Welcome to our Nursery Page!!
2022 – 2023
Summer 1 Newsletter
FS1 summer 1 newsletter
Spring 2 Newsletter
FS1 newsletter Spring 2
Spring 1 Newsletter
FS1 newsletter Spring 1
During our first week back at school, we have had a week of exciting Halloween activities. We have made Halloween biscuits, enjoyed lots of yukky sensory activities, we have scooped pumpkins, counted the seeds and we are going to plant them into soil to see what happens, we have also learned the rhyme ‘5 Little Pumpkins’ . We have painted spiders and pumpkins and enjoyed Halloween play dough activities. We finished our week by exploring our school grounds while we were on a hunt for different types of leaves.
Autumn 2 newsletter
FS1 autumn 2 newsletter
We have had good fun learning this week both inside and outdoors. Take a look at some of our photos.
We have had great fun in the first few weeks of our time in Nursery.
Autumn 1 newsletter
FS1 Autumn 1 Newsletter
2021 – 2022
Summer 2 newsletter
FS1 summer 2 newsletter
In our first week back we have been drawing pictures of people that are important to us and practising writing our names. We sent them home so you could see how fantastic our work is and how hard we have tried. Here are a few pictures of the children doing their drawings and who they decided to draw.
Summer 1 newsletter
FS1 Summer 1 newsletter
Spring 2 newsletter
FS1 Spring 2 newsletter.docx
This half term we have welcomed 10 new children into our setting and they have all done an amazing job of settling into Nursery. Our older children that started in September have been brilliant at welcoming them and helping them get used to our routines, we are very proud of all our children – what a lovely class we have!
Here are some pictures of some of the things we have been doing during the beginning of the half term.
Making new friends
Learning to share
Building with different materials
Imaginary role play (doctors, camping, picnics, going on a bus/plane journey, looking after babies, putting out a fire in the house – these ideas have all come from the children)
Exploring natural and man-made materials indoors and outdoors.
Learning about the cold season ‘Winter’
Learning the story of Jack Frost
Learning Nursery rhymes
Our children are really enjoying junk modelling at the moment – please bear with us on this journey – at the moment, the children have some great ideas about what they want to make but don’t always have the skills to bring these ideas to fruition, as the year goes on the children will become far more competent and have even better ideas and you should really start to see a change in the items that they make and bring home.
Spring 1 Newsletter
FS1 Spring 1 newsletter
We enjoyed our Christmas party food and games.
We have been exploring the natural items that we have collected and read a story called Leaf Man. We began creating some artwork with the leaves that we collected, using them to print different Autumn colours. Some children chose to make transient art patterns with natural items.
Our Nursery children have also been very busy making our usual Christmas crafts including decorations, cards, calendars and our wreaths for the Christmas Fayre. Watch this space for pictures of this!
We have been to Forest school this week and begun to explore this outdoor area. We went on a leaf hunt and looked for different coloured and different shaped leaves, we climbed trees, had a turn at cutting wood with the folding saw and we also found the bendy willow wood and made some circles for our wreaths which will be in the virtual Christmas Fair brochure.
We are going to be using the wood that we have cut to make a decoration for our Christmas trees at home and we have been busy sewing for our Christmas cards, so please watch this space, Our little elves are busy making things to take home soon!
This week we have been learning about bonfire night. We made chocolate apples with sprinkles, on science day we made a firework with effervescent tablets, vinegar and food colouring (which exploded in Mrs Bates face), we painted some beautiful firework pictures by printing and splatting paint and glitter and we also learned lots of words that represent the noises made by fireworks.
On our first week back in school after the Autumn half term, we have been celebrating Halloween. We had a party with dancing, games and delicious food and took part in lots of Halloween activities over the week.
Autumn 2 newsletter
FS1 Autumn 2 Newsletter
The children have settled well into the new school year.
FS1 Autumn 1 newsletter
2020 – 2021
Summer 2 newsletter
FS1 Summer 2 newsletter
Week beginning 17th May
This week has been very eventful!
We have been learning the story ‘Little Rabbit Foo Foo’, this week the children did some amazing story retelling; most children were able to read the story map that we had drawn together and retell the story word for word. Well done!
This week the children found a ‘caterpillar’ outside on the trim trail. We have been patiently waiting for our baby caterpillars to arrive and so we brought this one inside to look after it while we are waiting. We investigated what sort of caterpillar it was (it is a moth larvae) and what it likes to eat; we then went to our school field to look for the plant that it likes to eat. We have started to read the next story that we will be learning ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’ and we have done some caterpillar art. Our children told us they like to eat chocolate and so we made some delicious chocolate brownies!
We had a delivery of some new kitchen role play furniture this week which the children were really excited about. While some children read the instructions and built the units together, some children played in the empty boxes making trains, boats and somewhere cosy to read!
This week the children have been finding lots of ladybirds outdoors. We have done some ladybird art, maths and baking. We have also practised our cutting skills and made some flowers to send to Mrs Barratt to cheer her up and make her feel better. We made her a big ‘Get Well’ card and all practised writing our names from memory.
Week beginning 3rd May
This week we have been supporting our school fundraising by planting sunflower seeds. The children were really good at remembering what order to do things in and also did some really careful pouring.
As the children were still enjoying finding worms and observing them in the worm habitat that we made, we did some worm art and also baked some ‘worm’ buns. Yum!
19th April 2021
What a week of glorious weather we have had. We have made the most of this by spending as much time outside as possible and we have done some great learning outdoors.
We played with water and our new water resources; we have been learning how to put on the suits and wellies and how to take turns by waiting until someone else has finished with a suit.
We have started to develop our outdoor reading area, we have cushions, blankets, some new books and it is starting to look and feel comfy and cosy. We will add some pictures of the children enjoying this area when it is finished.
We have been practising writing our names, indoors, outdoors, with pens, chalk or anything lese that we can find. We have put our names on our pictures and paintings and anywhere we can write it!
Please look at the pictures of the children role-playing in the dinosaur area, making an island and a bridge for the dinosaurs and we have now added the roof that Cobie suggested.
This is our first week back after the Easter holidays. We have had some new children start Nursery, which means five new friends to play with. Our children have all settled back into Nursery routines really well and our new children have had a fantastic first week at Nursery.
We had a chat on our first day back about what we had been doing in the holidays.
Darcie – “Easter bunny come at house”
Eric – “Mummy buyed an egg, I ate it and now no Easter egg”
Logan – “I got lots of eggs!”
Hollie – “Me and Jake got a hundred dollar eggs!”
Noah – “Aiden ate his chocolate egg from the Easter bunny”
Before the holidays, lots of our children were really enjoying dinosaur play so we decided to make a dinosaur area outside and asked the children how we could make dinosaur area, what it needs to look like and what things we could use. This is what the children said:
Cobie – “We need a roof, but we can’t give them a house to play in ‘cos they haven’t got hands”
Jaxon – “We need some wood and we need to make a lock so they don’t get out”
Archie – “We need a fence”
Eric – “An umbrella”
Hollie – “A door”
Louie – “They lived in the Jurassic period”
Please take a look at the pictures of the children making the dinosaur area outside, enjoying their first week back and also finding worms!
We also began to plan together as a class how we could make a new reading area outdoors. Watch this space for how this develops over the next couple of weeks.
Summer 1 newsletter
FS1 Summer 1 Newsletter
22.3.21
This week we have been doing lots of Easter activities. We talked about Easter and what happens at this time of year.
Archie – “It’s going to be Easter, Easter bunny comes, we don’t have any bushes so he can’t hide”
Louie – “He delivers Easter eggs”
Ruby – “I’ve got Easter eggs at my home”
Yasa – “Mummy’s making an Easter dinosaur”
Eric – “I made an Easter egg with playdough with green, yellow and purple.
Rosie – “I’m going to make an Easter hat”
Lacey – “I built a bunny” (Easter hat)
We have had an ‘eggsperiment’ to find out if boiled eggs and fresh eggs would sink or float, we then enjoyed cracking the eggs, talking about what we could see, smell, feel and hear while getting gooey and messy.
Logan – “Its cracking”
Amelia – “I wonder what’s inside, its sinking to the bottom, oh my goodness, what a mess!”
Cobie – “I think it’s hot, I think it’s been in the oven, that one’s cracking”
Marilena – “I think it’s got a yolk inside”
Lacey – “It’s squishy” (as she pokes her finger inside the egg)
Archie – “That one’s egg yolk and that one’s just an egg’
We made some Easter buns with chocolate and cornflakes, we talked about how the chocolate was a rectangle and it was hard and what would happen when we put the chocolate into the microwave.
This is what the children told us as we made the buns…
Marilena and Lori “It will melt”
Cobie “The chocolate will be soft”
Amelia S “I love chocolate, it’s spinning” (as she talked about the microwave)
Louie “We’ve got a microwave; it goes round and round like a circle”
Lacey S “It’s melting”
Ruby “I like chocolate”
Archie “It feels really hard when I mix it”
Logan – “I wonder what makes it shiny and wet”
Bella – “Melt, its dripping, making a crunchy noise”
Lori – “It looks kind of sticky”
Jaxon – “It shrinks”
Amelka – “It will rain chocolate, it’s like hot”
Alfie – “It will melt, smells like chocolate”
Darcy-Jane – “It looks like it’s raining”
Egosa – “I can hear shaking”
Thomas – “It’s falling off, its making sound”
Tomi – “Its melting”
Shane – “It’s really hot in there”
After we had made our own bun to take home, we had a turn at making buns by ourselves with cornflakes and chocolate spread. As the children got messy, this is what they said…
As he squeezed the cornflakes and chocolate in his hands, Joshua said – “Its cracking”
Ruby – “Its sticky”
Yasa – “Going crack”
Logan – “Its crunching”
Louie – “It made sounds… crunch, we have chocolate at our home”
We asked the children what happens when there is an Easter egg hunt….
Bella – “The Easter bunny comes and puts eggs everywhere and you have to find it”
Shane -“I want to eat the chocolate with Warren, Mummy and Rhys”
Eric – “The Easter eggs are hiding”
Jaxon – ” I think they are in the tunnel because it’s a good hiding place, the bunny run away”
Ruby – “Might find a real egg”
As the children hunted for the hidden eggs, they told us…
Cobie – “I found a tiny one”
Hollie – “I found a big one”
Reggie – “I found two of them, pink ones”
Louie – “I found an egg down there”
Rosie found 3 eggs and held up 3 fingers as she put them in the basket.
Have a look at the pictures and see what we have been doing!
This week, we all came to school in our pyjamas for a whole week! We talked about what we did at bedtime and how we all loved to have a bedtime story. Children brought in their favourite books to share with each other, the adults read lots and lots of stories, and we had hot chocolate and buttered crumpets!
The most popular story this week was ‘There’s a monster in your book’. This was one of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library books which were sent out to all Doncaster children that registered for these free books; unfortunately, the free books in Doncaster have now ended but hopefully you will all have this story at home to read with your children. Thank you to Noah, Louie and Alfie for bringing this story in, we will be buying this for Nursery as we loved it so much!
This is what the children told us about their bedtimes at home.
Luna – “I go on my tablet, sing Elsa and then go to sleep”
Bella – “I have a bath, have milkshake and a biscuit, go on my ipad, have a story, brush my teeth and go to bed”
Joshua – “I have a banana, read a story with Mum”
Reggie – “Mummy gets me out bath, brush my teeth”
Eric – “My mummy reads a story with once upon a time, I love my mummy and daddy and then go to sleep”
Louie – “I have a bedtime story with Mummy”
Archie – “I have hot chocolate when I go to bed, I have it in a drink cup not a real cup”
Cobie – “I got a bedtime story; my Mum reads it”
Noah – “I have hot chocolate”
Marilena – “My mummy reads me a book”
We also looked at volcanoes this week. The children had been showing an interest in volcanoes as they played outside. They imagined that the floor was lava and they had to stand or climb on something so the lava didn’t ‘get them’.
We watched some videos of volcanoes and lava. In one video we saw lava melting a car as it flowed on top of it, we then created our own science experiment to see if our ‘lava’ would flow over and cover the car.
This is what the children said about the volcanoes…
Logan – “Lava’s from volcanoes and it eats cars”
Egosa – “Lava is orange it comes out of the volcano, a volcano’s like a mountain, then the lava goes so high and then it will get to town and it will melt over”
Finally, on Friday this week, we celebrated Red Nose Day, our children wore something. Red to school and donated money to help children that are not so lucky.
Bella – “I put coins in the basket ‘cause somebody has no food and no teddies”
Lori – “We put money in the basket ‘cause some people don’t have any”
Noah – “The boys and girls didn’t have dinner, but I have dinner”
This week is the first week where we have all our children back in Nursery and wow…. we have been busy!
We have welcomed some new children into Nursery, new friends have been made and old friends have been very happy to be back and play with each other again.
All children have planted seeds to grow a sunflower for Mums for Mothers Day. We hope all our Mums have had a lovely relaxing time on Mothers Day.
Before we planted our seeds we talked to the children about how to grow flowers and what things we might need, this is what the children told us:
Jaxon – “We need a hose and some seeds”
Hollie – “Seeds”
Thomas – “We need some mud”
Archie – “We need a plant pot and water; I got a plant for my Mummy, but it died because I didn’t water it”
Cobie – “You need to put seeds in a cup”
Ruby – “You need water and mud”
Here are some photos so that you can see what our children have been busy doing this week.
Some children made transient art presents (squares) and Christmas trees (triangles) using sticks and buttons, using lots of mathematical language as they played.
We continued to make our wreaths; all designed by your child, we sang and recorded our Nativity songs (you may order this on parent pay if you would like a copy) and finally, one of our children found the hidden book in Nursery! Well done Emilia!
This week in Nursery the elves brought us some doughnut seeds which we planted, sprinkled with magic and the next day we had magically grown our very own doughnuts! They also got up to some other tricks this week, even wrapping our Christmas tree in toilet paper to make a snowman!
December 2020 has finally arrived and it’s all very exciting.
Our very own elves arrived from Santa in Lapland and have been up to all sorts of mischief!
One the first day they arrived and sat in our curiosity box, they brought us a letter to tell us the rules and what their names were (Ernie and Ethel).
We are not allowed to touch the elves, or it will make the magic go away and they will have to go back to Santa.
Our elves have hidden in our take home elves on the washing line, they have pretended to be monkeys in our 5 little monkey line up and they have had a sack race with Rudolph. I wonder what they will get up to next week?
This week in Nursery our children have been busy dressing up, playing with our role play sleigh and reindeer, decorating our own Christmas tree, making Christmas cards and writing their names, making a 2021 calendar (and 2021 will be an amazing year!) and finally … making Christmas wreaths for your front door!
December 2020 has finally arrived and it’s all very exciting.
The children enjoyed having a go at using the folding saw, but their favourite tool to use was the drill. There’s just something about that drilling noise that causes great excitement!
All our orders were finished on time, what good little elves we have!
We finally managed to get some compost to plant our pumpkin seeds and so this week we have done lots of planting and been very busy outside.
We bought some bulbs for our garden; these were in our curiosity box and quite a few children though they looked like onions! In our wild garden outside, we have done some weeding and planted bulbs…. we still have another planter to weed yet! The children enjoyed exploring this area and getting dirty, we found lots of worms and grubs! We all planted our own pumpkin seeds and took the pot home to water and grow. We have also planted some pumpkin seeds to keep at school and see what we can grow!
At Forest School we began to weave our freshly cut willow in between the fence posts that they key worker children put in the ground in lockdown. You can see our fence starting to take shape although we have much more work to do on this!
Also this week, our curiosity box arrived. We will be looking at lots of weird and wonderful things in our box over the coming months. This week we started off with a lemon and a melon. We looked closely at these particular fruits as one lunchtime a child had said they didn’t want to eat their melon as they didn’t like it. When we asked them why they said they didn’t like it because it was sour. The children first looked at the melon and described what they saw, the next day we had a lemon in the box, they told us it was different because one was big and one was small, then we chopped them up and looked inside…then we tasted them. We have some lovely photos of the children tasting the lemon (only if they wanted to try it) and some children liked it so much that they wanted to eat more. The melon however, was much more popular!
Once we had eaten the fruit our box was empty until one lunchtime a child found a spider climbing the wall. We put the spider in the box so we could have a closer look with our magnifying glasses. We counted its legs, noticed that it had ‘black knees’ and then we found the spider on the internet…it was a cellar spider. Once we had a good look at the spider we set it free but not before some really brave children held the spider!
This week we went to Forest School and went on a leaf hunt. We explored the area, found lots of different coloured leaves and collected them, we climbed trees, collected some wood to start making our reindeers, cooked up some delicious treats in our mud kitchen and generally had a great time out in the fresh air.
When we came back inside we explored Autumn colours through painting our own Autumn designs and we made our own Autumn coloured rice to play with.
The children in FS1 had great fun celebrating Children in Need 2020.
In our first week back after October half term we have been busy with the first of our Autumn celebrations…Halloween and Bonfire Night!
We painted pumpkins, made Halloween pumpkins using shapes and we also scooped out some real pumpkins and talked about how they were smelly and sticky. Lori said we could plant the seeds; give them some water and we can grow our own pumpkins! As soon as the non-essential shops are open, we will get some compost and plant our seeds.
We also did some dressing up and made some delicious chocolate apples with sprinkles – yum!
On Friday we made some firework pictures. We used colourful bun cases and practised our cutting skills to open them and make them look like a firework explosion. We also did some firework splatter painting outside, if your child was covered in paint, this is why. If it is any consolation, the teachers were also covered in paint too!
As we talked with the children about the fireworks that they had seen the night before this is what they told us…
Lori – “It’s all foggy this morning because of the fireworks last night”
Logan – “I’ve got fireworks at my house, it go like BANG. They go up into the sky, they looked like red, orange, blue, pink, yellow and green, all the colours”
Marilena – “The fireworks sounded like a banging drum”
We hope you enjoy reading our autumn 2 newsletter.
FS1 newsletter autumn 2
This week in Nursery we were visited by different pets, Cinnamon the Guinea Pig, Daisy the Rabbit and Ebony the Stick Insect. Mostly, the children enjoyed petting the fluffy animals, but some children were brave enough to hold the Stick Insect!
Here’s what the children had to say about the Guinea Pig…
Amelia – “He’s so cute!”
Cobie – “It’s a squeaky noise”
Mohammed – “He’s a baby”
Logan – “I want a Guinea Pig”
Marilena – “He’s soft, he’s all brown”
Louie – “My Guinea Pig has black, red and blue eyes”
And the Rabbit…
Mohammed – “He’s soft”
Lawand – “Cutie”
Louie – “She feels like a bunny”
Reggie – “She’s nice”
Cobie – “She can sleep in the hay”
Logan – “Her eyes are all red, I got blue eyes”
Ruby – “She’s a girl, she’s twitching her nose”
Marilena – “She’s so fluffy, her ears are pink inside”
Eric -“Oh, so soft!” “Look, a tail!”
And the Stick Insect…
Isabelle – “It’s tickling me!”
In Nursery we have made shape houses with the children. Each child made their own picture and talked about who lives in their house. We also made some chocolate brownies.
Before we looked at the ingredients, we asked the children what we might need to put in the cake, Shane knew that we needed eggs to make it. Alfie said the cocoa smelled “chocolatey”. We looked at the chocolate chips and each held one between our fingers, Shane told us they were melting, then we washed our hands in warm soapy water. We talked about the different colours we could see while we were mixing and after we had melted the butter in the microwave and counted down from ten to zero, Lori said it looked ”eggy”.
We had some messy play outdoors in the sand pit. When it had rained, our sand was very wet and sloppy, so we used it as cement and built a wall with some bricks.
We had some messy play indoors with shaving foam!
This week we have had a very busy and eventful week in Nursery! The children did their very first baking, they made chocolate cornflake buns, one to eat and one to take home… these were definitely a hit with the children.
During the mixing and tasting, the children discussed what they could see, hear and taste.
Shane – The chocolate melts in the microwave.
Amelia – Yummy, yummy in my tummy!
Bella – The cornflakes are making a crunching noise.
Cobie – It looks delicious.
Marilena – It smells good.
Amelka – You’ve got to put the chocolate in the microwave.
Archie – It’s gooey and its soft.
As part of our ‘All about me’ learning, this week in Foundation 1 some of our children chose to paint a self-portrait. The children used mirrors to look at their face and then discuss their eye, hair and skin colour before choosing colours to use to paint themselves. They have produced some fantastic paintings!
This week we have had lots of fun playing outdoors in the wind, rain and in the sunshine. We have had all four seasons in the space of a week!
21st September 2020
Now that our children are settled and happy in Nursery, we are starting to see them begin to learn as they play.
We hope that you enjoy reading our autumn term newsletter.
FS1 Newsletter Autumn One.docx
We have all settled well during the first week in nursery, take a look at some of our fun learning.
2019 – 2020
We had a very busy week in Nursery during Science Week
We had a visit from Leeanimals and saw lots of different animals, some were very scary, some were soft and some were slithery, squeaky or smooth!
We were all very brave and got a certificate to say so!
We saved the seeds from inside our apples when we had apples as a snack. We learned how to plant seeds and what order to do things in and then we had a go at planting our own seeds. Together we estimated how long we though it would take for our seeds to grow and put the timer on to check if were right. The seeds didn’t grow after 2 minutes, 5 minutes or even 16 minutes so we had another guess at how many sleeps it would be.
Some children painted some spring flowers.
We loved our science experiment mixing different ingredients together and making messy gooey slime.
We all got to make and take home our own pot of slime to have fun with at home!
This week we have had lots of exciting things happening all around reading and books in Nursery. We had a lady come to school who exchanged our world book day tokens for a brand new story book for every child, the children enjoyed going to visit the school library and choosing their own books.
We had a cosy pyjama day where the children brought in their favourite stories from home to share with their friends and adults in school, we painted pictures of our favourite books in school and we shared toast and hot chocolate and watched a Julia Donaldson story on TV.
On World Book Day, the children brought in the masquerade masks that they had designed and decorated at home and they entered a competition. Well done to Everlynn who won a prize of two storybooks. We also had a visit from an illustrator who read a story and then spent some time with the children doodling, drawing shapes and shading.
We have enjoyed making, eating, flipping and talking about how to make pancakes this week in Nursery.
The new children have settled well into nursery and are enjoying their learning.
FS1 Spring 1 Newsletter
Christmas party celebrations
Outdoor fun in Nursery
Children in Need 2019
This is what the children have been saying:
“Pudsey Bear needs some money because he needs it for everybody to buy everything like toys or a bed or if they’re poorly he might make them better”
Emily
“We get money for Pudsey to get some food for the children “
Grace
“I’m wearing a Pudsey Bear t-shirt ‘cos we put money in the pot for the kids with no house, mummy or daddy or no car”
Benjamin
Diwali Celebrations
We read the story of Diwali with Peppa Pig, dressed up in Indian outfits, did some Indian dancing, had Henna designs on our hands and also we tried Diwali Sweets.
FS1 Autumn 2 Newsletter
Halloween fun in nursery!
We hope you enjoy reading our class newsletter.
FS1 Aut1 Newsletter
Take a look at our first photos from Forest School.
Tree Planting in the school grounds
Foundation Stage One children have been busy planting tree saplings to create a wood for the benefit of all children at Kingfisher Primary. Miss Geraghty applied to the Woodland Trust who donated 105 saplings to create a medium working wood along with an additional 30 saplings and 30 small bushes.
The long term project for the area of land at Kingfisher where the saplings are planted, is for the pupils to be able to engage in Forest School learning and experiences. They will benefit from Forest school as it allows them the freedom and challenge to explore and learn first hand what happens in the natural world. Children will develop problem solving skills which they can then apply to their indoor learning.
Kingfisher Primary Astrea Academy Trust
