Week commencing 7th July 2025
The Investigation Hub at Sidney Grove
Characteristics of Effective Learning- Creative and Critical Thinking
Many children have been expressing an interest in accessing maths opportunities in the Nursery and outside. Building on an evident interest in collecting, counting and sorting we offered further opportunities to develop these skills. Children then replicated activities in independent play. For example, they collected natural resources and placed them carefully one by one into a ten frame. They also collected stones and bark clippings and sorted them based on their properties, making observations such as:
“One of these rocks looks like gold!”
”This looks like wood”
”This one is big and this one is small”
Parents as Partners
The children have loved revisiting the Colour Monster this week and we have focussed on the exploration of feelings. As we know, this time of year can create a huge array of feelings for children; excitement for new beginnings, nervousness for change and even sadness due to goodbyes! The children have completed a feelings check in each day, describing how they feel and sometimes adding the reasons behind their feelings:
“I have love emotion, I have sad emotion. I’m feeling love emotion now!”
”I’m happy because I like being here at Nursery”
“A rainbow monster means confused”
“I feel excited, purple is excited because my Mum is going to make biscuits with me!”
We also discussed that all feelings are welcome and that we can find ways to manage tricky feelings. We practised deep breathing, stamping our feet and even squashing a pillow as strategies to help with big feelings.
We also explored some simple maps following on from last week’s developing interests. We asked the children to draw some places the Colour monster could visit and then asked them how the place would make him feel. This provoked some thoughtful responses:
”He can go to the theatre to be happy!”
”This is a bridge…he is scared he will fall if it breaks and he will crash into a river!”
”He can go to the park to be excited!”
The children have accessed maths opportunities in group time, selecting their feeling and then counting the totals for each, noticing which feelings had the most votes. They have also worked on repeating patterns (large and small) on a top secret arts and crafts task.
We are so happy to share school reports for our school leavers. It is always a pleasure to share the progress the children have made with you and we are very proud of each individual child for their amazing achievements this year.
Outdoors Learning
The children have been very engaged with throwing and catching activities this week. They have been throwing to hit a target such as a large tyre or crates. When discovering that throwing hoops was not safe they then found the alternative of throwing hoops over a target. These activities all help to develop gross motor skills alongside personal social and emotional development (throwing safely so as not to hit others) On Friday the children added a new element to throwing and catching which was combing this with water play! This added additional excitement and helped everyone to feel cool on such a warm day.
Last week of term time education!
If your child is not attending Nursery during the holidays, please could you empty their trays and take home any spare clothes (even if they are returning in September) as it’s a good time to check what they have and replenish for September. Please could returning families sign and return contracts to the school office asap. Many thanks, and have a lovely weekend 🙂
