bean plants have started to grow small, green shoots. We have seen that some are taller than others and a couple have started to grow leaves. We also noticed that some of them have roots coming from the bottom of the plant pot. Our new words are shoot and root. 
We are also watching our sunflowers each day and hope they may begin to grow over the weekend. 
Finally, we are watching and waiting for our butterflies to emerge from their cocoons- we think it might be next week! How exciting! 

As part of our learning about how flowers grow this week, we have been looking at flowers and talking about the parts- flower, petal, stem and leaves. In our creative area we have had a challenge to select our own materials to create a flower or flower garden. The children loved this activity and there was lots of learning as they chose suitable materials and different ways to stick them together. Lots of the children managed to make a flower with petals, a stem and some leaves. Look at us concentrating on our creations:

Our new Maths song this week is "One Little Flower Dancing in the Sun." At group time, we have been learning to sing the song and showing how many flowers on our fingers. Each time we added on one more flower and talked about how many altogether. 

Some children decided to draw their own flowers during provision time today and we think they are amazing. They have thought about including a flower with petals, stem and leaves just like we have been talking about at carpet time. Well done, superstars! 

Our new book of the week is Sam Plants a Sunflower and we will be finding out about how flowers grow. After reading the story, we worked as a team to plant three sunflower seeds in a pot. We recalled how to plant a seed from last week and we could remember that it needed watering too. We are going to have a competition to see if morning or afternoon nursery can grow the tallest sunflower! Watch out for updates! 

In the middle of our Coronation party, we noticed that our caterpillars have finally formed their cocoons. We enjoyed watching and talking about what we could see. Keep waiting, Shooting Stars! 

Today the children were invited to wear red, white and blue and make a crown at home to wear for the day. We had some wonderful crowns in nursery! During the session we carried out our very own Nursery Coronation. When the children entered nursery. we had seats laid out in rows and they were invited to choose a seat in West Minster Abbey! Then we went on to crown a King and Queen of Park Street. One child carried in the crown on a special cushion and then Miss McGinnes crowned our King and Queen. After that we all stood up and we sang "God Save our King" with Makaton signing. This was a very special occasion and really helped children to understand what will be happing during the Coronation tomorrow. 

We also had a party to celebrate with dancing and games followed by a special afternoon tea.