Oak Class

 Term 1 28/10/2024

The first term has come to an end and the children in Oak class have settled in well, becoming acquainted with the routines and have been forming good relationships with staff and friends. 

At the start of October we read the story "The Colour Monster", introducing the children to the emotions sad, happy, angry, scared, calm and love. The children engaged in activities such as using mirrors to see what these emotions look like in our friends and ourselves; through playdoh, dance and making music with instruments. We enjoyed action songs such as "If your happy and you know it" and art activities such as exploring colours to make monsters through blow straw painting, wool wrapping monsters and using coloured pasta.

Science Oxford came to visit and the children had a wonderful time engaging in a variety of science activities which helped them to develop their investigative and questioning skills.. 

Later in the term we read the story "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", which we used to explore size, counting to three and how the characters were feeling. The children explored the story in the role play area by  re-enacting the story, talking about how Baby bear was feeling and thought about how to make him feel better resulting in us cooking some Porridge Flapjack for Baby bear. 

We ended the term learning about Autumn and the different colours we can see in nature.  We went on hunts in the garden, painting and mixing colours, reading the stories "Autumn" and "Leaf Man", creating art out of leaves, and handling and manipulating items such as conkers, acorns and pumpkins. We also enjoyed learning the song "Autumn leaves are falling down". 

 

This term the children have been developing their skills in listening to instructions and turn taking through cooking sessions of baking jam tarts and bread; as well as helping to cut up pumpkin and autumnal vegetables to make pumpkin soup. We also had the opportunity to visit our wild forest area where the children practiced listening to sounds and following instructions.

This term's Phonics has focused on environmental sounds to develop the children's listening skills, by exploring animal sounds, everyday sounds and sounds in the garden. For Maths we have focused on one to one correspondence with counting to 5 through songs such as "5 little monkeys and ducks" and counting games. 

 

 

September 2024

Oak class welcomes our returning children and new children joining our class.  

We have started this term exploring the story "Dear Zoo", which the children have enjoyed helping to lift the flaps and talk about the characteristics of the animals and the sounds they make. 

The children have had the opportunity to explore and settle into their new environment, and we have started to introduce group time rules and getting to know our new friends through group games, role play building and counting songs. 

 

 

Easter week 1/4/24

Easter time and the children have been engaging in lots of Easter theme activities such as melting chocolate to make nests, decorating Easter eggs, making fluffy bunnies, reading and counting with "We're going on an Easter egg hunt" and going on an Easter egg hunt.

 

Term 4 27/3/24

The term has been very exciting for the children in oaks as they have adapted well to the changing weather with building rivers and jumping in puddles,  as well as observing and hunting for bugs in the garden and forest school. 

 

This term the children have continued to learn about prepositions from last term when we read "Goldilocks and the three bears", with the story "we're going on a bear hunt", with the children acting out the story, using their senses and hiding under the parachute from the big brown bear. 

We have engaged in lots of cooking this term  using the stories "Mr wolf's pancake" and "Pete the cat and the perfect pizza party" to make pancakes, pizzas and Easter chick nests.

 

The children especially enjoyed pirate week for world book day, listening to "pirates love underpants", creating their own, building their own pirate ships, playing with Captain Silly pants puppet and playing in the large pirate ship. 

 

We have also been engaging in lots of fine and gross motor activities to develop our skills such as Yoga, Dancing, Dough disco using tweezers, arts and crafts (using scissors, glue sticks, paint brushes, cotton buds and wool), role play with tools and shape stretching. 

 

Nativity and Christmas 7/11/12

The children have really enjoyed getting into the spirit of Christmas this week as they enthusiastically helped to decorate our Christmas tree, painting Christmas trees and searching for the Elf on the shelf. 

They did especially well during the Christmas nativity, after all their wonderful practice.   

24/11/23

Good afternoon

This Month the children in Oaks class have enjoyed exploring forest school, looking at the changing leaves, searching for bugs and having lots of fun playing hide and seek in the tall grass, inside the shelter, under the tarps or behind trees.

This term we have been focusing on developing our understanding of emotions through stories such as "Owl Babies", where the characters are waiting for mummy to come back; "A bit lost", where a baby owl is lost and a squirrel tries to help him find the right mummy; and "The Colour Monster", which involves a monster whose colour emotions are all mixed up, but are separated out as the story goes on. 

 

The children have been exploring emotions through dancing to different pieces of music, practising facial expressions and movements, painting their own colour monsters and making colour monster spaghetti. 

 

 

Welcome 22/09/23

I would like to say a warm hello to the new families and returning families.

Over the last two weeks we have been focusing on settling in and learning our routines. Our focus book has been " Whatever Next" about a little bear who wants to go to the moon, which the children have enjoyed exploring the props for. From this the children have helped to launch teddy to the moon using a starry night sheet, helped build a role play rocket out of blocks and create rocket artworks.

Alongside this during circle time we have been singing lots of songs that involve actions and using a sheet of Lycra for songs such as "row row your boat" and "5 little monkeys" to encourage all the children to join in at group time. 

We have also been exploring the children's interest with the apple tree in the garden. This has inspired talks about what makes an apple good or bad. We then picked apples and made an apple crumble, that we enjoyed together. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meet Josh! 21/09/23whatever Next

Josh joined the Oak team in September. He is a qualified teacher and worked in Early Years for a number of years before he began his teacher training. He is passionate about the outdoors and shares his love for nature with the children in his class and across the setting. 

 

Beware for Here be Giants! - 08/07/23

Despite a shorter week due to Strike Action we have still had plenty of time for learning fun this week with our new core text, Jack and the Beanstalk.

The classroom has been filled with the tapping of hammers and rasping of saws as the children have been curious about exploring the sounds made by the tools while making their own castles in the clouds (just like the giant lives in!) using blocks and cotton wool. In group time we have worked collaboratively to build a castle together, taking turns to choose and place a blocks to form a castle. When it fell down we were resilient and built it up again, learning from what worked and what didn't the previous time.

On Tuesday morning, to our astonishment a lot of things had mysteriously appeared in our nursery! In the classroom a beanstalk had appeared overnight, and a giant hand left a huge pair of trousers hanging up. When we went outside (tiptoeing very quietly just in case the giant was out there!) we found enormous footprints leading to a huge box of porridge with a large bowl, spoon and jug of milk beside it - clearly our messy giant had had some breakfast and left quite a mess. We spent some time running around the garden looking for him. 

      

Inside we decided to decorate the trousers that we had found and a treasure bag for the giant's golden coins. With adult support many of our children used scissors to cut out shapes and pictures they chose from magazines to stick onto the trousers and bag. After a few tries with adult help several of our children were then confident to use the scissors independently (still under a watchful adult eye of course!). Our giant clearly thought the new design was fabulous, as when we came into the classroom on Thursday there he was wearing them and holding his treasure sack! 

Inspired by this many of our children decided to continue using their scissor skills and apply their creativity to make their own giant faces out of paper plates and different materials. Perhaps we have the next Picasso in our midst...

 

Of course the absolute highlight of our week was that our caterpillars that had finally burst forth from their cocoons, transformed into beautiful butterflies. After drinking some sugar water and having a chance to strengthen their wings we released them into the garden. Some were reluctant to fly too far and so enjoyed a little rest to watch the goings on of nursery in one of our bushes before flying away to start their lives of freedom! It has been wonderful to watch this life cycle take place and the children have shown how knowledgeable they are explaining the different stages in order and considering what the caterpillars and butterflies might need such as leaves and nectar.

 

 

 

Awaiting the Butterflies - 20/06/23

Our butterflies have formed their cocoons, so in preparation for their metamorphosis into butterflies we have had a colourful week of butterfly themed activities in Oak Class.

In Literacy we have been continuing our work with sequencing, using our knowledge of The Very Hungry Caterpillar story. We have used flashcards to order the events of the story and retell them in our own words. 

 

In Maths we have been continuing our work on pattern and colour. We started with a fun colour sorting activity, choosing a plant pot and finding all the pompoms that were the same colour as the butterfly on the pot. It was a bit tricky to pick up the pompoms with the tweezers but we used our resilience and kept trying. The pompoms also ended up on a floor a lot, but many of our children showed respect for the nursery environment by helping the adults to pick them up.

Later in the week we developed this by looking at symmetry in butterfly wings. We have been playing matching games with the butterflies, looking carefully to check that both wings are the same.

 

Butterflies have given us lots of opportunities to explore colour creatively and we have been enjoying making butterfly suncatchers out of the lids from our friday lunchtime icecreams, lolly sticks and sequins.

We were fascinated by the process of making 'magic' butterflies for our display using coffee filter papers, felt tips and water. This is a really easy but very satisfying craft that you might like to try at home. Just scribble patterns on the coffee paper, paint with water and watch the magic as the colours run. Leave it to dry, then cut down one side to open it out and reveal your beautiful symmetrical butterfly!

 

 

 

Caterpillar Fun - 23/06/23

With the arrival of our caterpillars last Friday we have been having a fun week of activities based around The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The children have enjoyed using their creativity to make caterpillars. They have thought about how to use colour, pattern and different mediums such as pompoms, card, lolly sticks and stickers to make fantastic pieces of art.      

We have also been using our fine motor skills to do some threading activities. First we used coloured pasta to thread onto pipe cleaners to make some caterpillars, another opportunity to think about pattern and colour. Later we found the very hungry caterpillar had been munching on some leaves and so we used wool and pipe cleaners to thread through the holes. This was quite tricky as the leaves ripped easily but we used our resilience and persevered with the activity.

    

In our group times, as well as looking out our caterpillars each day we have been reading through The Hungry Caterpillar. We have been singing about the days of the week, counting the fruits and thinking about the sequencing of the story. We also made a fruit salad, counting the fruits we needed and using our knife skills to prepare it to eat at snack time - but it was so delicious it was gobbled up before we could snap a picture! We also tried a leaf from our nasturtium plants we had grown (edible leaves!) just like the hungry caterpillar. We were curious to see how they would taste, though some of us didn't like them very much as they were a bit hot and spicy.

   

 

We have also been enjoying some sensory play in the water tray, showing our knowledge of minibeast names as we fish them out of the water tray.

Just like the very hungry caterpillar we have watched our caterpillars getting big and fat (though we haven't fed them any chocolate cake or salami!). A few have just started to hang upside down to start forming their cocoons, so we are very excited to watch them develop next week and get stuck into some butterfly themed activities!