The children in nursery have learnt lots about being a good friend this week while reading the story of The Little Red Hen. They were shocked that none of her friends would help her in the story and talked about how they would be good friends by helping each other and sharing our toys. We have worked as a team to play different games with our parachute and had to help each other to keep the ball on top! 
Nursery smelt delicious on Wednesday as we all followed a recipe to make our own bread rolls like the hen in the story. We observed what happened during the process and were amazed how much the dough had risen before we baked it! 

Our book of the week has been The Three Little Pigs, a particular favourite among lots of the children! 
We began the week by reading a few different versions of the book and talking about what was the same and different in each one. The children have been great at telling the story using puppets and changing their voices for the different characters. In provision, we have used large and small wooden blocks, duplo bricks, sticks, stones and straw to build different houses and talk about them with our friends. This was a perfect opportunity to learn about shapes and to practise our use of different shape language such as round, tall, straight, flat, curved, square, circle, triangle etc. At groups times we extended this learning by playing a guessing game where a shape was gradually revealed and the children had to try to name the shape. Some of the children were excellent at explaining why they thought it was or wasn't a particular shape. 
In our weekly baking activity, we melted chocolate and mixed it with shredded wheat to make our own representation of the pigs' houses. Lots of learning and talk about heating and cooling took place too. 

Today we have had a very exciting theme day in nursery! We moved away from Magical Storyland to learn about Chinese New Year. The children and staff were invited to come to nursery wearing red, the lucky colour. During the session we learnt all about the celebration and had a go at lots of different activities. The children especially enjoyed using our ribbons to create our very own dragon dance. They also had a go at some Chinese writing, developed their cutting skills while making Chinese lanterns and worked as a team to create their own paper dragon using hand prints. 
At snack time we were lucky enough to taste some different Chinese foods including: noodles, rice, a dipping sauce and prawn crackers. Yummy!! 

Our journey through Magical Storyland has taken us to the story of The Gingerbread Man this week. The children have been amazing at joining in with the repeated phrases and re-telling the story during play. We have used our creative skills to design our own gingerbread man using different materials and have also practised our counting as we have added buttons to our playdough gingerbread people. 
We followed a recipe to make our very own gingerbread men, talking about how the ingredients changed during the process. Hopefully yours didn't run away before you had chance to eat it!! 

This week we have welcomed lots of new children into nursery. We are really pleased with how well they have already settled into our routines and started making friends. Well done! 

Our new theme for learning this term is Magical Storyland. Each week we will be basing our learning around a different traditional or fairy story, 
This week we have begun our new theme with a focus on 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears.' The children have enjoyed sharing different versions of the story and acting it out using finger puppets. They have enjoyed changing their voices for the different characters and have been joining in with the repeated phrases in the story. 
At snack time, we tasted porridge, like Goldilocks in the story, and the children had the opportunity to write their name on a chart to indicate if they liked the taste or not.