Rhyming words

We have been learning all about rhyming words in Nursery and Reception! We've been reading lots of stories with rhyming words and singing songs and rhymes. Yesterday we explored lots of different activities that helped us learn about rhyming words.

We played a rhyme matching game on the whiteboard

We read rhyming stories and books of rhymes and poems

We played with the rhyming puzzle and matched the pieces together

We found rhyming words and pictures in the sand

We wrote rhyming words on the board

We listened to nursery rhymes

We listened to a rhyming story on the iPads

We played a rhyming lotto game

We're now getting very good at knowing if words rhyme or not and can recognise when stories we read are written in rhyme!

The Teddy Bears' Picnic

Today we have been reading the story The Teddy Bears' Picnic. We talked about what a picnic is and what we'd like to eat on a picnic. There are lots of things we like to eat, from cheese and marmite sandwiches to cookies, cakes and apple pie!

We used the playdough to make some playdough meals and used the tea sets and blankets to role play going on a picnic. This afternoon we were learning the song The Teddy Bears' Picnic - we're going to keep practising it so we can sing it on Friday when we have our Teddy Bears' Picnic!

Can't You Sleep Little Bear?

We are very busy in Nursery and Reception learning all about bears, and today we've been reading the story Can't You Sleep Little Bear? In the story, Little Bear can't sleep because he is afraid of the dark. Big Bear keeps bringing him lanterns, but there is still too much dark for Little Bear to sleep. So Big Bear takes Little Bear out of the bear cave and shows him the night sky - it has been lit up by the moon and all the twinkling stars. And Little Bear finally goes to sleep!

We talked about things that we are afraid of and what makes us feel better, like having a light on or having cuddles with our mummies and daddies. Then we made some night sky pictures using black paper. We printed stars and cut some paper to make a moon. We also used glitter to make some twinkling stars!

This afternoon Reception were using torches to explore shadows by making shadow puppets and exploring different materials to see whether they were transparent or not. If we could see through them, they were transparent. If not, they were opaque. We sorted them into different groups, then looked at whether or not we could see a light shining through them. Things you can't see through but you can see a light through are called translucent. These are tricky words but we did well with sorting the different materials and could talk about why things belonged in a certain group.

We are enjoying reading lots of stories about bears and tomorrow we are bringing our own teddy bears in from home to share with the rest of the class!

Welcome back!

Welcome back to a brand new school year! We have got lots of new children in Nursery and Reception this year and this week we have been very busy learning about our new classroom and making new friends. Here are some pictures to show you what we've been doing and what we like about our school!

Pirate stories!

Over the last two weeks we have been very busy creating our own pirate adventure stories. We did lots of planning, including thinking about and drawing pictures of our characters, acting out stories and thinking of good words and phrases we could use in our stories. Reception have all written their stories and made a front cover, which we have made into books. Mrs Batson, Mrs Waites and I are all extremely proud of their hard work and the brilliant stories they created - I know Miss Worsley was impressed with them! Some children were so keen to write they filled pages and pages - Aaron's story, The Golden Sand, was six pages long! Here are some extracts from our stories.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful fairy called Sophie. One sunny day she flew past a pirate ship and the pirates saw her. They kidnapped her and put her in a cage...
from 'The Story of Beautiful Sophie' by Hope

Once upon a time there was a mean pirate called Captain Spiky. He met another pirate called Captain Chicken. They were fighting over treasure...
from 'The story of Captain Chicken' by Harry

... Kayleigh was frightened. She saw an ugly pirate. She screamed. She took a treasure map. She ran to the forest. She found the treasure.
from 'Kayleigh's Adventure' by Trystan

Once upon a time there was a good pirate called Tunip. One sunny Sunday he tricked a bad pirate called Magic. He gave Magic the wrong treasure map that led him to a dark cave. Tunip sailed away to the treasure island. Quick as a cheetah he ran to the dolphin river to find the treasure. Suddenly he saw another pirate called Shelinton. He was guarding the treasure...
from 'The Golden Sand' by Aaron

... She went to the dark dark cave. But a big scary monster was sitting on the treasure. Wendy ran away.
from 'Wendy's Adventure' by Lexi

...He looked at it. He saw an X marks the spot. The treasure was in the gloomy cave. He went to the gloomy cave. What will he do there? He found the treasure!
from 'The Story of Captain Hook' by Olivia

Once upon a time there was a brave, beautiful princess called Rose and a pirate called Captain Beeky Bee. One night the stars were twinkling. Captain Beeky Bee was in the jungle looking for treasure...
from 'Captain Beeky Bee and the Treasure' by Maddie

Once upon a time there was a bad pirate called Captain Redbeard. One day he was shooting cannons at people. He was making people walk the plank...
from 'Pirate Adventure' by Lilly

...One sunny day she went to a mysterious island. She walked through a squelchy swamp. Suddenly she saw the X marks the spot...
from 'The Adventure of Captain Purplebeard' by Lucy

Once upon a time there was a brave pirate called Jake. He stole treasure from other ships...
from 'Jake's Adventure' by Ollie

Once upon a time there was a brave pirate called Captain Bones who was having a fight with Captain Red. They both wanted the treasure...
from 'The Pirate Adventure' by Matthew

Once upon a time there was a boy called James. He crashed into a rock and he sank...
from 'James' adventure' by Jamie

Once upon a time there was a mean and fierce pirate called Captain Mushroom. He lived on a glorious ship. One stormy evening he bumped into Captain Bones and he swapped their maps around because he wanted to find the treasure. The next day he went on his ship to find the treasure island. "Land ahoy!" he shouted. He shuffled through the spooky forest. Then he climbed the mysterious mountains. Later on he ran as fast as a cheetah to the dark cave. The bats wanted to eat him! Did he get eaten? He didn't get eaten because he gave them some food...
from 'Captain Mushroom in an Adventure' by Grace.

A visit to the zoo!

On Wednesday of Small Schools Week the whole school went to Whipsnade Zoo. Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 were split into groups and went to see lots of different animals. Between us I think we saw nearly everything! Here are some pictures from Miss Ayres' group and Mrs Batson's group.

Pirate Party!

Ahoy there! Today we had our pirate party - arrrr! We all came to school dressed as pirates and Mrs Orton put some face paint on us so we had pictures of treasure chests, pirate flags or scars on our faces! When we got to the penfold we had snack - we had drink in our pirate cups and ate fruit and the pirate cakes we made yesterday on our special pirate plates!

Then we played some pirate games and listened to some pirate songs! We played musical bumps, pass the parcel, Treasure Island, pin the eye patch on the pirate and musical statues and we won some pirate prizes!

We all had lots of fun and we're looking forward to taking our pirate party bags home!