We have been helping the children in the Michael Faraday Nursery to improve their sense of rhythm during our musical lessons. We are having great fun reading and exploring some of the ideas in the brilliant Tanker Tanker Skunk. This is a book that has the aim of understanding more abut basic musical rhythm, as well as introducing many different animals. The Nursery children have been think about how many beats can be found in the name of each animal, and then sharing these in small groups.

The animal theme has continued in the Nursery with our role-play area being transformed into a Michael Faraday veterinary practice! We have been explaining to the children the idea of how we need to handle any pets with great care, as well as the importance of vets in helping sick animals to feel better.

With the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee almost upon us, we are also starting to think about a Nursery Jubilee party. We will be explaining to the children more about the role of the Queen, and the work that she does in our country. We are planning to make some Union flags to wave for our party, as well as coming up with some healthy Jubilee style snack ideas.

The Nursery children have been concentrating on improving their counting skills since the Easter break. We have been playing plenty of number games and signing some counting songs to help us with this task. All children are now confident at counting from one to twenty. We are also going to start to introduce counting backwards to help improve the confidence and familiarity.

The Nursery children are also incredibly excited about our forthcoming trip to London Zoo! As well as seeing how different animals live and play together, we are also going to use this opportunity to help with our number work. How many animals will we be able to count at the Zoo?

You can watch a short video of the Nursery children playing some counting games above.

The Nursery children have been continuing with their work based all around the class reading book of What the Ladybird Saw. We have been recreating the story by making our own characters and props that we have been finding out about in the tale. This work has also helped us with our maths knowledge, with the Nursery children counting the number of spots on each ladybird.

We have also been holding a number of class discussions all about feelings. We wanted the children to think about what it means to be feeling happy, sad, scared or angry. We spoke about what we could maybe do as good friends if a member of our class was feeling sad.

Plus with the spring weather now hopefully upon us, the Nursery children have been able to play outdoors in our purpose built safe area. We have just purchased a number of new resources and toys for the children. Playing with water is proving to be a popular choice in the Michael Faraday Nursery!

The Nursery children have been continuing with their work based all around the class reading book of What the Ladybird Saw. We have been recreating the story by making our own characters and props. This work has also helped us with our maths knowledge, with the Nursery children counting the number of spots on each ladybird.

We have also been holding a number of class discussions all about feelings. We wanted the children to think about what it means to be feeling happy, sad, scared or angry. We spoke about what we could maybe do as good friends if a member of our class was feeling sad.

Plus with the spring weather now hopefully upon us, the Nursery children have been able to play outdoors in our purpose built safe area. We have just purchased a number of new resources and toys for the children. Playing with water is proving to be a popular choice in the Michael Faraday Nursery!

We are having great fun in the Michael Faraday Nursery reading our new book, What the Ladybird Heard. We have been reading out different parts of the story to the children, and then getting them to recount the main events in the correct sequence. To help us remember the story, the Nursery children have been involved in making many ladybird themed pieces of art. We have created a trail using glue and glitter, as well as producing some giant ladybird pictures. These have helped us with our maths work as we count up the number of spots. Our Nursery role-play area has been turned into a Farm Shop, with many of the other animals in the book also appearing.

The Nursery children have been having great fun with our new class-reading book of The Gruffalo. We have introduced the different characters, and then played many games, all based around the book. This is a wonderful story in which to use role-play to explore how the animals are all feeling. The Nursery children have made masks for all the different characters to help us out with our acting. The story has excited us so much that we are planning our own Nursery Gruffalo Hunt! We will be taking all the children out to nearby Dulwich Woods on 2nd February, to see if we can find the South London Gruffalo. All parents are welcome to join us on this trip.

The animal magic has also continued in the Nursery with a visit from Paul the Python Man! As the name suggests, our friend Paul brought in his wonderful python to help the children learn more about different kinds of animals. We were also able to see a tarantula spider and a lizard. Our work themed around animals and The Gruffalo will continue over future weeks. We will be using animals in our maths work, playing games such as counting the number of spots on a snake.

We have started off the new year in the Michael Faraday Nursery by introducing the children to our special digital camera. This is a model that is designed for Early Years children to experiment with – we have been having tremendous fun in the Nursery doing just that! To help all of the children get back in the routine of the school day and to remember all of our friends following the break, we have been using the camera to take photographs at different stages of the day, as well as pictures of each other.

Our first major topic of the new year will start next week. We are going to be reading The Gruffalo as our main class book. In preparation for this, we have been building a Nursery jungle in one of our resource rooms. As we progress through learning the story, we will be asking the children for some jungle ideas to add to the design. Plenty of role-play will take place in the jungle, so that we can understand how all the different animals in the Gruffalo are feeling.

We are already making grand plans for our Nursery children for when they return to Michael Faraday at the start of the New Year. Our main class-reading book will be The Gruffalo – a fantastic read for children of this age group! We will be exploring the main character in great detail, as well as using the story to help the children learn more about the many animals that we can find in the woods. We are planning on making a trip to nearby Dulwich Woods to go on our own Michael Faraday Gruffalo Hunt! The highlight however is a planned visit to the Nursery from our friend Paul the Python Man. As the name suggests, Paul will hopefully be bringing in one of his snakes so that the children can learn all about this beautiful creature.