WOW! When we arrived at nursery this morning, we discovered that the final three eggs have hatched and we now have 10 beautiful chicks! We have transferred some to the brooder box and given them food and water but the younger ones need to stay in the incubator for a little while longer. We have found out that the yellow chicks are boys and the brown chicks are girls! 
The children all had the chance to hold a chick today and we learnt how to be gentle. There was so much awe and wonder and the children were so kind and calm with them. Some of us found it a little bit scary but we got more confident and most children were brave enough to hold one! 
We are excited to see how they will grow and change over the next few days. 

The Shooting Stars were very excited to find out if there were any changes to our eggs when they arrived at nursery today. They were amazed to see that one egg had cracked open and we had one fluffy chick in the incubator already! As the day went on, the children had the chance to watch and notice as they started chipping- we noticed small peck holes and then larger cracks in the eggs. Finally we got to see some hatch out and by the end of the afternoon, we had 7 chicks and 3 eggs in the incubator! Wow! What a magical experience! 

The Shooting Stars were very excitedly waiting for our delivery of eggs today. We have looked at photos and talked about what we think will happen. 
This afternoon, the eggs finally arrived and the children had the chance to observe them closely in the incubator. We had lots of lovely discussion and lots of excitement too! We cannot wait to see what changes we can observe tomorrow- keep checking back for updates! 

We were very lucky today in Early Years to experience a visit from Lion Learners who brought a range of animals for us to find out about. This was a perfect hands on learning experience to enhance our learning about animals and minibeasts. We had a chance to handle and find out about a tortoise, snail, bearded dragon, guinea pig and a tarantula. We
found out lots of interesting facts about each one. 
The Shooting Stars were amazing at listening, answering questions and sharing their own knowledge too. They also were very brave! Here are some photos of us exploring:

Today the children in Early Years raised money by joining in with a sponsored fancy dress welly walk on the school field! The children were invited to wear their favourite fancy dress costumes, put on their wellies and do laps of the school field. The Shooting Stars were absolutely AMAZING! Everyone did at least two laps of the school field and most children chose to run around! Some children managed to do five whole laps which was a massive achievement and some of the children who stayed all day did five laps in the morning and five more in the afternoon!! WOW! We had some very tired boys and girls but they were very proud of their achievements. 
We are going to use the sponsor money raised to pay for our animals workshop tomorrow and any extra will be used to purchase resources to enhance the learning environment for our wonderful children. They definitely deserve it!!!! 
Thank you so much for all the sponsorship money which has been raised so far. We will let you know the grand total once we have counted it all up! 

Our new core book for this half term is The Very Hungry Caterpillar and we began reading it today. This book will help us to learn about the life cycle of the butterfly. Today we read the book together and we talked about how a butterfly grows- we learnt the words egg, caterpillar, cocoon/chrysalis and butterfly. In our provision, we have been working together to complete some tricky jigsaws of the life cycle, creating butterflies and caterpillars with our play dough, reading books about them together and exploring our garden in the small world area. 

For a focused activity today, we had a go at some butterfly printing. Firstly, the children talked about the butterfly's wings and we noticed that they were bright, colourful and had different patterns on them. We also noticed that they were the same on both wings and we learnt the word symmetrical to describe this. 
The children used paints to make patterns on one side of their butterfly and then folded it over and pressed it down. They were amazed to see that their butterfly was symmetrical when they opened it up! 

We are looking forward to welcoming back our Shooting Stars tomorrow for another term of fun and learning together in nursery. 
This term our learning journey is called "Watch it Grow!" and we will be learning about different plants and minibeasts over the half term, Our core book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and this book will help us to learn about the life cycle of the butterfly. We are looking forward to a delivery of our own caterpillars which we will be able to watch change into butterflies and we will also be having a delivery of live eggs- we are hoping to hatch our very own chicks! There will also be a visit from Lion Learners who are bringing a selection of animals for us to handle and find out about too. What an exciting half term of learning we have ahead of us! 

One of our provision enhancements this week is to create a sea creature using their own choice of materials. We have lots of different sea creatures to choose from and some children have been using their scissors to cut them out. Some children have been adding colour and others have selected collage materials to decorate them. Here are some photos of us in action so far this week:

Our Amazing Animals journey has moved on this week with a focus on sea creatures. We read the book Commotion in the Ocean which is a rhyming story so the children were encouraged to join in with the rhyming words. We also practised saying the sea creature names and clapped out and counted the syllables- we are getting really good at this now! We have found out that the blue whale is the biggest mammal on earth, that sharks are very fierce and that crabs walk sideways! We will keep on learning more new facts as the week progresses. Here are a few photos of us engaging in our provision so far this week: