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Northfield Avenue, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB4 2HU

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King's Hedges Educational Federation

Excellence, achieved through care, creativity and challenge.

King's Hedges Educational Federation

Excellence, achieved through care, creativity and challenge.

Nursery Work

Roots and shoots

There has been a lot to learn about ‘roots and shoots’ so we covered this theme for two weeks.

One of our adult led activities was to create shapes with dried beans and seeds. We drew around a 2D shape then used glue to stick the beans and seeds along the edges. It was quite tricky to follow the line but we tried really hard!

The children liked exploring in the soil, before half term we scattered some beans and seeds, sprinkled some water in the tray and put the lid on top. When we returned after the week off the children were delighted to see the shoots poking out! They then dug and planted the plants into pots.

We were very lucky to have the year 5 children come into nursery to help us plant a sunflower seed. The older children talked us through what we needed to do; put soil in the pot, make a hole, plant the seed, cover and water. We are now checking daily to see if our sunflowers are growing!

Our theme book was ‘Jack and the beanstalk’ the children liked joining in with the story and repeating the giants words “fi fi fo fum, I smell a child” We sequenced the story using pages of the book, talking through what happened at the beginning, middle and end.

We know that it takes time for a shoot to emerge from a seed. Flowers and plants need soil, water and sunlight to help them grow. If we pick flowers they will soon die as the roots are important to soak up the water.

Zoo clues

This week we have had lots of fun learning about zoo animals!

We have learnt the difference between zoo and farm animals, understanding that zoo animals are wild animals and farm animals give us produce.

The children liked exploring the different animal prints and patterns, recreating their own in the art lab with paint.

We had fun using the dressing up costumes and role-play masks where the children could use their imagination and pretend to be various zoo animals.

Our adult led activities this week consisted of moving like an animal, making a pair of binoculars and guessing what animal they have seen (depending on the picture clues) and decorating a biscuit like a tiger using orange and black icing!

Highlighting heritage

We have covered this theme for two weeks as there was a lot to learn! During the two weeks we have learnt about different countries and cultures, flags from around the world, we also practised saying “hello” in different languages.

It was great fun listening to music from around the world and even had a go joining in with traditional dance moves such as Bollywood, Irish, Bulgarian, Jamaican and Polish dancing.

We talked about our families and heritage. We have learnt that we all belong to different families and have different cultures, beliefs and celebrations.

Hannah came in and showed us some henna; she drew designs and patterns on paper with it and explained that it is used to decorate hands or feet for a special occasion such as a wedding. For one of our adult led activities we had a go at creating our very own henna designs!

Children were invited to come to nursery dressed in their traditional clothing, they were very proud to show the class their clothes. We were lucky enough to have Aryon’s mum come in and talk about her beautiful clothes.

To finish the two weeks of our Highlighting heritage theme we celebrated together with an ‘international party!’ where children brought in traditional foods to share.

Swing into spring

This is our first week back after Easter and we have welcomed some new children into the classroom!

All children have settled in well and taken to the routine of nursery.

This week we have continued our learning about spring.

We enjoyed the activities and especially liked exploring outside where we looked for signs of spring. We found beautiful blossom on the trees, flowers, dandelion puffs and even a little egg shell that had fallen out of a nest in a tree!

The children enjoyed making their observational drawings of flowers, carefully looking at the colours and parts of the flowers as well as playing ‘I spy’ with spring objects.

Easter/Spring

This week we have been learning about Easter and spring.

Spring is a season and time of year.

We have learnt a lot of baby animals are born in the spring and matched the animals to their young.

We created an Easter egg using a technique called pom pom painting; we used a peg to hold a pom pom and dipped it into the different paints, we tried to make a repeating pattern using the colours.

It was fun having an Easter egg hunt outside, we estimated, counted and compared the amount of eggs we found and even won a chocolate lolly!

Another activity was to make an Easter headband. We used Easter stamps with pastel coloured paint.

Stay safe PANTS rule

This week our topic has been pants safety. We focused on why we wear pants and how our pants are private!

We used the NSPCC guidelines and discussed the correct terminology for our private parts and how our body belongs to us, so if anybody asks to see your pants or private parts you say ‘no!’ and tell someone that you trust!

Our activities this week have included making our own aliens using card and shapes, decorating underwear templates and using chocolate to put pants on a gingerbread man!

Our role-play area was a ‘pants shop’ with our theme book being ‘Aliens love underpants’

Stay safe – PANTS rule

This week our topic has been pants safety. We focused on why we wear pants and how our pants are private! We used the NSPCC guidelines and discussed the correct terminology for our private parts and how our body belongs to us, so if anybody asks to see your pants or private parts you say ‘no’ and tell someone you trust! Our activities this week have included making our own aliens using card and shapes, decorating underwear templates and using chocolate to put pants on a gingerbread man! Our role-play area was a ‘pants shop’ with our theme book being ‘Aliens love underpants’. 

 

People who help us

This week we learnt all about people who help us.

We had a visit from a nurse who we were able to ask lots of questions, she also brought in some of the equipment she uses when treating her patients. 

We know what to do in an emergency – we dial 999 and ask for help.

Different occupations help us with different things; firefighters put fires out, police officers keep us safe and stop crime, lollypop people help us to cross the road safely, teachers help us with our learning and paramedics give medical help and transport people to hospital. 

We enjoyed making a fire engine using 2D shapes; we watched the adult and followed the instructions carefully making sure we created the correct structure. 

Some of the children helped to make fire engines out of large boxes, they painted the boxes red and then helped to paint the features such as lights and a ladder, they enjoyed playing in the boxes with a steering wheel, hoses and wearing a firefighters helmet. 

Book Week

Thursday 7th March was world book day. We celebrated this all week by exploring a wide variety of books. We held a ‘shared parents session’ where parents/carers could come in and spend time with their child, looking at and talking about the books they read.

Children brought in thier favourite book from home to share with the class, we had a lot of books to read during the Nursery sessions!

The children did a ‘show and tell’ where they talked about their favourite book, the charcaters and the setting of their chosen story.

 We were busy making bookmarks this week, we decorated them with sequins, felt-tip pens, sticky shapes and tissue paper.

 The year six children came to Nursery and read to the children! It was lovely, all of the children sat and listened beautifully.

 On Friday the whole school took part in a pajama day to celebrate bed time stories!

Pet Parade

This was a great week for learning about and exploring the animlas! We were lucky enough to have a variety of animals visit us throughout the week.

The teachers and Lion Learners brought their pets in for us to see, this included dogs, budgies, a snake, a tortoise, rabbits, a bearded dragon, guinea pigs and a scorpion that glowed under the uv light! 

It was great being able to hold and stroke the different animlas. We asked questions and discussed our favourite pets with the class. 

Our adult led activities this week included making our choice of paper ‘plate pets’ and baking cheese straw snakes.

Ways to say I love you

This week we talked about the people that we love; we all have a family and friends that we love. 

There are many different ways to show and tell someone that we love them. 

Hearts are a symbol and sign that show we love somebody; we created beautiful pictures using wax crayons and watercolours.

We decorated heart shaped cards with a variety of materials and felt tip pens.

Our adult led activities included recording a video message on the Ipad, making a symmetrical heart and baking shortbread biscuits. 

We were lucky enough to be outside when an aeroplane flew over and made a love heart in the sky!

Where we live

Our theme book was ‘The Three Little Pigs’ 

We learnt about the different materials the pigs used to build their houses, and even had a go at buliding with them ourselves – we soon realised the straw and the sticks were not a good idea as they easily fell down. 

Another activity was role playing using the ‘little pig’ and ‘big bad wolf’ headbands – we tried to blow the brick houses down but couldn’t, it was too strong as there is cement holding the bricks together! 

We desinged front doors by colouring and writing numerals on them, linking it to our own door number. 

There were pictures around the classroom of local shops and parks, the children looked at these and told us if they recognised or had been there.

Art and Artists

This was such a fantastic theme and the children loved exploring, mixing and experimenting with colours! 

Firstly we took a walk along the corridoors and looked at all of the beautiful art we could see in the school. It was lovely to discuss and talk about our favorite canvas’ and pieces of art. We learnt there are many types of art, such as portraits, landscape, pencil drawings and our overall favourite – abstract. 

We focused on Kandinskys famous painting ‘Circles’ and had a go at making our own abstract art using a variety of materials. 

We drew our own rainbows using coloured chalk and also used collage materials to create a large rainbow! 

 Winter Wonders  

Our topic book for this theme was ‘Stickman’ we enjoyed listening to this story and is one of our favourites! 

One of our activities was to make our very own stickman. We collected sticks from the forest and put googly eyes and a scarf on him.

We then used him to role-play and repeated some of the familiar phrases from the story such as “I’m Stickmn, I’m Stickman, I’m Stickman that’s me!” and “I want to go home to my family tree” 

We also painted with sticks, played the Snowman game where we rolled the dice and drew that amount of buttons on the Snowman and designed our own pair of mittens; we learnt that the two mittens had to match and have the same colours and patterns. 

Another activity was looking at and feeling the ice, we helped to put some water in the freezer one day and the next day it was frozen! It had changed from a liquid to a solid! It was really hard and cold. 

Making music 

This was a very loud and noisy week!

We enjoyed exploring all of the various musical instruments – our favourite instruments were the large cymbal and the xylophone! 

We learnt that different instruments make different sounds and are played in different ways; such as hitting, tapping, blowing or banging. We can play some instruments loudly or quietly and fast or slow, this is called a beat or tempo. 

We listened to the music and moved our bodies to the rhythm. We waved our ribbons and listend to the beat. 

We also made shakers; we filled a pot with different materials of our choice, for example, dried rice, lentils, beads, oats and stones and sealed a lid on top. We discovered that some of our shakers sounded different to our friends ones.