Today we will start to send home our travelling crib so each child in nursery has a turn before Christmas. In the bag you will find a wooden stable and nativity story characters, a candle and book of the story. Please share the book with your child and encourage them to tell the story using the stable and characters, You will also find a book where you and your child can record the fun you have had. We hope you all enjoy this lovely Christmas experience! 

Today the children in nursery had a very exciting job- decorating our nursery tree! There was so much learning in this and great team work too! We talked about what kind of decorations we could add to a tree and used the words- star, angel, baubles, bells, tinsel and beads. We clapped out the syllables in each word and practised saying them using "my turn, your turn." Then we thought about some words to describe the decorations and used the words- sparkly, glittery, twinkling, shiny, bright and colourful. The children worked as a great team to carefully add the decorations, taking care about where to add each one. Super work, Shooting Stars, your tree looks beautiful! 

This week we have begun learning about the traditional story of Christmas. We have read different versions of the story and have talked about the main events. There are lots of new words to learn such as: stable, innkeeper, angel, shepherd, manger, gold, frankinsence and myrrh. We spoke about Mary travelling on a donkey and Joseph walking all the way as there were no cars in those days! This supported our early understanding of History as we spoke about things being different and used the phrase "Long ago...." 
In our provision we have lots of small world props and figures so the children can act out the story. We have created a stable in our role play area and we have dressing up clothes so the children can take on the role of the different characters. This area has been very popular today and the children have been great at trying to say the words which their character said in the story. 

We thoroughly enjoyed raising money to support Children in Need today. The children were all invited to donate £1 and wear non-uniform, spots or Pudsey clothes and everyone in the Shooting Stars got involved. At group time, we spoke about helping children who are not as lucky as we are, we had a go at some Pudsey dancing and played a game of "Pudsey says" which was great for developing our listening skills.
Morning nursery:

Afternoon nursery:

During provision, our activities included: decorating Pudsey by adding sticky spots, colour by number Pudsey, fishing for spots in the water tray and using tweezers to pick up pom-poms to add as spots to a Pudsey outline. We also went on a spot hunt around nursery and found 34 hidden spots!! We learnt it was easier to count them if we lined them up. 

As well as all our other activities today, the children in nursery followed a recipe to make Pudsey and Blush biscuits. Firstly, a group of children carefully weighed and mixed all the ingredients to make the dough. Then everyone had a turn at rolling the dough and cutting out their own biscuits. 

To link with our Elmer story, our Maths song of the week is "One elephant went out to play." In our group times, the children have been acting out the song with themselves as the elephants, counting them and adding one more onto the spiders web each time. The children are great at showing amounts on their fingers to represent the amount in the song!
We have also had a go at a focused activity where we counted elephants on a spiders web. Some children were learning to say and count how many elephants and some were counting out an amount of elephants to match with a numeral. We have some amazing mathematicians in the shooting stars! 

, Our book of the week is Elmer by David McKee. This week is Anti-bullying week and the story of Elmer links perfectly with this theme as Elmer is different to all the other elephants. Today we shared the story and talked about the elephants being grey but Elmer is patchwork. We talked about how it is okay to be different and every0ne can still be friends. Some of our provision activities today included: making our own patchwork elephants in the creative area, exploring how to mix grey in the painting area, mark making with lots of colours on an elephant outline, building animals using popoids, counting and sorting elephants and using wooden blocks to build a jungle for Elmer and his animal friends.

Today the children prepared and ate their own toast for snack and it was enjoyed by everyone! We mixed milk with different food colouring to make edible paint and the children then painted this onto their toast. There was lots of discussion about colours and colour mixing as well as recall of the colours of the rainbow from last week. Super learning, Shooting Stars!

Today children and staff were invited to wear odd socks to kick off our Anti-bullying week in school. In nursery, we looked at everyone's socks and decided if they were the same or odd. We noticed and talked about all the different patterns and colours on them. We also discussed how being different is okay and linked this to our odd socks as well as other ways in which we are all different. 

Today we participated with the whole school in "We Love Words" day. The children were all invited to come dressed as a word. In nursery, our words included: magical, sleepy, rainbow, blue and superhero!
Morning nursery:

Afternoon nursery

We took turns to guess each other's words and we talked about what they all meant. We also went on a parade through the other early years classes to show them our outfits.

It was very difficult to choose two winners but we finally decided on these lucky ones:
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