November in Nursery

We’ve had a very busy and exciting November in Nursery. The children are fascinated by autumn and all the changes they see around them and every morning we get a fantastic selection of giant leaves that the children are picking up on their way to school. During outdoor time, they are raking and collecting the smaller leaves to mix with soil and water and make “soup” or “tea”.

We have started introducing some initial sounds in Phonics and it is lovely to hear the children singing the Jolly Phonics songs as they recognize some sounds in the environment: ‘The snake is in the grass’ is a big favourite.

In Talk 4 Writing we read the story “Dear Zoo”. We made a story map of some of the events and later we made our own story with new characters that the children suggested. To support understanding of the book, our classrooms were set up with lots of animal related activities, including snakes in the sand box, washing crocodiles in the water tray, a zoo in the role-play area and a mini zoo in the small world area. The children had a chance to make animals in the creative area. We had real live bugs and spiders in the investigation area that we observed for a while before we let them go back outside. We also talked about what would be a good snack to take on a trip to the zoo and the children made their own jam sandwiches – yum!

We also had our Nursery Rhymes week in November. Each play area in our unit was set up as a different nursery rhyme and we sang and practiced a lot of new rhymes. 

It is wonderful to see how much the children’s confidence has grown and how eager they are to learn and play together. 

Mihaela Chesaru

Nursery Teacher, Head of EYFS