Ducklings 26/27
💎 Gems in the Jar! 💎
In Ducklings, we work together as a team to fill our class reward jar with gems, celebrating all the wonderful choices we make each day! Our Ducklings earn gems by showing our school values: Ready, Respectful, Responsible and Resilient. Once our jar is full, we celebrate with a special treat that we can all enjoy together! 💛
This term, our Ducklings have been working incredibly hard towards their shared goal of enjoying some time on the trim trail! They have shown fantastic teamwork by helping to tidy up, even when they haven't made the mess themselves, listening respectfully to adults and their friends, and taking responsibility for our environment by helping to keep the garden clean and ready for everyone to enjoy.
We are so proud of how our Ducklings have embraced our school values, learnt our routines and developed their understanding of our classroom rules and boundaries. It has been lovely to see them working together, making positive choices and recognising that their actions can make a difference to the whole class.
When we finally filled our jar, we had the BEST time on the trim trail! 🎉 It was a wonderful way to celebrate everyone's efforts and remind the children that working together really does pay off.
Now our jar is empty and ready to be filled again! We can't wait to see our Ducklings continue to shine as we work towards our next special treat together. 🌟
🌿 Outdoor Learning in Ducklings 🌿
Being outdoors is such a special part of our day in Ducklings! 💚 Our garden provides endless opportunities for the children to explore, discover, role-play and learn together. Whether they are climbing, scooting, biking or building, the children are developing their gross motor skills, balance, coordination and physical confidence, while enjoying plenty of fresh air and fun!
Our outdoor environment has been carefully designed to offer safe risk-taking and exciting challenges, encouraging our Ducklings to try new things, develop independence and feel proud of their achievements. Through playing together, the children are also building their communication skills, learning to share, take turns, solve problems and express their ideas.
Most importantly, we want our Ducklings to develop a love of learning, confidence in their abilities and the courage to have a go! Our garden is so much more than a place to play — it is a place to explore, grow, build friendships and make wonderful memories together! 🌱💚
🍞 Toast Fridays in Ducklings! 🍞
Friday mornings are extra special in Ducklings because it’s Toast Friday! After working hard during our big gross motor activity, the children love sitting down together to enjoy some delicious, warm toast. It’s the perfect way to refuel after all that movement! 😊
But Toast Friday is about so much more than a tasty treat! It provides lots of wonderful opportunities for learning and developing important life skills.
The children are building their independence as they learn to manage their own toast, while also developing their fine motor skills and control when using tools safely. We encourage lots of communication too, as the children practise asking for what they would like, answering questions and chatting with their friends.
There are even opportunities to explore early maths! We have fun cutting our toast into different shapes, including squares and triangles, helping us to recognise shapes and develop our mathematical language. 🔺🔲
Toast Friday is a lovely part of our Ducklings routine, bringing together movement, learning, independence and social interaction — all with a little bit of toast and lots of smiles! 💛
🎭 Dressing Up 🎭
In Ducklings, we have been enjoying all things role play! The children have had the best time dressing up as their favourite characters and letting their imaginations run wild. ✨
Dressing up has also provided a wonderful opportunity to develop our independence skills, as the children practise putting on and taking off their clothes, building confidence in doing things for themselves.
We have also been working hard on our sharing and turn-taking skills. Using our words and timers has helped us navigate sharing our favourite outfits, learning to be patient and taking turns with our friends.
It has been lovely to see the children’s imaginations flourish as they develop their independence, communication and social skills through play! 💛
🦴 Funny Bones 🦴
Our Ducklings have really enjoyed exploring our core text, Funny bones! This has been a wonderful story to support our All About Me topic, giving us lots of opportunities to learn about our bodies and discover the different bones that make up our skeletons.
The children had great fun creating their own skeletons and working together on a big art project to build houses for our very own Dark, Dark Town! 🏠🌙
During our group times, we worked together to put a skeleton back together. This was a fantastic opportunity to practise taking turns, communicating with one another and working as a team.
We loved seeing the children’s enthusiasm, creativity and confidence grow as they explored this fun and engaging story! 🦴✨
🍂 Listening Walk 🍂
Our Ducklings enjoyed a lovely listening walk around the school grounds! We took time to stop, listen carefully and talk about the different sounds we could hear around us. The children listened to other children, cars and birds, and had a go at copying the sounds they heard.
We also listened to the wind blowing through the trees and watched as it rustled the leaves. This provided a wonderful opportunity to talk about autumn and the changes we notice in the world around us at this time of year. 🍁
It was a lovely way to develop our listening skills, encourage curiosity about our environment and explore the sights and sounds of the changing season! 🍃
Ducklings’ Gross Motor Fun!
Our Ducklings class had a fantastic time taking part in a gross motor activity on the astro! 🦆
The children enjoyed a range of fun activities to develop their gross motor skills, including throwing balls at a target, navigating an obstacle course, and practising kicking and catching a large ball. These activities helped to develop their coordination, balance and control, while encouraging them to be active and have lots of fun!
This was also our first visit to the astro, and we were so proud of how sensibly the children walked to and from the classroom. They were fantastic at following instructions and showing how to stay safe when moving around our school.
Well done, Ducklings! We are so proud of you all! ⭐
Group Time Fun in Ducklings Nursery! 🔴🔵
We have been enjoying starting our group times in Ducklings Nursery! The children now know whether they are part of the Red Group or the Blue Group, and we have been having lots of fun learning together.
To begin our group sessions, we have been focusing on developing our listening skills through a variety of exciting activities.
👂 Listening Games: We listened carefully to bottles to explore the difference between loud and quiet sounds.
🐻 Listening Bag: We explored our listening bag and used our voices to make different animal sounds, thinking carefully about the sounds each animal makes.
🎵 Musical Fun: We used a range of instruments and practised following simple instructions, such as “stop” and “go”.
🥁 Guess the Instrument: We put our listening skills to the test by guessing which instruments were being played while they were hidden from view!
These activities are helping the children to develop their listening and attention skills, recognise different sounds, and follow simple instructions, all while having lots of fun together.
We look forward to sharing more of our group time adventures with you! 💙❤️
Our Wonderful Families
In Ducklings Nursery Class this week we have been celebrating their families!
The children enjoyed talking about the special people in their lives and sharing who makes up their family. They then got creative and drew beautiful pictures of their family members, carefully thinking about their faces and the people who are important to them.
It was lovely to see their unique ideas and personalities shine through in their artwork. Every family is special, and we are so proud of the children for sharing a little piece of their world with us!
Our First Full week
What a fantastic first full week we have had! We are so proud of all our Ducklings and how well they have settled into nursery. They have picked up our new routines so quickly, and it has been wonderful to see them becoming more confident and comfortable each day.
We have also started our first topic, “All About Me” and have been busy creating our very own self-portraits! The children have all been looking in the mirror and discussing what colour of eyes and hair they have whilst noticing other features too, such as freckles and glasses. We are so very proud of their first artistic masterpieces and look forward to seeing them develop in this area over the school year.
