Today we have had a very exciting day in nursery as we have had a special visit from Michaela from Lion Learners, She brought a selection of animals in for the children to find out about. They were all given the opportunity to hold and stroke each one and they were all so brave!! 
We learnt about a snake, a guinea pig, a spider, a bearded dragon and a giant millipede. The children were fascinated to find out that the millipede had 250 legs and the spider had 8 eyes! Michaela brought some grasshoppers and put one on the floor so the children could watch how the bearded dragon would eat it! We learnt so much about the animals as well as how to be gentle and caring towards them. 
Well done, Shooting Stars! You were AMAZING!! 
Here are some photos of our 30 hours group of children:

Here are some photos of our morning nursery children:

Here are some photos of our afternoon nursery children:

Today we have been planting our own bean seeds to see if we can grow a beanstalk like Jack in our story of the week. Firstly, we opened the seed packet together and talked about the seeds- some children were surprised how big they were. In small groups, we all had a go at planting our own seed. We learnt how to carefully fill a plant pot with soil, make a little hole with our finger, carefully push in the seed and then cover it over. Finally, we watered our seed and talked about why we need to give them water. During this activity, we learnt the words: plant, plant pot, soil and seed. 
We are going to check on our seeds each day and watch how they grow and change. What a lot of super learning! 

Our "Watch it Grow!" theme this week has moved onto learning about how plants grow using the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. We began by reading the story together and using our big booming voices to pretend to be the giant and shout "Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an English man." In the small world area, we have a beanstalk and castle as well as puppets of the characters and the children are acting out the story with their friends. 
Our other provision activities this week include: 
- mixing green with powder paint to paint our own beanstalk.
-building different sized towers and talking about them using the words: tall, taller, tallest, short, shorter and shortest. 
-exploring glittery green water with different sized watering cans and plant pots
-digging the soil and filling our different sized plant pots while comparing the sizes
-counting and sorting different seeds in our Maths area 
-digging and weeding the garden outside. 
Here are some photos of us playing and learning together so far this week:

The children have loved watching the growth of our caterpillars this week and there has been so much language and talk while observing closely. We cannot believe how much they have grown throughout the week and today we noticed that some of them have moved onto the lid and begun to hang down. "I think they are getting ready to spin their cocoon" said one of our Shooting Stars! We cannot wait to see what has happened after the weekend! 

We had lots of fun playing together with our parachute outside today. There is lots of team work involved in this as we have to work together to make it move. We also played some listening and turn taking games. This was also great for developing our gross motor skills as we moved in lots of different ways. 

In our Maths learning, we have been practising our careful counting by making sure we point slowly and carefully saying one number for each item. Today we played a ladybird spots game to help us. We had to count the spots on the ladybird (or quickly subitise the amount if we could) and then click on the matching numeral. We played the game together at carpet time and then the children played independently during provision time. They also learnt that the interactive whiteboard doesn't work if more than one person taps at once and so they learnt to take turns with their friends too. 

In our creative area, we have been learning how to use boxes, tubes and other materials to create our own 3D minibeasts. We have learnt how to choose suitable materials and to attach them using tape and glue. Here we are working hard on our creations:

Today we went on a minibeast hunt in our outdoor area. We used our magnifying glasses to look very carefully and talk about what we could see. We learnt that minibeasts like to live in dark, damp places so we looked under stones and logs as well as amongst the flowers. We found worms, a snail, a fly, woodlice, ants, a spider, a ladybird and a bee. The children were keen to talk about what they looked like as well as how they were moving. They also used their mark making skills to tick off what they found on our spotters sheet.