Welcome to Puffin Class - our school nursery!

This page celebrates the wonderful learning that happens in Puffin Class. Our learning is done through play, it's how children learn best! We follow the children's interests meaning no two weeks are the same. 

Lots of practical information about our nursery can be found under the 'key Information' tab.

Spring 2: February half term - Easter

The children in Puffin Class have really enjoyed finding out about the celebration of Lunar New Year, which is also known as Chinese New Year or Spring festival. We have used non-fiction books, stories and videos to learn facts about the celebrations and about how the festival is celebrated in different countries around the world. 

We were thrilled to spot some early signs of Spring in our outdoor area this week; the bulbs we planted in the Autumn term have grown and some are already blooming!

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Our children have been fascinated by the concept of a leap year, we have learnt that this month we get an extra day - I wonder what you will do with your bonus day? With us having a leap year every 4 years most of the children haven't experienced one before and will be 7 or 8 before they see another one!

It has been wonderful to talk about Mother's Day with the children, we have learnt about the origins of the day and talked about what it means to 'mother'. The children came up with some amazing ideas about what their Mummy's are good at and what they enjoy doing with them. As part of our work we have looked at our wider families and how they are all very special and very different. We have used the book 'We Are Family' by Patricia Hegarty to support our learning.

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The children have enjoyed learning all about Ramadan, we have used books, stories and our own in nursery experts to find out about the festival and how it leads the way to the celebration of Eid, which will occur during the school holiday.

Along with our friends in Robin Class (reception) we went on an Early Years trip to Eureka in Halifax. We had a wonderful time! Whilst we were there we had a focus on our bodies and especially our Senses, we even attended a special science show. Back in nursery we used non fiction books to discover even more about our wonderful bodies and how they work.

Spring 1: January - February half term

We have loved exploring the varied weather we have been experiencing in the past few weeks, the children have enjoyed being weather detectives. We have played games with the wind, collected, measured and played with rain water and enjoyed investigating the frozen ground.

Our favourite five books for this half term are proving very popular - it is wonderful to hear the children retelling and enjoying them with their friends. We love books and stories in nursery with the staff delighting in the children's enthusiasm around them.

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Each month we visit the large oak tree on the back field; we take a good look at it and have a photograph in front of it. This photo is then added to our date wheel, allowing us to track the changes month by month, season by season. We also add key events, books and learning to our wheel tracking the things we've enjoyed doing in nursery.

This month we spotted two holes at the base of the oak tree, this lead to some wonderful work around animals that live underground and what we might see or find if we could fit down the hole. The children's creativity was fabulous to behold as they created models, pictures and sculptures of their imagined animals!

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The week beginning the 5th of February was Children's Mental Health Week, in nursery we did lots of work around understanding what our mental health is and why it is so important. We learnt how important our voice is; telling our friends all about us, our likes and favourite things.

Autumn 2: October half term - Christmas

The children returned to school full of tales from their half term holiday. One of our big focuses in nursery is helping the children develop their communication skills, since we have returned we have been doing lots of speaking and listening about our first hand experiences, with the staff supporting the children as needed.

This half term will be full of festivals and celebrations, we've enjoyed starting to learn about some of them including Halloween, Bonfire Night, Diwali,  Hanukkah and Christmas. We can't wait to experience them and find out more!

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In Puffin Class we have really enjoyed taking part in 'World Nursery Rhyme Week'. The children have enjoyed saying, singing, performing and joining in with a wide range of rhymes and songs. We have had great fun learning some new rhymes and sharing our favourites with the rest of the children in nursery.

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We have loved exploring the beginning of Winter, it has been great to have hands on experience of frost, snow and freezing temperatures. The children enjoyed developing their gross motor skills by making tracks in the snow by pushing crates, making snow angels and throwing snowballs at the sheds. We exercised our fine motor muscles by using pipettes to squirt coloured water on the snow and showed our creativity when mark making with sticks in the snow to create pictures and patterns.

Autumn 1: September - October half term

We are so excited to be back! It is wonderful to have a classroom full of busy, happy children again. Over the past few weeks we have been thrilled to see and catch up with those children who are returning for a second year in nursery, as well as welcoming and settling new families into Puffin Class.

This half term our focus will be helping the children to settle in; getting to know and build, or re-establish, relationships with the adults and friendships with other pupils as well as familiarising themselves with our setting, learning where everything is and most importantly having lots of opportunities to play and explore. 

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The 10th October was World Mental Health Day, we used this as a focus for our learning all week, exploring what 'mental health' is and how it is just as important as our 'physical health'. In nursery we enjoyed playing the face game - seeing how many different emotions we could think of and represent with facial expressions! We were wowed with the way the children could name and identify different emotions and with what they knew about those emotions - when they might feel them and what they could do to change the emotion if they so wished.

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In Puffin Class we love stories, books and reading. The staff spend lots of time engaging with the children to further develop their early reading skills and can often be found snuggled in the book corner reading stories. Each half term we select a 'favourite five' which are five books that we repeatedly read and revisit over that half term (through the year these include fiction, non-fiction, rhymes, poems, traditional tales and books from known authors) allowing the children to become really familiar with them. This in turn helps develop inference, retelling, comprehension and the acquisition of new vocabulary.

This week we welcomed Catherine from Tiny Tales and Tunes who came in to run a highly interactive story telling session with our nursery children. We focused on the tale of Cinderella and all had a wonderful time bringing the story to life! We marched like soldiers, looked for stars in the night sky, worked our magic with the Fairy Godmother, danced at the palace party and even looked for frogs for princesses to kiss - it was a busy morning!