Life in Early Years

SUMMER TERM 2009

NURSERY

This has been another busy and fun term.  We have done lots of activities around the theme of zoo and jungle animals, including a visit to Twycross Zoo.  The children were invited to adopt an animal and they chose an elephant.  In the role play corner the 'Zoo cafe' was filled with lots of interesting props to help stimulate the children's imagination and language development.  We had chocolate monkey milkshake and made our own healthy pizzas too.  Outside in the garden we planted our own vegetable patch of lettuce, carrots and strawberries. 

Red Group have been reading Dear Zoo and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  We were very lucky to have some of the reception children visit us and act out the story of the hungry caterpillar.

After half-term we welcomed two visitors - a local veterinary nurse who brought a poodle called Izzy and Mr Fear from the Guide Dogs for the Blind who came with a guide dog called Rascal. 

Mya had fun dressing up to look like our visitor and Grace is putting a bandage on our poorly dog (top left).   The children enjoyed stroking Rascal and made a special thank you card for Mr Fear.

Parents were invited to the nursery summer concert based on "The Animals in Noah's Ark".

Here are some of the animals and are three Noahs!

Both Nursery and Reception took part in Sports Day and Reception also swam in the Lower School Swimming Gala.

RECEPTION

Our learning themes this term were 'Growing' and 'Minibeasts'.  We planted a bean and then kept a diary of how it grew from a bean, to a shoot, to a plant.  We made grass heads out of old tights.  Our imaginative play and language development was promoted through our role play garden centre and Jack and the Beanstalk corner.

We studied the lifecycles of frogs and butterflies.  Here we are releasing our butterflies on the lawn:-

The end of term saw a fond farewell to our Form 6 buddies who have kindly visited us throughout the year to play and help us with our work.  We ended the year with a picnic and a quiz.  Here are some of us with our buddies:

As we reach the end of Reception we have also been welcoming the nursery children for a 'taster' session each week to help them familiarise themselves with the next stage in their education.