Nursery

This weeks learning.........

The Yellow/Gold Pod
At the beginning of the week the yellow pod have been celebrating all things Christmas. We have explored colourful Christmas pasta shapes in the sensory tray, made chocolate scented play dough, decorated pine cones to hang on our little tree and created beautiful stockings which are displayed in our home corner. An igloo role play area has been set up where we can explore "Antarctica", with visuals of polar scenes and artic animals. We have also been busy little elves wrapping presents and writing letters/cards to send in our very own post box to Santa!
This week we had lots of fun at our party on Wednesday playing musical bumps, showing off our dance moves and we even got to see Santa who left us a special gift. Followed by some Christmas gingerbread smelling play dough, the boys and girls spent some time making snowmen and reindeer with it using google eyes and pipe cleaners, discussing what they thought about the smell. We also made a fireplace to hang our stockings on that Lianne made with us, we used our fine motor skills to cut yellow, orange and red paper to look like flames. On Thursday we got to go to the gym hall and watch the Jack and The Beanstalk pantomime and made some more Christmas decorations which we will bring home to hang on our tree. We have also been writing letters to Santa and having lots of exciting Christmas fun.
This week the gold and yellow pod have been continuing learning about Winter. We enjoyed the short spell playing in the snow last week which started discussions about igloos. We have made part of our play space into an igloo, discussing animals that live in cold conditions. 
We have also enjoyed different activities around Christmas and of course our Christmas party went down a treat alongside a tasty snack.


The Red Pod
Christmas has arrived in the red pod. Debbie brought us a real Christmas tree to decorate, we have our own red pod elf, he’s very nice. We have been busy working in Santa’s workshop, wrapping presents ready to be delivered. Play dough has been popular again, Santa loves gingerbread so we made gingerbread men using gingerbread dough. We created Santa’s living room, with a fireplace and cosy log fire and we decorated stockings to hang up. We have also been busy writing letters/cards to send to Santa via our very own post box that Debbie’s husband made for us. We celebrated with a Christmas party, we had a special visitor. On Thursday we enjoyed a socially distanced virtual pantomime, it was fun!


The Blue Pod
This week we have been fully into Christmas. The children were making green and red playdough candy canes which we added mint scent to make them smell real. They had fun with the ice cube train which had blue and red food colouring in. On Wednesday we had our Christmas party and the boys and girls were exhausted from all their dancing. We even got a very special visit from Santa. On Thursday we watched an online pantomime of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. The children were laughing away at the characters. We have been helping Santa by wrapping presents in our pod and the North Pole elves definitely have some competition!


The Purple Pod
This week has been a very very busy week for the purple pod, Christmas preparation are well and truly under way, 
We explored writing for a purpose by writing our letters to Santa and our book corner is full of winter and Christmas stories for us to read. We had lots of fun at our Christmas party Playing party games including pass the parcel and frozen statues. We were very surprised and happy when Santa himself visited us. Santa arranged for us all to watch the virtual pantomime “Jack and the beanstalk” it was very funny, the cow buttercup made us all
laugh. Out in the nursery garden we used a sledge to role play Santa and his reindeer, we took turns playing the different characters. 
This week we also made our own hot chocolate playdough, we used cotton wool as marshmallows it smelled delicious. 
And on Friday we took part in filming for the Nursery and Schools Christmas Nativity video, we preformed our ‘Snow is falling’ makaton 
signs for the camera man and Lynn could not be more proud of us all.

The Green Pod
This week in the green pod Christmas has arrived, we have decorated the pod with lots of Christmas sparkle, with our water tray taking on a festive polar express theme. We have been exploring winter and Christmas themed stories including ‘The Little Christmas Tree’, ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’ and ‘What’s a Christmas’. We have taken part in the virtual pantomime ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ in the gym hall and enjoyed a special treat for our panto snack. Today we have taken part in shooting our Christmas video and have all dressed up with lots of festive cheer for the occasion.

Have a lovely weekend.
The Nursery Team