Kirkley Nursery& Centre of Excellence

We have had a lovely week enjoying the sunshine in our Owl room. The children have really enjoyed having the water tray out with opportunities for lots of water play. This week we have been continuing to focus on the letter "S" and the sound ssss. We have been working hard at recognising what the letter S looks like by play "I spy the letter S". The children have enjoyed some bear hunt themed arts and crafts such as making the bear cave. The children have also been loving the jumbo sized chalk using them to draw on the pavement.

Over the past few weeks, the Hedgehogs have continued reading and exploring activities based around their core text 'Oh Dear!' It has been lovely watching the Hedgehogs engage with this story, they have all learnt the context so well, identifying what comes next and now being able to name the animals as well as making the sounds! We have been exploring lots of sensory based activities, such as with colourful spaghetti, using the tweezers to pick up the animals to develop our fine motor skills, created our own sensory bags, 'milked' our own cow as well as lots of messy play and also garden play!

The Squirrels have had a great first few weeks back. We have been busy exploring all activities based around the farm. We have had different sensory tuff trays, been discussing where things come from e.g.milk and eggs and have been using pencils to trace our dot to dot pictures. These last few weeks we have seen a big development in the Squirrels role playing. They have been looking after the babies, digging for fossils with 'axes' in the mud and been talking on our train track telephones! We have also been enjoying all of the lovely sunshine. We have been watering our plants, reading books in the sun and developing our gross motor skills on the climbing frame.

We have had a lovely week in the owl room. Our children have been making " long wavy grass" pictures from our bear hunt story. We have been practicing our phonics, focusing on the letter "S" sound. We played " silly soup", and got a giant piece of paper where the children played a drawing game where they had to copy the letter S and point to things that Zoey had drawn beginning with an S. The weather has been lovely so we have had lots of fun playing Hopscotch, incorporating our number recognition and counting skills, and hopping and jumping skills.

We have had a really busy first week back after our Easter holidays. The children in the Owl room have started our new book "we're going on a bear hunt" the children have been retelling the story with our tough tray. During our phonic session this week we introduced the children to the sound "s" the children have taken part in "silly soup" sessions when each child takes out an item from the bag which begins with an s they then have to say what it is with emphasis on the "sssss"sound. We were very fortunate to have been donated an amazing woodwork bench and tools for our role play area, the children have loved exploring this resource pretending to go around fixing things. The children have been practicing their fine motor skills with the pegs and peg boards, making some beautiful patterns with the pegs. We also reopened our grass area and the children were able to use our new slide and climbing apparatus which they were very excited about.

This week we had our Squirrels return after their Easter Break. All of our children have settled back into the nursery routine with ease and we have had a lot of smiles and laughter On Monday we started our new core text ' Oh Dear' and have been exploring activities surrounding the farm and animals who live on the farm. This week the outside environment was extra exciting. The grass has been opened and our new climbing apparatus has been built. The children loved learning how to climb with care and had fun coming down the slide! We have been enjoying the lovely sunshine! Very positive first week of the Summer Term

Welcome back Hedgehogs! We have had a lovely first week after the Easter holidays all together and have started to look at our new core text, 'Oh Dear!' The Hedgehogs have been very creative this week, painting pictures of the animals from the story, completing puzzles, feeding the animals a variety of cereals as well as all of them all being keen to read the book! It has been lovely to see how even after only reading the story for a week, how many of the Hedgehogs have already progressed with their language development and recognising the patterns seen in the story. We are proud of them all everyday!

The Hedgehog's, Squirrels and Owls have had a busy Easter holidays! We were very busy taking part in lots of different activities in the lead up to Easter. We made biscuits, cakes and went on lots of Easter egg hunts outside in the garden! This week we have been outside in the garden enjoying the sunshine! We hope you all had a lovely Easter and we look forward to welcome all the children back on Monday 13th April for the start of the Summer Term