Today the morning children went over to the school courts to practise and develop their ball skills, They enjoyed exploring throwing, catching, kicking and bouncing using different sized balls, It was lovely to see some children playing together- throwing and catching or kicking a ball with a friend . We finished with a circle game together where we learnt how to position our hands ready to catch the ball. It is a tricky skill but we are practising and getting really good at it!

In Nursery, we make sure the children have access to a wide range of different technology in our provision so they can develop their skills. Today we added a CD player to our music area which was a great hit! The children learnt to use the play and stop buttons to play different nursery rhyme CD's and they were also able to press a button to move the song on if they wanted to. They also learnt to adjust the volume. 
Whilst listening to the music and singing along, the children enjoyed dancing together in different ways. Some also enjoyed practising their big scale movements while dancing with floaty scarves!

This week in nursery we are basing our learning around the rhyme "Incy Wincy Spider." Hearing and saying rhymes is a very important pre-reading skill and we will be practising this all week. Today the children  have learnt to sing the traditional version of the rhyme using different voices- loud, quiet, fast and slow. We also begun to learn a new version:

Incy WIncy Spider, 
Climbing up the trees,
Down came the snow and made poor Incy freeze,
Out came the sunshine and melted all the snow,
So Incy Wincy Spider had another go!

The children listened to the rhyme and were great at completing the rhyming word at the end of the lines= trees/ freeze and snow./go.
The older children have also been playing different rhyming games at group time so they can learn to hear and say a rhyming string eg cat, rat, bat, hat, mat or dog, log, frog.  Some of  the children are getting really confident with this now and we have been making up silly rhymes with our names too! 

Our provision enhancements this week include:
- acting out the rhyme in the water area with a drainpipe, toy spiders and watering cans to make the rain
- singing and playing the rhyme using puppets and musical instruments in our music area
- making spiders using black playdough, googly eyes,  pipe cleaners and match sticks
-creating spiders using different collage materials and paints
- exploring mixing black and white paints to make different shades
-making small world homes for spiders and other minibeasts using different fabrics, blocks and other loose parts. 
- mark making and reading different stories about spiders. 
- playing an Incy Wincy Spider dice game together in the Maths area

Here is a photo of our display which showcases this week's learning:

Today was internet safety day across school and in nursery we talked about how to stay safe online. The children shared if they have any devices at home and some said they play games or listen to songs on a tablet or their grown-up's phone. 
Firstly we shared a powerpoint about Smartie the penguin who has a new tablet for his birthday. With Smartie, the children learnt a new song to help them to stay safe and to ask a grown-up before they click on anything. Here are the words to our song:
Before you tap and click,
You need to stop and think
and TELL someone! 
During the session, the children played a counting game on our interactive whiteboard and also had the opportunity to explore our i-pads. They learnt to tap and drag and drop as they played. With the interactive whiteboard, they also learnt to take turns as they played. The children were excellent at asking for help and not clicking on anything without asking a grown-up. 

Today we went on a welly walk to the nature reserve for our learning. Our challenge was to use our imagination with a stick. Firstly, we shared the book "Not a Stick" which gave us some brilliant ideas of what our sticks could be, Then we went exploring and found lots of sticks of our own! It was amazing to see the children's imaginative play as they explored together. Their sticks become a whole host of different things including: fishing rods, oars for a boat, swords, drum sticks, spoons, magic wands, telescopes, paintbrushes, metal detectors, sweeping brushes and lots more! 
Here is a link to the story of Not a Stick if you would like to share it with your child at home. Not A Stick - Book Read Aloud - YouTube
Here are some photos of us in action with our Not a Stick!

OutAll the children were invited to wear clothing with a number on it and donate £1 to the NSPCC as today was Numbers Day. We had lots of fun learning about numbers together! At register time, we were all given a numberblock and we added it to a tower to show whether we are three or four years old. Then we looked together at the towers and talked about which we thought had the most and the least by comparing the sizes. We counted how many were in each tower and found out that most  children in our nursery are three years old. Next we went on a treasure hunt! We found that there were 1p and 2p coins hidden all over nursery and we had a challenge to go and find as many as we could. We sorted them into containers of 1p and 2p and then we worked together to stack them and build coin towers. We talked about which tower was the tallest and the shortest and counted how many coins in each one. 
'During the session, we also sang lots of different number songs and rhymes. In our provision, we explored different number puzzles and had a go at writing numbers too. Outdoors we played hopscotch and a target game of throwing beanbags into numbered hoops. Finally, to finish the session, we all sat together and watched Numberjack where we spotted lots of different numbers!