Pre-Nursery & Nursery 20.9.24

Stomp, stomp, stomp! Here come the dinosaurs

Pre- Nursery became archaeologists as they searched the sandpit for dino bones and stone age fossils, looking closely at the different patterns and textures. They also enjoyed following the stories of, “Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs”, and “1,2,3, Do the Dinosaur”. Using paper plates, the task was to design a mask using mixed media resources for example, paint, tissue paper and felt. Be wary of the “Montyosaurus” and “Freyadaptyl” hiding in the classrooms!

One morning, Nursery were greeted by a handful of frozen eggs which sparked much wonder and curiosity. “Who do the eggs belong to?” and “What will happen when they start to melt”, the children asked. Using smaller tools they started to chip away at the ice, only to reveal a range of different sized, coloured and shaped dinosaurs which needed to reunite with their parents. Expanding on this, they recognised the creatures might need some food, so we created cloud dough to fill their hungry tummies.

We all ventured out for our first nature walk, and the children worked together to find leaves, conkers, and acorns for our Autumn display. We talked about how to care for living things and to only pick natural items from the ground. Next week we look forward to creating our very own stick people.

In music, the children have been introduced to Harvest songs, singing along to nursery rhymes and joining in with actions. P.E is focussing on negotiating obstacles and spatial awareness, weaving in and out of cones and having a go at the hula hoop. There are new hammocks in the forest school site which is most exciting and lots of creepy crawlies under tree stumps. Lastly, in French we are familiarising with colours, numbers and animals.

Next week we will be using free from pasta shells to construct fossils, as well as exploring the natural loose parts.

What is loose parts play?

With no prescribed method of play, natural resources and man-made items can be used entirely at the discretion of the child. They can explore, create and imagine in all the senses of those words and assign their own purpose and meaning to the objects. Loose parts play can develop skills across our entire EYFS curriculum – communication and language, physical, personal, social and emotional, literacy, numeracy, expressive arts and design and understanding the world. It is also cross-curricular or an integrated pedagogy because so many learning intentions will be covered in any one learning experience.

We are developing our loose parts collection, if you happen to have any of the following and no longer need/ want them, please could Nursery take them off your hands.