A little reminder for the week . . .

• The children have recently brought home quite a few forms! These need completing and returning to Nursery by Monday 3rd February. Thank you.

• We have been enjoying getting to know some of the books written by our new 'Author' for the term - Mick Inkpen. Remember to click on the link to our 'Share a Story, Share a Smile' blog (found at the top of this page) to find out what the children think of each story. You can also view the books being read in Willow and Rowan Class!

Star of the Week!

Our Stars of the Week for last week were Noah, Milena and Bethan. Congratulations and well done to all of you!

Chinese New Year

This week we have been learning about Chinese New Year and how it is celebrated. People give presents, decorate houses in red and gold, put up lights and lanterns, eat special foods, have dragon dances, and give lucky red envelopes containing money to friends and family.

For Wellie Wednesday today we played a game where we had lucky red envelopes and we had to find as many gold coins as we could to put in them. Some of the coins were numbered and we were able to put them in the correct numerical order. We did enjoy the game as well as getting very muddy as usual and trying out our new wheelbarrows!

“Gung hay fat choi”  
 - which means “ Happy New Year” in Chinese.

 Do you know what animal it is the year of?

Do you know what animal year you were born in?

Birdwatch Bungalow!

  

We have been giving a lot of thought to how we can look after our little feathered friends during the cold weather. This week we began converting our Three Bears Cottage to a 'Birdwatch Bungalow'!

The children have been having fun looking through their binoculars to spot a variety of birds - and checking them off on their chart.

This weekend the Big Garden Birdwatch will be taking place - click on this link to take you to the rspb website for more detail - Big Garden Birdwatch information. 

We hope you have lots of fun looking at who visits your garden this weekend. We'd love to hear about the different varieties of bird that you spot - let us know which were your favourite!

Ice Spectacular!

This week the children received a very special letter from 'The Snowman'! The weather had been so cold that his pipes had frozen and he hadn't got any water to make a drink for his friends. All he had was some ice-cubes in the freezer - he was hoping that the children might be able to help him and suggest what he could do.

The children came up with some lovely ideas, including sending the snowman some water in a bucket, getting him some water from the sea, and telling him to go and buy some apple juice from the shop!

Alfie had a really good idea though - "We could get the ice-cubes out of the freezer and they will melt and turn into water!"

And Felicity said "They will melt because that's what snow and ice does - I picked up some ice and that's what happened because it was sunny - I think it will melt in my hands"

So we investigated . . . 

All the children noticed how cold the ice-cubes felt on our hands, and then they began melting! Milena was very observant - "It's slippery, it's water and wet - it's gone smaller!"

Some of the children couldn't wait to write back to the Snowman and tell him what we had found out - we hope he enjoyed receiving their letters and has been able to follow our advice - now he can make a nice drink for all of his friends!

Poor Little Snowman!

We had lots of fun learning the 'Five Little Snowmen Fat' number rhyme this week - particularly when our five little snowmen wore their funny hats! 

Then we heard about a poor little snowman that had lost all of his buttons! We played a dice game to help him find them again - he looked much happier afterwards!

How many red buttons can you see? How many green buttons? Can you count them to find out how many there are altogether?

We hope we will get some snow soon so that we can build our own snowman! How many buttons do you think we should give him?

Winter Wonderland!

Over the past couple of weeks we have been helping our friend the Weather Bear to find out about 'winter time'! 

After sharing the children's thoughts and ideas, we had lots of fun playing a dressing game. We took turns to roll the dice, find the matching number on the chart, then put on the corresponding item of outdoor clothing - now we were all wrapped up nice and warm ready for our winter walk!

There was lots of ice about, and we found a sweatshirt that had been left outside - it was hard and had been frozen to the top of the fence! We all had to be very careful as some of the ground was still quite slippery. 

We noticed that a lot of the trees had bare branches, but Thomas M told us that when it is spring, the trees will grow new leaves!

What do you enjoy about going out for a walk on a nice cold winter's day? What other changes do you think will take place as we move from winter into spring?

Star of the Week!

Our Stars of the Week for last week were Bailey, Thomas H and Thomas M - congratulations and well done to all of you!

Tweet Treats

Today we listened carefully to the birds and talked about how some migrate to warmer climates during the winter months. Other birds stay, managing to keep warm by eating more food and fluffing up their feathers. These birds can get very hungry because worms are very difficult to get out of the ground when it is hard and frozen so they have to manage by finding berries or seeds. We decided to help them by making some special bread cone treats for the birds to feed on. We spread lard over the fir cones and then rolled them in bread crumbs before hanging them in the trees. Next week we’re going to see if the birds have had their tweet treat feast and whether they fly back for more!

Spread on the lard.

Roll it in the bread crumbs.

Ready to hang..........

in the tree.

Birds look.......

A tweet treat mini feast!
Would the birds in your garden like a tweet treat?

Hand-print Robins!

The children had lots of fun making their special bird feeders in Wellie Wednesday this week! We thought we might help to encourage some more birds to visit us by creating these wonderful hand-print Robins! 

Can you spot some of the different media that the children have used?

We hope we do get lots of new little friends flying in to see us - we could be bird detectives instead of shape detectives next week!

Let us know what different types of birds you have spotted recently.

Shape Detectives!

To help familiarise our new friends with their new surroundings,  we decided to be detectives and all hunt for different shapes in and around the playground!

"Hexagon - cause it's got 1,2,3,4,5,6 sides!"

"A circle!"

"I've found some squares!"

Georgia spotted a different shape - "A triangle - it's got a down, across and an up"

Noah spotted the same one - "I can see a triangle. It's got black sides and yellow in the middle. It's a triangle with three sides and three corners!"

Can you be a detective and find what it was that the children saw from their wonderful descriptions? What other shapes can you find in our playground? Happy hunting! 

A New Year Promise . . .

Not only have we been celebrating the start of a new term, a new year and a new month - this week we have also been welcoming some new friends to our Nursery. The children talked to them about what they feel makes our Nursery a safe and happy place to be!

We also talked about the New Year being a time when some people like to make a special promise to themselves to try and do something good.

Each of the children then made their own special New Year Promise for 2014. 

Here are just a few . . . 

"I'm going to try and be kind" (Ember)

"Play nicely with my friends" (Lottie)

"I'm going to share things" (Milena)

We are all going to help each other to keep our promises. What New Year Promises have you made?

Welcome Back - Happy New Year!

• Welcome back - and a very 'Happy New Year' to you all. We hope you had a lovely Christmas - thank you so much for all your lovely cards and gifts. It was very kind of you and much appreciated!

• A huge 'thank you' to all those that brought in a donation for  'Send a Cow' - thanks to your generosity we were able to raise £43.00 in total. This has enabled us to purchase a Tip Tap, four mixed fruit trees, a Keyhole garden and some Magic muck! 

• As always, please ensure that your child comes dressed appropriately for the weather conditions, and that you check regularly that all items of clothing are clearly named!

• If you haven't done so already, please make sure that you have applied for your child's admission to full time school - the closing date is next week!

• We all enjoyed sharing our Julia Donaldson books together - remember you can access our 'Share A Story, Share A Smile' blog at the top of this page to read a selection of the children's thoughts and comments. We will be looking at a new author this term - check the blog next week to find out who it will be!