Faces and feelings

* Sorry about the delay on this week's post, I have had problems with my internet connection.

This week the children have been learning about feelings. We have had lots of discussions about feelings and why different events make us feel differently.

The children have enjoyed looking at photographs of faces and trying to guess which emotion the person was feeling, we have also used emotion pebbles (pebbles with faces painted on) to discus feelings.

Here are some great examples of happy/sad faces the children have made using card, wool, sticky eyes and lolly sticks.

The children have given some great responses to our feeling discussions this week, here are some of our favourites:
"Feelings is when you are happy or sad." "You might get scared if you see a storm." "You will be sad if you have noone to play with." "I feel happy when I play with my little sister." 

This week's cooking activity was rice cake faces; the children used raisins to make eyes and a nose and cheese to make hair!

The children also participated in a senses activity, we filled bottles with lots of different smells and asked the children to take a sniff and guess what it was. The bottles were filled with perfume, vanilla essence, lemon juice, bubble bath and vinegar.

The children have loved learning about shapes last week so we decided to continue this and set up some more activities using shapes. Activities included:

 Shape printing.

 Making shape books (also developing cutting skills).

 Sorting shapes.

 Connecting shapes.

Here are some more photos of other things we have been up to this week. 

 Fishing for ducks.

 Painting.

 Ribbon streamers in the wind.

 Practicing pencil grip. 

 Small world knights & wizard's castle.

House playdough mats. 

Coming up next week: Road safety training with Southwark council (on site). Children will also be learning about Africa through the traditional Ashanti tale The Leopard's Drum. 

A day in the life of a Nursery child

During our parents workshop some of you mentioned that you would like to know a bit more about how the children spend their time whilst at nursery; here is a brief outline of a usual morning/afternoon.


Children arrive and self-register.
Free play/choosing activities (inside and outside).
Free play and an adult focus activity (children are invited to participate, on a Friday this is a cooking activity).
Monday/Tuesday group time (children work with their key worker as a group on a phonics or communication based activity).
Snack time (the whole class sit down together, we pray and share out the fruit and drinks).
Free play/choosing time (inside and outside).
Tidy-up time.
Story, singing time.
Hand out book bags and children's pictures.
Prayer and reflection time, then home!  

Early Years Curriculum Workshop

I would just like to say a big thank you to all the parents that joined us for our curriculum workshop; we had a great turnout from both Nursery and Reception parents.


We hope you enjoyed the evening and got a taster of how we teach the children through play, if you have any further questions about the curriculum or the type of activities the children will be doing do not hesitate to ask.


Many thanks- Mrs Haxell.

Houses, junk modelling, shapes and lots & lots & lots of building!

We are at the end of another week already and it has been busy...

Our focus this week was houses and homes, we read the story 'This is our house' by one of our favourite authors Michael Rosen. George won't share his house (a box) with the other children but in the end gets a taste of his own medicine, when he leaves the house to go to the loo and the other children won't let him back in the house. All of the children agreed that George was very rude and unkind to the children in the story and that is was much better to share and for everybody to be happy.

Following on from the story the children created some great models of their own houses using recycled materials. We encouraged the children to choose boxes to represent the shapes you might see on a house and to practice using scissors and tape independently. Here are a few pictures of the excellent models.

To link with the buildings theme we set up a builder's construction site in the outside area, here are some pictures of all the building fun.

And other activities this week included...

 Digging with dinosaurs.

 Mark-making on the table.

 Cutting and sticking shape pictures.

 Building with wooden blocks.

 Writing builder's plans.

 Practising recognising and writing names. 

Pouring and filling bottles.