Every Thursday morning we have a special treat. Mr Gornor takes us to the hall to help us develop out gross motor skills. This week we have been focusing on skills linked to gymnastics such as balancing and rolling. We have lots of fun and are trying really hard to move our bodies in a controlled way. It's one of the best bits of the week!

Recently in maths we have been looking at sorting by shape. We had to look really carefully at different things, such as buttons, to see if we could group them by shape. It didn't matter if they were big, small or medium sized as long as they were the same shape they could be sorted together. 

Quite often in nursery learning happens that we haven’t planned for. Things happen or children make discoveries that we have to explore further straight away. On Friday while we were exploring number shapes at choosing time a big spider walked across the carpet. Lots of us were fascinated (some of us were a little scared too). Mrs Lees found a big transparent box and popped the spider in it so we could have a closer look without it running away. Using the computer we found out that it had 8 legs and 8 eyes. We think it was probably a house spider that had come into nursery to keep warm in the autumn and to find a friend. We learnt that it usually eats flies but if it couldn’t find any it would eat left over food. We tried giving it banana and cereal from our snack table but it wasn’t very keen on eating it. 
After we had finished looking we put to back carefully outside and went to look for some different spiders (some of us looked up the waterspout like in Incy Wincy Spider). We managed to spot (and catch) another spider so talked about what was the same and what was different.  I wonder if you can find any spiders in your house?

After noticing some leaves on the ground outside, we decided to put on our wellies and head into the woodland area to explore. We found lots of different leaves and decided to collect some to bring back into nursery with us. We spoke about how the leaves were now starting to change colour and fall to the ground because it is autumn. The children were super at describing the leaves as 'big' or 'small' and found lots of orange, brown, green and yellow leaves. We even found one red leaf, which was very exciting! We can't wait to see what other changes come in Autumn. 

This week our book of the week is The Leaf Thief by Alice Hemming and Nicola Slater. We will be starting to talk about what happens in Autumn and all the changes we can see.

Perhaps you could start to look at what is changing in your garden or on the walk to school? Can you find any tree treasure like conkers, acorns or pinecones? 

You can read the story on YouTube or ask for it at your local library. 

Each week we learn a new number rhyme as part of our maths learning. Below are all the rhymes we have learnt so far. 

​1,2,3,4,5 Once I caught a Fish Alive
1 Potato, 2 Potato
5 Little Speckled Frogs
5 Little Ducks
​
Why not try singing them at home?

This week we have been looking at matching number shapes using Numicon. We talked about which pieces were the same and how to find a match. We looked carefully at the Numicon jigsaws and tried to find the matching pieces to fix. Some were a bit tricky and we had to spin or flip them to fit!

The little girl below loved it so much she wanted to do all the jigsaws at the same time!

This little boy below wondered what happened to the shapes when you joined lots of the same number shapes together. He found all the 3s that matched to make his own pattern. 

In maths we have been learning about matching and pairs. We know to make a pair we needed to find two things that were the same. In continuous provision time we tried to find pairs of socks and pairs of wellies and put them together. We have read two stories about pairs called Simon Sock and A Pair of Socks. 

In the painting area we tried to paint two socks that same to make our own pairs.

To start our maths learning this year we have been looking at colour. We have been talking about the names of different colours and which are our favourites. We have been sorting by colour in our group times (e.g purple and not purple) and have been exploring colour sorting in continuous provision.

We have looked at two different colour stories called The Colour Monster and Mix It Up. We used this as inspiration to look at colour mixing in the painting area. We loved mixing different colours together to make new ones. 

We even turned our water tray and playdough different colours depending on the colour we were learning about!

At home you can help by talking about all the different colours you can see. How many different shades of the same colour can you find? Perhaps you could watch some episodes of Colourblocks on BBC iplayer to find out about new colours? 

Today the children have been exploring how they can make different sounds outside. We all searched the woodland area to find a stick to use as our 'beater' and explored how we could make music using these. We tried stroking, banging and tapping our beaters on different surfaces outside including the fence, tyres and tunnels. We used our super listening ears and followed instructions to create sounds that were 'loud' and 'quiet' as well as tapping our beaters 'fast' and 'slow', creating different sounds.