Hi Everyone

We have had such a lovely but busy term in Nursery School, highlights from this term have to be our recent visits from Wesley Smith our local police officer, and the Chipping Norton firefighters. The children got to listen about their jobs within the community, learn new vocabulary, ask any questions, see the emergency vehicles, listen to the sirens, sit inside the fire engine, and spray the fire hose 😊 This was such a great experience for our children.

This term our over arching theme has continued to be around – Community / Occupations along with following the children’s interests. The children have been discussing and thinking about Chipping Norton and discussing local shops, schools and attractions.

For maths we have been focusing on pattern and prepositions (words that show the relationship between a number or object and another number or object).

For phonics we have been looking at alliteration and for music we have been exploring rhythm. The children have also been interested in space, going on bug hunts, printing, castles, doing science experiments, making dens to name a few things.

Next term our overarching theme will be Summer / Transition & Sustainability (Environment), as soon as the medium term is done I will let you know and send the link to where you can find it on our website. Out maths focus will be on shape and measure, for phonics (for our older children) we will be looking at oral blending and segmenting and for music we will exploring and playing a range of musical instruments.

Our poem this week – Sliced Bread

Slice, slice, the bread looks nice.
Spread, spread, butter on the bread.
On the top put jam so sweet,
Now it’s good enough to eat.

Our song this week – Five Little Firefighters

Five little firefighters standing in a row,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, let’s go.
Jump on the engine with a shout,
As quick as a wink the fire is out.

Four little firefighters standing in a row,
1, 2, 3, 4, whoosh, let’s go.
Jump on the engine with a shout,
As quick as a wink the fire is out.

Three little firefighters standing in a row,
1, 2, 3, whoosh, whoosh, let’s go.
Jump on the engine with a shout,
As quick as a wink the fire is out.

Two little firefighters standing in a row,
1, 2, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, let’s go.
Jump on the engine with a shout,
As quick as a wink the fire is out.

One little firefighter standing in a row,
1, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, let’s go.
Jump on the engine with a shout,
As quick as a wink the fire is out.

Information / Reminders

INSET Day – No children in Nursery School on Monday the 2nd of June, all children are due back on Tuesday the 3rd of June.

Grapes – If you put grapes in your child’s lunchbox can you please make sure they are cut (length ways) this is following our health and safety guidelines.

Just a reminder we are a nut-free school.

Please can we ask that you name your child’s clothing, water bottle and lunchbox to help us at particularly busy times of the day.

Forest School working party – Saturday the 31st of May 9.30am – 12.30pm – If you can please do come and give us a hand to develop our Forest School area. We ask that you do not bring children this time as there will be tools and gates will be open etc. Please do let us know if you can make it 👍

Transition Visits – For children going to school in September, some reception teachers will be visiting nursery school next term, we will let you know which day your child’s teacher is coming as soon as they have confirmed. This allows them to meet your child in an environment they are confident in and allows us to time to talk about your child etc.

For any children going to Holy Trinity in September, I have had an email to confirm they have two coffee mornings coming up next term. The dates are Tuesday 10th June at 9.45 and Wednesday 25th June at 9.15.

Spare socks plea – If you have any spare socks (3-4 years) any donations would be very welcome 🧦

Leavers celebration – We will confirm at the start of next term when our leavers celebration will be / timings but more than likely it will be on the last day of term (one in the am and one in the pm) which is Tuesday the 22nd of July.

We hope you all have a lovely half term and we look forward to seeing you next term for our last term before the Summer.

Thank you for all your support, help and donations it is as always very much appreciated.

Kind regards

Zoe 😊

 

Hi All

I hope you are all well and having a good weekend. Can I just start by saying how well all our new children have settled into nursery and how all of our returning children have helped to support them by looking out for them and showing them the ropes.

Our overarching topic has been around community and occupations. The children have been busy looking at photographs of Chipping Norton where they have identified numerous shops and places. It has been lovely hearing the children share their knowledge of the community and represent it within their play. We are awaiting a date for Chipping Norton Firefighters and the Police to come and visit us, hopefully we can expect one visit if not both this term. I will let you know the dates as soon as they have been confirmed.

Maths – We have been focusing on ‘Pattern’ for maths where the children have been making repeating AB patterns physically and by using loose parts. Next week we will be recalling pattern in provision and also focusing on prepositions.

Phonics – This term we are focusing on ‘Alliteration’, listening for initial sounds of words / names and thinking of more words beginning with these sounds. We have played ‘I spy’ linking sounds to names, made ‘Silly Soup’ which consisted of objects / pictures of things all beginning with the same sound and have been making up silly alliterative sentences such as ‘Faron finds fabulous foxes funny’.

Forest School – Groups A & B did forest school last week, where we focused on woodland animals ‘Habitats’, they enjoyed sharing information books and learning about where the different animals live, they looked for bugs / insects and gathered natural resources to add to our ‘Bug Hotel’. Regarding our new children we have decided to run a few open sessions to introduce them to Forest school, we will continue to do this over the Summer term and in the Autumn term they will be allocated a group where they will do Forest school every other week, this worked well last year.

STEM – We will start our science experiments probably next week, we have lots of exciting activities to try and will begin with making a ‘cloud in a bottle’.

The week before last we were lucky enough to have Holly from ‘Funky Pants’ come in to do a session with the children. It was a lively music and movement session which the children loved and for the ones that found it a little overwhelming they enjoyed some time outside. Thank you to Holly and for those that made this a possibility, we are extremely lucky to have the support to be able to offer our children at ACE experiences like this.

Our core songs from the last two weeks have been ‘London Bridge’ and ‘The Wheels on the Bus’.

Our core poems from the last two weeks have been:

I have a Little Frog

I have a little frog,
His name is Tiny Tim,
I put him in the bathtub,
To see if he could swim.
He drank up all the water,
And gobbled all the soap.
And when he tried to talk,
There were bubbles in his throat.

Dance

Do a dance says one foot.
Other foot says let’s jiggle.
Hands say clap, slappity slap.
And all of me says wriggle.

Information / Reminders

*Thank you for all your snack donations, we have a lot of fruit left for this week but are a little short on savoury snacks such as rice cakes, breadsticks, crackers etc.

*Please please please can you name your child’s water bottles and lunch boxes, this helps especially when separating the bottles before lunch and helping the children at lunchtime if they can’t remember what their lunchbox looks like and there may also be multiple children with matching lunchboxes.

*Please feel free to add any new interests your child may have on the board in the cloakroom, this helps us to plan for these.

*If collecting your child at 11.50, from next week we will get your child ready and bring them to you at the gate. We will endeavour to have coats, bags, water bottles etc and encourage the children to go to the toilet before leaving. This is to support members of staff who are on lunch duty and to ensure other members of staff can go on their lunch break on time and be back by 12.30 for the afternoon session. This change may take a little getting use to but we have done it in the past and it has worked well.

*Trip to the High Street – We are hoping to take the children in small groups to our local High Street as part of our over arching theme of ‘Community’ and ‘Occupations’ this term. Please let me know if you are able to help in the last week of term on:
Monday the 19th of May (am) 9.45 – 11
Monday the 19th of May (pm) 1.15 – 2.30
Wednesday the 21st of May (am) 9.45 – 11
Friday the 23rd of May (am) 9.45 – 11
Friday the 23rd of May (pm) 1.15 – 2.30

I will confirm once I know we have enough support, if you have not helped out on a trip before – We start by meeting and going over a risk assessment that you will be asked to sign and then you will be assigned your own child and one other child to hold hands with. We always stay together and there will be a member of staff at the front leading the group and another member of staff at the back (staff will be wearing hi-vis jackets). We also talk the children prior about keeping themselves and their adults safe and we do regular safety check ins and sing a song about what we do when crossing any roads.

*Working Forest School Party (Saturday the 31st of May) – We are developing our Forest School and top field with ‘Little Wild Things’ and ‘Nicholson’s’. This is very exciting and we will send out some more information soon about what our plan, vision is but it will bring great benefits to our children at ACE and the local community. If you or anyone you think of who might be interested can come and help us on the 31st of May at 9.30 -12.30 for the first working party this would be great. At this moment I am going to say not to bring your children along to help as there will be dismantling and tools on site etc. But for future working parties this may be a possibility as it would be lovely to get them involved in planting and transporting. Please let us know if you can help

Kind Regards
Zoe 😊