"WOW!" has been heard a lot in nursery this week as the children have been so amazed to see the growth of both our caterpillars and beanstalks. Our caterpillars have doubled in size over the course of this week and we were very excited to notice on Friday that they were forming their cocoons! We are wondering how long it will be before we have some butterflies!
The children have also been carefully observing the growth of their bean plants each day. They  have learnt the words "shoot" and "root" and were excited to see how tall they were by the end of the week. 

Today was baking day in nursery and, to link with our learning about how butterflies grow we decided to make butterfly buns. We learnt how to mix butter and icing sugar to make buttercream, using our motor skills to mix carefully. We found out that icing sugar is very powdery and it went everywhere! Then we had to cut out the top part of our bun with some help and all the children were able to safely use a knife to cut it in half. After this we had to be very careful as we spooned the buttercream into our bun and then added on the wings we had cut. Finally we carefully sprinkled on some toppings. There was such a lot of learning in this activity and we really had to concentrate.

We have some new balls in nursery and today we developed our gross motor skills while playing with them outside. We have some budding footballers who have an amazing kick! We also practised throwing and  catching which can be tricky- but everyone tried their best! 

This week we are continuing our growing theme by learning about how flowers grow. We read the book "Sam Plants a Sunflower" and talked about how flowers grow from seeds. Our activities this week include:
- using collage materials to create our own flowers
- observational pictures of Spring flowers using pastels and paints
-  building flowers using a construction kit
- singing "one little flower dancing in the sun" and counting and ordering seeds and flowers in our Maths area
- gardening in the outdoor area

The children thoroughly enjoyed exploring in the nature reserve and observing the changes- there are lots of things growing now!
We also took our mud kitchen resources and the children used their imaginations to cook all sorts of different meals and drinks!
Here are some photos of us having fun and learning together. 

As part of our growing topic, we have been planting bean seeds. We looked together at the seeds and talked about how to plant them and what they needed to grow. We are looking forward to seeing if we get any beanstalks in nursery!!

For our baking activity today, the children decorated a biscuit to represent a butterfly. Firstly they mixed the icing sugar with water and food colouring and then carefully spooned and spread it onto their biscuit. Then they selected some toppings to represent the wings. We re-visited last week's learning about the wings being symmetrical and some children tried really hard to make their wings look the same on both sides. 

We are continuing our theme of growing this week with a focus on the story of "Jack and the Beanstalk." We have read the book together and the children have been trying to join in with the repeated refrain, learning to change their voice for the scary giant. 
In our provision, we have a castle and puppets of the characters so the children can tell the story as they play. We have a digging are with different sized plant pots and gardening tools and we have added watering cans to our water area, 

After reading the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, we decided to make our own class beanstalk with a leaf created by every child. The children used green materials and learnt to attach them to their leaf shape. Some of the materials were tricky to stick and the children had to try different things to make them stick. They learnt to problem solve and persevere. Great job,  Shooting Stars!
Look out for a photo of our completed beanstalk on display very soon!

The children in nursery were very excited today as our delivery of live caterpillars has arrived! We looked at them together and spoke about how tiny they are. The children enjoyed observing them through their magnifying glasses and we cannot wait to see how they grow!