Ladybirds: Clouds, Unicorns and Burns’ Night

Looking back at the January news I can’t believe how much we have done in such a short term. We have been reading a great many new stories including: Shark in the Park, Floof, Bumblebear, The Snail and the Whale, and plenty more. We have improved our reading corner into a large, soft comfortable space where we can get lots of children around one adult reader. It’s really popular!

In maths we have continued to practice our counting, often through song. We have been looking and naming 2D shapes, including oval and rhombus (tricky ones to remember at the moment). We have looked at comparative measurement, both of the children and had them measure the adults on a large piece of paper on the floor. Recently we have been estimating, which was introduced with “Good guess or bad guess?” for the number of objects in a basket and the last couple of days we have looked at sequencing: 2 blue bears, 2 red, two blue two red…what comes next?

We have been on several trips to the green grocer and experienced lots of different types of fruit: golden apples, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries and lots more. The children got to choose the fruit, went through the process of paying and enjoyed it at snack time. We also baked bread rolls which the children mixed and kneaded the dough for. They were amazed to see how much it had risen before we baked it. Again, they had it at snack time.

Another foody event was cooking a Burns night meal. Before we made the meal we looked up Scotland and the children all painted the flag. We listened to the bagpipes (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!), and were reminded of the bagpipes in Pumpkin Soup from last term. The children were involved in the cooking and mashing of the vegetables (neeps and tatties), we also cooked two types of haggis, one meat one veggie. There was very little left over! Burns poetry is a bit tricky but we all called out “Great Chieftain of the Pudding Race!” when the haggis came out. Instead of more Burns we did do The Ning Nang Nong poem with the trees going “Ping!”.

More recently we have been making “clouds” with plastic bottles surrounded with cotton wool. These have been strung with lights going through them and look really good hanging from the nursery ceiling.

We have also made unicorn food. The children made different coloured sugar by grinding chalk onto it then layering it into bottles. This, in practice, is to help them understand the various steps, processes and order of events involved in reaching a goal. Giving food to a unicorn means he has to grant you a wish!

We have had lots of positive feedback and support from parents which has been great, thank you.