Rhyme Time

We sing a nursery rhyme every day in nursery, repeating the same rhyme every day.  This week our rhyme is: Hot Cross Buns.

Drop Everything and Read

Learning about the world through stories and developing a love of books is promoted through our daily shared reading sessions.

We hope children enjoy watching and listening to our daily stories.  Children can of course watch the videos again and again and use the stories to inspire play and creative tasks.

Making Meaningful Marks

Learning ideas:

Draw pictures of the characters you read about in stories.  There were lots of animal characters in the stories last week and some more this week.  Can you draw your favourite animal characters, or favourite animals?

Drawing alongside your child as they draw/make marks, creating your own picture for your child to see, as they create theirs, can support children's development.  Always encourage your child to make their own marks and talk about the features on whatever it is they are drawing.  For example facial features on animals, number of legs, shape of body etc. 

Draw on a box to support the theme of play, using boxes.  Maybe you could make a rocket to take you to space, just like in the story, Whatever Next.

Draw around your hand and draw patterns.  Can you make stripey, spotty and zig zag patterns?  What other patterns can you think of?  

Parent/Carer:  Encourage conversation during the process of making meaningful marks and when your child has finished mark making.  Model making meaningful marks too to support understanding of drawings and early writing.

Making sense of number.

Play games which encourage counting and count objects during play and whilst doing helpful jobs at home.  Here is one idea:

-Sorting socks and shoes.  Matching and making pairs, ordering by size, counting how many individual socks and shoes.  

Number names and numerals are just words and marks.  Helping children by exploring quantities through play, supports secure understanding of number values.

-Go on a number hunt outside.  Look on car registration plates, lamp posts, signs, doors and bins!  Numbers are everywhere.

-Count how many animals you see as you go on a walk, or look out of your window.

-Join in with a counting challenge with Mrs Ashcroft, using the link below and the photograph.  The challenge linked to the photograph is set by Mrs Ashcroft in the video below. 

Being creative with shapes

Exploring everyday shapes around the home and outdoors, matching shapes which are the same, a different size but the same shape and different shapes, supports children's mathematical knowledge and understanding.

Play a game of 'Snap Shapes.' Take it in turns to identify a shape in something around you and the other person has to find the same shape in something else. For example a circle on a wheel and a circle on a watch.

Encourage descriptive vocabulary such as: number of sides, curved side, straight side, big, small, tall, thin, thick, the same shapes as...

2 dimensional shapes children in nursery are taught to develop their awareness of: circle, square, triangle, rectangle, star, oval, heart, diamond.

If your child recognises these shapes why not try: moon/crescent, semi-circle and begin to explore 3 dimensional shapes such as a cylinder, cube, sphere and cuboid.

Physically Active Learning

Challenges which involve 'fiddly fingers' (moving small objects carefully) help to support children's fine motor control. This helps the development of early writing skills.