JBnursery

Happy New Year!

2012-01-14T07:14:00.000-08:00

Welcome back and Happy New Year! We've had a great start to the year and welcomed some new members to our Nursery. We've also got a new climbing frame for our garden. This has been very popular with the children.

We began our new topic of 'Stories and Rhymes' by reading stories by the author, Pat Hutchins. Our favourite was 'Titch'. We found out that Titch was small, but will grow as he gets older. We created a large collage of Titch by using a range of materials and lots of glue!

We wanted to find out if we were 'taller' or 'shorter' than Titch, so we all measured ourselves. We found out who was the tallest and shortest in our Nursery.

We also used bears to identify different sizes.

We also read 'Rosie's Walk' by the same author. We hunted around the Nursery to find resources to recreate the setting of the story and used this to retell Rosie's walk. We used the book to remind us of the story and took it in turns to take the role of the characters.

Pat Hutchins also wrote 'Changes'. We used this book to help us create models for our own stories.

We are going to enjoy our topic this term. We can't wait for next week!

What an end to the term!

2011-12-17T06:18:00.000-08:00

Christmas celebrations started in the Nursery. The celebrations began with the Foundation Stage Nativity.

Following our successful Nativity, Whoops-a-Daisy Angel, we held a Christmas party for the children.

We had fun with the parachute, learning to share and co-operate together.

Back inside our warm classroom we found that our children were great dancers. We danced away to our favourite Christmas songs. We learnt how to play 'Musical Statues' and lots of prizes were won. One of our favourite games was 'Pass the Parcel'.

After all that dancing we were ready to eat the party food that was kindly brought in by the children. We even got to wear our party hats that we made the day before.

A great end to the term.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
We look forward to seeing you back in the Nursery on Thursday, 5th January 2012.

Superhero Day!

2011-12-17T04:14:00.001-08:00

What a fantastic day we had, dressed as our favourite Superhero!

We spent the whole day engaged in 'Superhero activities' with the Reception classes. In the Nursery classroom the children were able to print out Superhero logos using the screen printing kit.

We could write secret messages to our Superhero friends and build Superhero cities.

The children also enjoyed visiting the Reception classes for more Superhero activities. Supergirl, Mrs Grainger, was busy helping little Superheroes make themselves a Superhero mask.

Mrs Incredible, Miss Stockwell, helped the children create their very own Superhero puppet.

We finished the day by raising over £100 with our Superhero-Dance-a-thon.

Well done, Superheroes!

A sneak preview!

2011-11-27T06:18:00.000-08:00

Our topic of Celebrations has been continuing over the last 2 weeks. We made our very own 'thumb print' poppy for Remembrance Day, painted blue pictures for Anti-Bullying Week, celebrated our class puppet's birthday and have been busy preparing for our Nativity performance. We have been learning songs and dances and trying on our costumes. We hope you can come to see us perform. The dates of the performances are:

Morning Nursery - Thursday, 8th December at 9:30 am
Afternoon Nursery - Monday, 5th December at 2:45 pm

Both performances will take place in the hall.

As a special treat you can have a sneak preview of the children rehearsing.

To finish our topic of Celebrations we will be having a party on Wednesday, 14th December with food, drink, dancing and games!

Off with a bang!

2011-11-06T09:25:00.000-08:00

The second half of term started off with a bang! The children in Nursery began our topic of Celebrations with Bonfire Night and Diwali. As we weren't allowed to have fireworks we decided to make our own. They look great hanging high in our room.

The children helped to change our role play area into a Hindu home, complete with traditional clothes to dress in.

Mrs V. told us the story of Diwali, about Rama and Sita, and we sang a rhyme to help us remember the story:

Little Lamps (to the tune of London Bridge is Falling Down)

Little lamps are burning bright, burning bright, burning bright.
Little lamps are burning bright.
It's Diwali.

We finished the week with a party. The children danced to Bollywood music and enjoyed a buffet. We love Celebrations!

Y1 Visit to Valentines Mansion

2011-10-13T00:47:00.000-07:00

Y1 classes travelled by bus to Valentines Mansion.

It is over one humdred years old!!

The children enjoyed looking at the old rooms and artifacts. There was even opportunities to dress up!!

Welcome to the Nursery!

2011-10-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to welcome new children to our Nursery. All the children have been busy exploring their new surroundings. We've been learning to make new friends, share our toys and games and gain independence. We have lots of exciting things planned for the children. So keep checking our Blog to see what we have been doing!

Thank you for coming to our Nursery Sports Day!

2011-07-17T11:50:00.000-07:00

We hope that you enjoyed the nursery sports day as much as we did. The children were fantastic and it was a real pleasure to see them taking part so confidently. We are very proud of each and every one of them.

A huge thank you must go to our Year 5 children. They were excellent team leaders who did exactly as they were asked to do. They were sensible, polite and supportive and led the children extremely well. It's occasions like this that make John Bramston a very special place to be. It was wondeful to see our older children taking such good care of our youngest learners. Well done.

Life cycle of a butterfly

2011-07-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

Not so long ago a little pot of tiny caterpillars arrived in our nursery. Attached was a little note telling us how to look after them.

Each tiny caterpillar had to be put into its own little pot called a vial. Mrs. Coppin had fun and games doing this as they all tried to escape. Once they were in their own little vial, the caterpillars ate and ate and ate. Each day they got bigger and bigger and bigger.

One day we had a surprise as the caterpillars had crawled to the top of the vial and were hanging from the lid. They were beginning to change shape and looked very different. Mrs. Coppin said that they were now chrysalides. We had to very carefully attach all the chrysalides to the inside of a big cage made of netting. For a long time each one just hung there, very still and nothing seemed to be happening. Then, last Thursday some of the chrysalides started to move. We were absolutely fascinated as out of each one came a beautiful butterfly. We gave the butterflies some apple, an old banana and some sugar water and watched them feed.

It was a very hot day on Friday and we decided that the butterflies would be far happier if we set them free in the nursery garden. We watched them fly away and hoped that they would meet up with other butterflies so that the whole cycle could start again.

Down on the Farm

2011-06-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

We've had a lot of fun learning about different types of farms. We found out lots of interesting things about farm machinery and we certainly enjoyed watching the 'Little Red Tractor' stories. We've all had great fun playing with the toy farm inside the nursery and outside in the garden too. Lots of us wanted to help make a big farm picture and we worked very hard to make it look really special. We enjoyed doing this so much that we've decided to turn our reading corner into a barn. Watch this space to see how we get on!

Over the next few weeks we're going to be learning more about the animals that live and work on the farm.

Apples and Pears - Peas and Carrots!

2011-05-23T12:26:00.000-07:00

What a busy time we’ve had recently! Since returning from the half term holiday most of our learning has been linked to our topic about farms. The children have enjoyed learning about farm machinery and growing crops. We have learnt the names of lots of fruits and vegetables, used lots of new words to describe them and explored the insides of different fruits and vegetables! We very much enjoyed helping to wash, peel and chop lots of fruits and thoroughly enjoyed eating a delicious fruit salad.

We shelled lots of peas, scraped lots of carrots and scrubbed celery. We chopped up cabbage, washed lettuce and sliced cucumber. Jamie Oliver would have been proud of us. We tasted lots of different vegetables to find out which vegetable was the most popular vegetable in our nursery. Carrots!

We really enjoyed making a farm shop in the nursery and have been using our imaginative play skills very creatively! The farm shop assistant has been busy sorting, weighing and selling the fruits and vegetables. The customers have been busy choosing and buying only the very best fruits and vegetables and the farm shop delivery person has been busy collecting fruits and vegetables from all around the nursery and the nursery garden to restock the shelves! You won’t need too many guesses as to who gets the role of the farm shop delivery person! (Or persons as all staff members can be seen bobbing up and down collecting a range of abandoned fruits and vegetables.)

After the half term holiday we hope to create a digging patch in the garden so that we can grow our own vegetables. If you would like to help with this please come and talk to us.

We know how to celebrate in our Early Years Foundation Stage!

2011-05-01T03:00:00.000-07:00

The Royal Wedding

The nursery children celebrated the ‘Royal Wedding’ in style with the reception children as part of the school’s heritage week celebrations. The children were very interested when learning about our Royal family and were able to link their own knowledge and experience of family weddings to the Royal Wedding.

Inside the nursery we built a castle, decorated it with flags and installed a throne! The children have enjoyed being a king, queen, prince or princess and the nursery staff have enjoyed being the servants! (No change there!)
We found lots of red, white and blue resources to use around the nursery so it all looked very regal. We made crowns, designed a commemorative plate and painted portraits of kings and queens.

However, the best bit was our ‘Royal Garden Party’ where we had some traditional games for the children to explore. The children had great fun when attempting to splat the rat, pin the tail on the donkey, knock a coconut off its stand and get the hoop over the peg when playing hoopla! They all had a lucky dip in the ‘Royal Lucky Dip’ bran tub!

Lots of children dressed up as a king, queen, prince or princess. The traditional tea party was a huge success. Staff served cucumber sandwiches, jam tarts, Victoria sponge cake, angel cake, scones, tea cakes, and jelly. All washed down with a delicious cup of English tea!

On behalf of the children I would like to say a big ‘thank you’ to all the Early Years Foundation Staff who worked so hard to make our Royal Wedding celebrations a huge success.

Now, come on Prince Harry we want to have another Royal Garden party!

Look what we've been learning about!

2011-03-27T10:16:00.000-07:00

Over the last two weeks we have been very busy learning about plants. We looked closely at lots of different seeds and noticed that some are very small and some are very big! We also looked at the shape and colour of the seeds. We found out that a seed needs some soil or compost, some water and a nice place where there is lots of light to help it grow.

One of our favourite stories has been ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’. So, we decided to plant some grass seeds to make two meadows for the three toy goats that we have in the nursery. We found two flat trays and some compost. We carefully filled the trays with compost, sprinkled the seeds on top and used a watering can to make the compost damp. Each day, we looked at the seeds! Then, sure enough the grass seeds began to grow.

Mrs Coppin said, ‘Now you have to build a bridge for the goats to cross over and for the troll to live under!’

We said ‘No problem. We just love a challenge.’

We had so much fun acting out the story using the two 'meadows' and the bridges that we made.

We also enjoyed the story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. We planted a bean seed and carefully carried it home so that, with our families, we could watch our bean seed grow.

We also planted some cress seeds but not many of us fancied eating a cress sandwich!

We just love learning together in the Nursery Garden!

2011-03-20T04:32:00.000-07:00

This week we have really enjoyed learning together in the nursery garden. We looked for signs of spring and found some dafodils growing in the garden and noticed that buds are appearing on the branches of the trees. The grass is growing and it is not so muddy!

We very much enjoyed exploring the wooden climbing frame and were very good at waiting for a turn.

Watch this space for some fantastic learning all about the 'Three Billy Goats Gruff'!

Imaginative play in the nursery garden!

2011-03-13T13:37:00.001-07:00

Hope you enjoy looking at these photographs as much as I did taking them!

Thank you for a wonderful Mums, Grandmothers and Aunties Day. It was fantastic!

2011-02-21T10:59:00.000-08:00

On Friday 18th February we welcomed the Mums, Grandmothers, Aunties - in fact to sum it up, all the family ladies - into our Nursery to see some of the exciting things that their little ones do whilst they are with us and to enjoy some messy play! We know that all children just love showing their Mums, Grandmothers etc. what they can do and it turned out to be a wonderful opportnity for them to see for themselves.

It was an absolutely fantastic day and we cannot thank all the Mums, Grandmothers and Aunties enough for coming! It was wonderful to see you all playing together and enjoying time with your child.

Our nursery sessions are always filled with fun filled activities that develop the early skills and concepts and lay the foundations for future learning.

You are very welcome to visit us in the nursery and to‘Stay and Play’any day!

Hope to see you soon!

May I take this opportunity to say thank you to our staff members, Mrs. Murcutt, Miss Harris, Mrs. Theodorou, and to our fantastic students, Mrs. Grainger and Natalie, for working so hard on the last day of a very busy half term.
Your support is very much appreciated!

We loved finding out about Chinese New Year!

2011-02-13T07:38:00.000-08:00

Last week, part of our learning was finding out about Chinese New Year. We enjoyed learning about how it is celebrated. We particularly liked tasting noodles, rice and vegetables with sweet and sour sauce! We learnt that this year it is the year of the rabbit. We loved watching the dragon dance on the interactive whiteboard and made our own dragon masks to take home.

We listened to a story about some children who made a dragon like the one that we had seen on the interactive whiteboard. We then decided that we’d like to do that too! So, Korana helped us to make a big dragon head and Mrs. Murcutt found a large piece of fabric to make a dragon’s body. We learnt a song about a dragon, added some instruments and then took it in turns to make our dragon dance around the nursery! Have a look at the short film clips to see us in action!

We just loved our treasure boxes!!!

2011-02-03T13:56:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday, we had a very special visitor. Ann Barratt, the children's librarian, from Hainault Library came to visit us in the Nursery. She told us all about the library. We listened carefully and then we all said that we would like to join the library so that we could borrow lots of books to read at home!
Ann read us some stories and then she showed us a 'treasure box'. It was all very exciting. Inside the box there were some books, some colouring pencils, a drawing book and some information about the library.
At the end of a very special nursery session we all proudly carried our treasure box home.
We would all like to say a big thank you to Ann for telling us about the library, reading some stories and especially for our treasure boxes!

Welcome back to the nursery!

2011-01-16T08:31:00.000-08:00

Welcome back! Hope you had a super holiday and enjoyed a lovely time together.
Thank you for all the wonderful Christmas gifts that were so gratefully received by all our nursery staff members. Your thoughtfulness, generosity and kindness were very much appreciated. Thank you.
We have a fantastic half term planned, with some wonderful learning experiences for the children to enjoy. We just cannot wait to get started!

We had a special visitor in the nursery called the 'Imaginative Play Fairy'. She waved her magic wand and turned our home corner into 'John Bramston Corner Shop'. With a little help, the children have worked hard at taking turns to be the shop assistant who operates the till!!! They have all enjoyed being customers and filling up their shopping baskets and bags but I don't think we have many budding shelf stackers! Excuse me while I just go and tidy up aisle 2!

This term, most of our learning will be linked with our main theme which is ‘Traditional Stories and Rhymes’. Children love listening to stories and traditional tales such as ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ are always very popular! Our focus stories include; Little Red Riding Hood, The Town and the Country Mouse, The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Gingerbread Man, Hansel and Gretel and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Each story will support children’s learning by providing a meaningful focus which links all areas of learning. Activities that develop mathematical language and understanding will include looking at variations of size, making a bed cover for each of the three bears, making a house (and furniture) for a mouse, investigating shoe sizes. The children will be ordering items by weight, capacity, length and height. They will solve practical problems such as, How many food items will fit into the basket that Red Riding Hood takes to Grandma? They will also use various materials to dress a mouse!
Learning and using positional language will be vital when designing and making a house for the town and the country mice and knowledge of positional and directional language will undoubtedly be of great importance when helping Hansel and Gretel to find their way home!
The children will be making links with their own experiences and sharing these to support their learning and the learning of others. We will be finding out where our grandparents live and exploring the different ways of travelling to see them. We’ll be investigating breakfast cereals and making porridge. We’ll be thinking about people who work at night - what jobs do they do? We’ll investigate and compare daytime and night time and create a dark area where the children can explore the absence of light. (Linked with the Elves and the Shoemaker.) We’ll be finding out about rivers and explore ways to help the Gingerbread Man cross the river without getting eaten by the fox!
Our imaginative play area will be magically turned into a shop! Initially it will be a general ‘corner’ store that sells most things. Then, all going well - if we can get enough shoes, it may change into a shoe shop! We will be learning about the role of the shop assistant and customer and developing our ability to share and take turns! We’ll also look at coins, paper money and bank debit/credit cards!
We also plan to decorate our home corner to link with the celebration - Chinese New Year. If time, after what looks like a very busy half term, we’ll turn our home corner into the witch’s house - hee hee!

We’ve already enjoyed the story ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and lots of activities linked with the story. The children have tasted porridge, ordered the bears by size, matched the bowls to the bears, painted a picture of a teddy bear and tasted other breakfast cereals to help baby bear find an alternative to porridge every day!

Ask your child to tell you the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’, share the book together (We have a copy if you would like to borrow it.) or watch the story together using the following link. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS3nN6PH96Y)

Just a glimpse at our Nativity - hopefully more to follow!

2010-12-09T13:27:00.000-08:00

Oh! What fun we had when the dads, grandads, uncles, brothers, mums and friends came to play!

2010-11-28T08:58:00.000-08:00

We all had a wonderful time on Friday and we hope you did too. It was fantastic to see so many dads, grandads, uncles, brothers, other male family friends and some mums too! It was very rewarding for us watching the children showing you what they know and how they develop their learning through play experiences. It was so uplifting to listen to the conversations that you were enjoying together. Thank you!

Children benefit greatly from opportunities where they can show you and share with you some of the things that they enjoy doing at nursery. They will all have fond memories of the day that you came into the nursery and from this shared experience they will know that you value their learning.

We will be having another day in February when the mums, grandmothers, aunties, big sisters will be invited to engage in some really messy play! We don’t mind if a few dads want to come along too!
Hope you enjoy looking at the photographs.

John Bramston Nursery - No job is too small for our construction engineers!

2010-11-21T01:34:00.000-08:00

If you need any construction work or building work undertaken just contact John Bramston Nursery! The children have really enjoyed working as construction engineers and building site workers. We have really enjoyed watching how they have approached their building and model making. It is wonderful to see them sharing their ideas and experiences and learning from each other.

Please don’t forget our Dads Day this Friday 26th November.

On Friday 26th November 2010 we would like to invite all the Dads, Step-Dads, Grandads, Uncles into the Nursery to see some of the exciting things that your little one does whilst he/she is with us. All children just love showing their Dads, Grandads etc. what they do so it will be a wonderful opportunity for you to see for yourselves. It will also provide an opportunity for you to have some fun with your child, meet other male family members and to enjoy a little challenge together!

Please talk to the nursery staff for more information about this exciting day!

It’s been very busy in the nursery since we all returned from the half term holiday!

2010-11-14T03:24:00.000-08:00

Before the end of the first half term, the children expressed an interest in having a hospital in the nursery. We waved our magic wand and ‘hey presto’ a hospital appeared just where our home corner had been. Thank you to Mrs. Murcutt, Miss Harris and Mrs. Theodorou for helping to set this up (and for keeping it tidy). What a fantastic amount of learning has already been gained from our hospital. So far, I’ve had a tonsillectomy, treatment for high blood pressure and a bad heart. I’ve had my ears checked, my eyes checked, my reflexes tested and been told that I have very old skin and need to stay in bed. (Just wish I could!)

Blue week was fantastic! The children enjoyed eating toast spread, by themselves, with blueberry jam. They explored blue playdough, blue water and found lots of blue resources in the sand tray. Harry Thomas Stevens (afternoon nursery) shared his favourite story with us called ‘Big Blue Monster’ by Thomas Docherty. This is how the story begins! On top of a mountain not very far from here, there once lived a big scary monster. This monster was bigger and scarier than any other creature – and he knew it. All the other little creatures that lived on the mountain spent their days playing happily together among the small rocks and small plants. But suddenly, when they least expected it, something disturbed the peace.....Ask your child what this was!

We have made a ‘Big Scary Monster’ display in the nursery. Don’t forget to have a look! This book has really supported the children’s learning so thank you Harry for brinnging it in to share with us. The story has helped with understanding and using positional language such as top, bottom, up, down, below, above, next to, behind and in front. It has supported our creative work and imaginative play.

We will also be using this story when we think about being a good, kind and caring friend during anti-bullying week. (Week beginning 15th November.)In the middle of the story the Big Scary Monster felt so alone that he sat down and started to cry. Then something happened... At the end of the story everyone became friends and played happily together.

And there's more ....We have also helped Mr. Jackson to plant some onions and daffodils. (No, it’s not Michael Jackson- it's Mr. Jackson. I can hear your sighs of relief! Mr. Jackson is our school gardener and although I’m sure he would entertain us, if we asked him, with a song and dance routine he’s probably much happier looking after our school gardens, allotment and grounds.) Thank you Mr. Jackson for letting us help you and for your help with our learning.

Hope you enjoy looking at the photographs.

We hope you enjoyed listening to our Nursery Songs!

2010-10-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

Thank you for coming to listen to our nursery rhymes and songs. We hope you enjoyed sharing this special time with the children as much as we did! It takes a lot of confidence and trust to sing in front of an audience. We were very proud of the children who were absolutely fantastic. We plan to have a little 'concert' at the end of each half term and look forward to seeing you there.

Hope you enjoy listening to a little bit of the afternoon performance.

Orange week was .....very orange!

2010-10-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

Last week was 'Orange Week' and what a messy week it was too! We absolutely loved painting one of our hands yellow and the other one red and then rubbing them together to make orange! Later in the week, after discovering that we didn't have any orange paint, we remembered how to use red and yellow paint to mix our own orange paint to paint an orange fish.
Mrs. Murcutt helped us to make and decorate an orange bag so that we could carry an orange safely home to eat with our families. We played with orange water and squeezed oranges to make orange juice - which was delicious! Hope you enjoy looking at the pictures! Keep looking at our Blog because we're hoping to post part of our 'Nursery Songs' concert right here soon!

We know all about the colour yellow!

2010-10-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

We had such a lovely time last week learning about the colour yellow. We tasted lots of yellow foods such as cheese, melon and pineapple. We squeezed lemons to make lemonade and enjoyed big bowls full of bananas and custard! We looked closely at yellow flowers called chrysanthemums and painted some fantastic pictures. On Friday we made a yellow badge to wear on the way home.

Oh! What fun we had on Red Day!

2010-10-09T06:53:00.000-07:00

Last week, along with lots of other things, we were learning about the colour red. On Friday we had a 'Red Day'. We all came to the nursery wearing something red and everything inside the nursery was red! (Well as much as possible!) We iced biscuits and put a red cherry on top, we explored red jelly, we made red hats using red glue and got very red playing in red water! We enjoyed the story about the Little Red Hen and even got to wear our hats on the way home. Next week, on Friday, we're going to have a Yellow Day!

Oh! What big ears you have!

2010-10-03T03:27:00.000-07:00

Yes, but all the better to listen with! We have been learning how to be a good listener so we made some big listening ears to help. We've had great fun wearing them and learning about good listening which is important when you are learning lots of new things.

We all played a game in the nursery where we had to listen to lots of different everyday sounds. We were brilliant - especially when we were wearing our listening ears!

Next week we are going out into the school grounds for a listening walk. I wonder what we'll hear!

Here we are!!!!

2010-09-19T04:43:00.000-07:00

It is lovely to see everyone again. As you can see, the children are really happy to be back and have been chatting enthusiastically about their summer time adventures.
It has been a real pleasure to watch them helping their new friends to settle into our nursery. They have been busy showing the new children where to wash their hands, how to tidy up, how to sit on the carpet and even helping them to put on aprons!
We are very proud of them. Well done!
So, may we take this opportunity to warmly welcome our new children and their families. Lucy, Mithun, Hafsah, Beyonce, Raees, Aman, George, Jaymie-Leigh,Jada-Renee, Matt, Harry, Niko, Anthony, Cameron, Vanessa and Ayden have joined our morning nursery and Courtney, Harry, Mia, Abel, Deeviya, Elizabeth, Zahra, Joshua, Jameal, Ra’Kanye, Shrayce, Simone and Kashif have joined our afternoon nursery. We hope they all enjoy every minute of their time with us.

Welcome back to our nursery!

2010-09-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

Phew! What a busy week we've all had in the nursery.... but what's missing? Have a look at the photographs. Can you work out what's missing? Yes! The children!
Mrs. Murcutt, Miss Harris, Ms. Creasey and I have all been busy getting the nursery ready and I must say it is looking pretty good! In fact it's looking fantastic - so thank you to Mrs. Murcutt, Miss Harris and Ms. Creasey for your hard work.(I promise not to have too many more adventurous ideas - well at least for a couple of weeks.)

We just can't wait now to open our nursery door on Monday to welcome some of our children and their families back from last year and lots of new children and their families who are joining us this year. We had a lovely time meeting our new families in their homes - thank you for making us feel so welcome.

We also have two new friends Daisy and Tom, who are just as excited as me, waiting to enjoy lots of new things together.

See you soon.

Mrs. Coppin

Hooray!!! It didn't rain on our Sports Day!!!

2010-07-18T03:57:00.000-07:00

Thank you to all of our families who came to support our Sports Day! We had a fantastic time and enjoyed every minute. We hope that you did too!

Caterpillars, butterflies and snails!

2010-06-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

Just before half term, a very special parcel arrived for us. Mrs. Jackson, our school’s science leader, arranged for ten tiny painted lady caterpillars to spend some time with us. They looked so cute! However, over the half term holiday they munched their way through a huge amount of food and when we returned they were not tiny caterpillars but great big hairy things! They still kept on eating and didn’t stop even when their skins got too tight and they had to shed them. Then, one morning when we looked in their container they had all attached themselves to the top of the container to pupate. We had talked about each caterpillar starting life as an egg, hatching as a small caterpillar and growing bigger until it becomes a chrysalis so we knew our caterpillars were at the chrysalis stage.

About 7 days later, Naomi was looking at the chrysalides and noticed that one of them was moving! Mrs. Coppin got very excited and started acting like an expectant father! We all had to sit on the carpet and watch for what seemed like a very long time. Then, an amazing thing happened because out of the chrysalis came a perfectly formed butterfly. We were very lucky because over the next two days we were able to watch another nine butterflies emerge from their chrysalides.

We took good care of our butterflies and enjoyed watching them feed.However, we knew that they must be set free to fly away and enjoy meeting up with some more butterfly friends!

Not only did we have to look after the butterflies, we also had some snails staying in the nursery. Mrs. Coppin found them in her garden eating her cucumber and pepper plants so she decided that a short spell in our nursery would soon put a stop to that!

We had great fun finding out about snails! Do you know that snails have two pairs of tentacles on their head, with their eyes at the tip of the longest pair? The tentacles are extremely sensitive to touch. We also found out that snails move around on their bellies and that they leave a slimy trail to show where they have been. We had great fun looking after the snails. Mrs. Coppin didn’t want them back in her garden so we sneaked them over to Mr. Jackson’s allotment and set them free on his tomatoes!!! Not really, Mr. Jackson – just joking but we did enjoy looking round the allotment. Thank you for showing us all the vegetables that you are growing and for letting us eat all the peas fresh out of their pods!! Absolutely delicious!

Thursday 27th May was a very special day!

2010-06-09T12:50:00.000-07:00

Thursday 27th May was a fantastic day in our nursery because we all enjoyed a ‘Tell me a story’ day! There were books to read together, story props to use to act out stories, puppets to make, faces to be painted, games to play and lots more! Earlier in the week the children had been busy baking cakes and icing biscuits so these were enjoyed, along with a healthy fruit option, at our snack table. Thank you to all of our families for supporting our nursery open days! Thank you to all the nursery staff for their support and hard work. It was wonderful to see everyone enjoying their time together. I hope you enjoy looking at the photographs as much as I did!

Welcome to John Bramston Zoo!

2010-05-09T06:24:00.000-07:00

This half term our main topic is ‘Wild Animals and their Habitats’. Yes! We have already been finding out about all those lovely big animals that live in the jungle, survive in the desert and roam the African plains. We have enjoyed lots of animal stories and songs. One of our favourite stories is 'Dear Zoo' by Rod Campbell which inspired us to build our very own John Bramston Zoo!

This week we hope to go on lots of safaris in the nursery garden. If you have any old and unwanted back packs, small framed tents, safari type hats, binoculars, cameras, suitable soft toys we would welcome them to enhance our creative play.

We are also keen to learn about some of the wild animals that live in our parks and gardens such as squirrels, rabbits, hedgehogs and mini-beasts (insects). We just love those creepy crawlies! We also hope to develop a wildlife area in our garden to attract more mini-beasts. Part of this will include growing sunflowers, tomatoes, lettuce, marigolds and a selection of wild flowers. We would welcome any seeds, cuttings, bedding plants, plant containers that you may have spare. We would also welcome any help to prepare the ground (digging and weeding).

We hope that you enjoy looking at the photographs that show how we all helped to build our zoo.

And finally, throughout the summer, we hope to spend lots of time in the nursery garden. Nursery staff work hard to provide a range of outdoor play experiences for the children to explore and enjoy whilst developing a variety of important early skills. Lots of these activities involve physical play such as throwing and catching a ball, riding wheeled toys, running about on the grass, simple obstacle courses and lots of balancing and climbing. To participate fully and, more importantly safely, the children need to be wearing suitable footwear - ideally trainers or plimsolls. Also, with the warmer weather approaching, before coming to the nursery, please remember to put suntan protection on all exposed areas of your child’s skin and don’t forget a sun hat! (Please write your child’s name in the hat and in all items of clothing.) Please support us in keeping the nursery a safe environment for all children.
Our very best wishes - until next time!

We held a sponsored bounce to raise money for Sports Relief!

2010-03-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

On Friday 19th March we had a sponsored bounce in the Nursery garden to help raise money for Sports Relief. We enjoyed ourselves so much and could not stop laughing. We raised the incredible amount of £230.00! Thank you to all of our families who supported this worthwhile cause.

This week is going to be a busy week! We have an Easter egg hunt in the Nursery garden on Tuesday. On Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning we are looking forward to performing our Easter Nursery Rhyme Concerts! We hope to record these so hopefully you will be able to enjoy these via our Blogg spot should you be unable to come on the day.
Hope you enjoy looking at the photographs of our sponsored bounce.

We had a great time when all the Mums, Grandmas and Aunties joined us for a wonderful time in our Nursery!

2010-02-21T09:45:00.000-08:00

On Friday 12th February we invited all the Mums, Grandmas and Aunties to play! And what a wonderful time we all had. The day was aimed at providing an opportunity for the ladies of our families to see the sort of activities that their child enjoys whilst at the nursery. (The men had their day back in November.) We also wanted to highlight the importance of being a good adult communicator particularly when helping our children to become good communicators.
Once the session got underway we worked as one big happy team. All the activities were messy! We had jelly, corn flour, sand and ice to explore! We made sandwiches, play dough, Valentine cards, caterpillars - and a big mess! But it was worth it. We all worked hard to listen to the children, ask open ended questions and to allow our children thinking time! We introduced new words and got really involved in some fabulous imaginative play. We hope that you enjoy looking at the pictures. If you have time pop into the Nursery to see what we're up to or plan to 'stay and play' for part of a session - you would be welcome any day!

We just loved the snow - inside and outside the Nursery!

2010-01-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

Hello, just thought that you might like to see some of our most recent photos!

Happy New Year from the Nursery!

2010-01-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

Hello! What a cold start to 2010! Just to remind us of all the wonderful things that we did before the Christmas holiday we've put some of our photographs on our Blog for you to enjoy!

Watch this space for more Nursery News. But first...we've got to build a snow family (not just a snowman) and find out what happened to Mrs. Coppin's snowball - yes the one that she put on the shelf in the Nursery! Who took it? Was it Rosie? We'll just have to investigate this!

We welcomed all the Dads and family men into our Nursery and what a fantastic time we all had!

2009-11-28T10:17:00.000-08:00

Hello, from all the Nursery children! We've been having a really fantastic time in our Nursery so we don't really know what to tell you about first!

We've continued to enjoy our 'Colour Weeks' and in particular Fridays! At the end of each week we all enjoy wearing something in the colour that we've been learning about and it is amazing how creative we can be! I think we'll all miss our colour weeks next term.

The Morning Nursery children enjoyed a visit from Anne Barrat who is the Children's Librarian at Hainault Library. Anne read some stories and invited the children to become members of the library. All the children in both Nursery sessions were given a Treasure Box which contained two story books, a colouring and drawing book, some colouring pencils and information for parents about reading together and how to join the library.

On Friday 20th November the children baked fairy cakes and iced some biscuits to raise money to support BBC Children in Need. We raised £30!!! Thank you for your kind donations and we hope you all enjoyed the cakes and biscuits.

On Wednesday 25th November we welcomed the Dads, Step-Dads, Grandads, Uncles - in fact to sum it up, all the family men - into our Nursery to see some of the exciting things that their little ones do whilst they are with us and to enjoy a little challenge! We know that all children just love showing their fathers, grandfathers, uncles etc. what they can do and it turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for them to see for themselves.

The Dads etc. were amazing and it was a very rewarding experience for us to watch how they explored all the activities with their child and other children.

Everyone enjoyed the challenge to build a model using reclaimed materials (boxes, cartons etc.) and some really interesting models were created!

It was an absolutely fantastic day and we cannot thank you all enough for coming! It was wonderful to see you all playing together (and that was just the Dads) and enjoying time with your child. If you were unable to come and now feel quite left out please don't worry because we aim to have a special day like this every term! And, don't forget, you are always welcome to stay and play any day!

We hope that you enjoy the photos - there are lots more photographs on the Nursery News board outside the Nursery door and even more in the children's cloakroom.

If you would like to find out more about our Nursery please visit us - you are always welcome!

A much needed half term holiday!

2009-10-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

Well, we made it through the first half term! In fact it has been a fantastic first half term, one of the best that I've ever had! The children have all settled very well and are a real credit to all of you. Thank you to those of you who came to the parent/teacher meetings - please remember, if you have anything that you would like to share about your child or have any concerns, you are always welcome to come in for a chat. I'm sure that we can find a convenient time for us both before or after school.
I feel quite certain that you have been looking forward to the holiday, I know we have, it's nice to spend some time at home! If you're short of an idea or two to keep those little ones occupied - read on. We have been learning a little bit about autumn so you could support this by looking for changes such as the leaves changing colour and falling, changing weather (getting colder, misty in the mornings etc). A lovely and very healthy activity is to have a walk in the park - you could collect some leaves and look at the different colours and sizes. If you don't mind getting messy you could paint the leaves and print with them. Whilst in the park have a look for wild life such as squirrels, ducks and other birds. Take a ball and play catch - you'll be surprised how good the children are getting. If you have any bats take a couple of those too! Some of the children are getting really good at playing 'tennis'.
Try your best to visit the local library and spend some time just looking through some of the books together. You never know you might see me there! I just love books.
Play a game together - the children love playing lotto, snap, picture dominoes and pairs. I don't like admitting it but most can beat me at pairs. Challenge your little one to a game and let me know who wins!
We have done lots of cooking - thank you for all of your 50p contributions. You could find out how much of a 'Jamie Oliver' your child has become. All the children have loved cooking. When Mrs. Murcutt made bread nearly every child was gathered around her table all advising her on what to do! All the children have enjoyed making (and eating) fairy cakes, such a popular activity. We are hoping to make pizzas and cheese cakes next half term so give your child a head start to impress Mrs. Murcutt!
If your child goes shopping with you 'write' a shopping list especially for him/her. You could even draw a simple picture of what you need such as 4 apples, 3 bananas, 1 loaf of bread etc. and then let your child find those things. Count out the items together, talk about what you need to buy such as washing powder for washing, cat food for .... etc. Don't forget the cooking ingredients for fairy cakes!
Play shops at home - just get a few tins, packets etc. a couple of bags and use any loose change and hey presto - hours of fun and what a lovely way to learn about money!
Above all, take time to listen to your child. Answer his/her questions and extend his/her language by talking about what you are doing together. Share books together, watch a special/favourite television programme together, turn off the telly and then talk about it.
I shall look forward to hearing about all the wonderful things that your child has done when he/she comes back to Nursery on Monday 2nd November. Take care and enjoy!
Mrs. Coppin

P.S. A big thank you to all of you who supporting our 'Colour days'! They have been such good fun and nearly all the children can name and identify the colours! What a clever bunch!