Our first focus book of this term was ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’, we have had a variety of sensory activities available linked to this book throughout the last couple of weeks including a bear hunt trail. We had five trays out for the children to explore with their hands and feet, using different textures and materials. As we went through each tray we recalled the story, the children could tell us what each tray felt like using words such as ‘cold’, ‘bumpy’ and ‘prickly’. 

Thursday 5th March was world book day, the children came in dressed as their favourite book characters. Year 3 came across during the afternoon to read too cygnets and to share stories with us. 

We have settled some new children to cygnets this term, we have been talking about how we felt when we started nursery. We set up a tuff tray all about different feelings to help us talk about them, some of our older children remembered how they first felt when they started. 
In our creative area, we have been exploring mixing and making potions, we built on our hand eye coordination pouring from cup to cup and talking about what we were adding a pinch of this and a drop of this and a sprinkle of that. 

This term we have been looking at Autumn alongside our theme which is ‘celebrations’. Earlier in the term we went on an Autumnal nature walk around school where we collected lots of different coloured leaves, sticks and pine cones. We also had lots of fun playing in the leaves and listening to the sound the leaves made when we walked through them, they went ‘crunch’,crunch’. 
We have been looking at birthdays and birthday parties, the children could recall their own past experiences from their birthdays by telling us what presents they received and any themed parties they had with their friends and family. We had a go at making Rice Krispie cakes, the children followed simple instructions to create these listening carefully to each one. Following on from this we investigated our own cake smash, using our hands and other senses such as smell we broke up the cake and explored the textures of the cake and icing. Some children preferred to use spoons to break up the cake rather than their hands. 

Recently in cygnets we have been focusing on naming our body parts to link in with our marvellous me topic, to help us we have been looking at a book called Eyes, Nose, Bellies and toes. This book has helped us to confidently name our body parts and what each part can do such as bending, moving and stretching. Using our hands and feet we explored mark making using paint, we created our hands and footprints in a variety of different colours. 
We expanded our home corner area into a doctors role play for the children they have enjoyed using the body part names they have learnt, in their play when taking on the role of a doctor or nurse. 

Welcome to Foundation!

We have started our topic 'Marvellous Me!' across Early Years, we have been looking at our faces and the different features which we have that make each of us UNIQUE. We then tried to paint or draw our faces in a variety of ways. Our Cygnets (2-3) have tried to build their faces using paper plates to help with the shape. Our Ducklings (3-4) have tried to paint the different features using a variety of different shapes, sizes and colours. Our Foundation (Robins and Kingfishers) used mirrors to look our faces and draw the different features using pencil. We think they look FANTASTIC, Well done Early Years!