EXPLORERS' NEWS

Week commencing 22nd April

Our focused story last week and this week is ‘Jack and the beanstalk’. We have delivered the story using using props first, before moving onto reading the book. We have now added the props to the provision for the children to explore freely using their imagination and recall from the story. We will encourage and emphasise the repeated refrain ‘Fi-if-fo fum watch out everyone here I come’ as we play alongside the children and as we move onto other activities for story time such as, colourful semantics, drawing the story then acting the story out in a group. This is called a helicopter story.
Here is a link to the same version of the story that we have been reading at nursery.

https://youtu.be/C8lPc4pFuPQ?si=flOC7G2auUtsjWn7 

This week the children will plant a bean into a transparent bottle, they will choose one magic bean each then fill with soil and place on the window sill. We will be sharing the life cycle of a bean with them, explaining what they need to grow and teaching them new vocabulary such as shoot, root, tall & short.

Our focused book next week is ‘The three billy goats gruff’. We will focus on the repeated refrains to help the children remember and recall the story. “Who’s that trip-trapping over my bridge”. We will also focus on mathematical language such as ‘first, second, third, small, big, biggest’ and prepositional language such as ‘on, over and under’. Below is a link to the version that we read at nursery.

https://youtu.be/39c2TWfg9E4?si=O1XTGNk4f1DkQcKF 

Our focused song this week is called ‘Tommy thumb’, and next week it is ‘London bridge’.

https://youtu.be/ENBITpySo8g?si=uqPtIbSPDANf1Vst 

https://youtu.be/e2sj2W4hxkM?feature=shared 

The classroom has been enhanced with resources to support the skill we are teaching which is understanding the world- knowing that beans need water and sunshine to grow, and they can name parts of a bean such as leaf, stalk, root & shoot. We are still keeping maths as a focus alongside it looking at length, quantity and subitising.

The children have naturally shown an interest in mini beasts while playing and exploring in the garden. To support their interest and learning, we have enhanced outside with magnifying glasses, bug carriers and non-fiction images of different mini beasts.