Phoenix Nursery School

Hello !
As you know the children have been very interested in the birds in our nursery garden and after creating nests for them last week, this week we have co constructed a story together as a group, learning about how a story is structured with a beginning, middle and an end and thinking about the characters within the story such as ‘sparrow tweet,tweet,’ baby bird and the egg. We also talked about the setting which was the nest.
The children thoroughly enjoyed offering their ideas to the shared story and it was wonderful to hear the children share their knowledge and understanding of birds built through thoughtful research and a range of rich hands on experiences.
This is our bird 🦅 story

Once upon a time there was a bird
She was making her nest in the trees
She put the sticks and the leaves and the rocks and the feather in her nest
The nest was very hot and soft
The bird found an egg. She sat on her egg
The egg crack
With her head
A baby chick came out, tweet, tweet
The baby chick said I want to eat
Mummy fly
Mummy bird get some snails and spiders and worms and cherries and tomatoes and ants
Baby said I want to sleep
And mummy bird said ‘ok go to sleep honey’
And then she sleeps and she wakes up and go to school
And then go back home
The End.

We have been taking good care of the seeds and potatoes that we planted, watering them regularly and they have started to grow!
One of the parents has donated a mint plant and we have potted it outside.

The cress that we planted inside was ready to cut. We cut the storks and all tried a little bit, we thought that it tasted delicious! We are looking forward to the carrots, peas and potatoes being ready to harvest at the end of term.

As part of our nursery project 'What lives with us in nursery garden?' Katharine and Bal's children have taken a keen interest in the squirrels. We have watched them running along the nursery fence and climbing in the trees. The children have learnt about what squirrels like to eat and how they build dreys in the trees to live in. We even have our own pretend squirrel 'Rocky' who we look after in the nursery.

The children have been looking closely at the squirrel's features and creating observational drawings, using the inks to add colour. We also used the construction materials to create a home for the squirrel. Over the next half term we will be creating stories using the squirrel as our main character.

Dear Parent/Carers Pay As You Feel activities in half term for children under 7.

Play in the Park - Wolves Play Cafe
Tuesday 26th May
10-12 & 12-2pm
Ward Street Park, WV2 2RE
Book spaces online - www.wolvesplaycafe.org/playinthepark

This year at nursery our project work continues to question the children’s thoughts and ideas about, ‘What lives with us in our nursery garden?’

The children in Claire’s group have developed a strong interest in the different birds that can be seen in our garden and sitting in our trees. We have been watching the birds together and talking about what we see. The children have shared their ideas about where birds live, what they eat and how they fly. We also have a soft bird called ‘Sparrow Tweet Tweet’ who lives inside nursery and joins in with our daily routine. Whilst talking about the birds, some children said that the birds lived at ‘home’ in their ‘houses’.
After watching a ‘bird movie’ using a digital projector children learned that the birds houses were called a nest.

Due to the windy weather a few weeks ago we were very fortunate to find a small nest that the children were able to take a closer look at to make sense of what a birds nest looked like close up and to deepen the children’s knowledge about how the nest was made, what it was made from and why birds need a nest. We then used our hands and fingers to manipulate clay and shape it into a nest like shape, discussing how safe the birds would be using some stone birds to check that they wouldn’t fall out.

Over the next few weeks we will continue to learn about birds- adding natural materials to our nests, giving the children the opportunity to express their ideas through drawing on A3 paper with a photo of the nest to further gather more wonderful ideas and creating some observational drawings that will become characters in a digital story created by the children.

This week at nursery our children have been learning about the wonderful world of planting. They have been exposed to the planting process and the sequence needed to grow a potato.

The children had opportunities to handle compost, a potato that had been chitted ready to plant, watering cans and began to understand what plants and vegetables need to grow such as water, sunlight and care. We also spent time listening to the children’s ideas and discovering what they already know about plants and growth. It has been wonderful to see the children’s excitement and engagement as they connect with nature.
Over the next few weeks we will continue to talk about similarities and differences as we take a closer look at some carrot and pea seeds ready for planting

This week Claire’s children have been practicing their painting skills with the water colours to create a range of concentric circular patterns. These are circles that are nested inside one another and every layer gets bigger, such as the shapes you may notice in nature when cutting an onion in half.
This intention encouraged children to slow down to look and notice the pattern arrangement, develop control over their paintbrush and focus on the process of layering clear lines around the shape rather than creating fast overlapping marks.

This week at nursery we have been learning about Easter.
Yesterday we watched a short film about how Easter is celebrated and all the exciting things that happen such as noticing plants and flowers beginning to grow - like the daffodils in our nursery garden and new life with lambs and chicks being born.
Next it was time to join in with some of the traditional experiences such as going on an egg hunt to find some eggs that had been hidden outside. We then decorated an egg by drawing a range of different shapes and patterns and then to finish we tried a hot cross bun at snack time. I hope you all have a wonderful Easter holiday with your families.

Dear Parents/Carers please see below some information to which you might be eligible. BOOST aims to be highly effective in increasing the resources available and improving access to unclaimed entitlements.

Hello

As you know for ‘World Book Day’ the children in Claire’s group voted for their favourite story which was Jack and the Beanstalk.
We talked about how the beanstalk grew and grew after Jacks mummy threw the beans on to the compost heap. To make this more meaningful for the children, we went outside to experience what it would be like to plant and grow some sugar snap peas. The children were given a pot and filled it with some soil. Next we covered the pea with some soil and gave it a sprinkling of water from the watering can. The children are doing a fantastic job of looking after their peas at home and have been noticing the changes occurring each day as their pea starts to grow sending their updates on Teams.