Stick Man

The children are exploring the story of Stick Man, by Julia Donaldson, over the festive season. In the story, Stick Man is picked up by several people and animals who want to use him for different things such as a mast for a sandcastle and an arm for a snowman. All he wants to do is back to the tree where he lives with his Stick Lady and their 3 Stick children. It is a beautiful journey of imagination. Eventually Santa turns up to help Stick Man get back home, after they have delivered all the children's Christmas gifts of course. The children have collected sticks in the park. We would now like the children to work with their families to turn their stick into something else. How good is your imagination? Google might lend you a hand.  Please return your new ‘stick’ to nursery on Monday or take a photo of what you did with it. All returned sticks will form part of our Stick Man display. Why not borrow Stick Man from the library and have a read at home together. Stick Man animation will also be televised over the Christmas period on BBC One.

St Marys @ The Park

St Marys now has a nursery uniform. The uniform is optional but will save your children's clothes from getting dirty during creative activities. The uniforms will be available from Whittakers Schoolwear, Church Street, Blackburn. 01254 676047. Polo shirts are £6.99 and sweatshirts £7.99. For more information please take a leaflet form the windowsill outside.

Susan's Kitchen

Susan enjoys panini's at home and so chose to make them with the children. She started the week talking about paninis while the children made paper craft versions of them sandwiching different paper fillings in between 2 rectangles of white paper. Susan explained what a panini was and how they were made, talking to the children about what they liked in their sandwiches. Susan brought in her panini maker and encouraged children to make their own panini. The children buttered their own bread and chose whether they wanted cheese or tuna or both and then they watched Susan warm them in the panini machine, before they tucked into eating them.

Parent's Christmas Craft

Thank you so much to our Mummy's who came into to nursery to help us prepare our Christmas crafts, we will be displaying all the work the children did with you from the beginning of December.

Snowmen

Fahmeeda made snowmen with the children, using a mixture of paint and shaving foam and she enhanced the paint with a peppermint scent. Fahmeeda talked to the children about big and little, using big circles for the snowman's body and little circles for the head. Fahmeeda extended the children's descriptive language to include, bigger than, large, small, smaller than etc. The children also added the features of the snowman to their pictures.
Mathematics - Shape, space and measure - Begins to use the language of size

Amanda's Kitchen

Amanda explored making cakes in her kitchen. She used emptying packaging and equipment and firstly encouraged children to role play making cakes, taking on a role in their play, weighing out ingredients, mixing and putting 'cakes' in the oven. She used playdough to represent cupcakes and the children put it in the cake cases. She then explored making cake mixture, the children examined the different textures, the smell, look and feel of the different ingredients. They used an electric mixture to mix all the ingredients. The children then decorated their own cake, making buttercream icing and put the icing and jam inside the cake. Amanda then showed the children how she pipes the icing on top of the cake and the children chose different colours of icing  and different shapes to cut out and decorate it with. They each added a handful of sprinkles. The children were excited and enthusiastic about their finished cake. The cake was cut into slices to take home and Amanda discussed smiling 4 life by eating our cake after a meal to keep our teeth healthy. At the end of the week the children re-enacted making the cakes in the malleable area with all the packaging, equipment and flour. They took on the role themselves, copying what Amanda had done earlier in the week.

Wellbeing Wednesday

Wednesday is our Wellbeing Wednesday. We will be wearing our Orange clothes. The healthy message of the day is winter vegetables and we will be introducing the story The Enormous Turnip to the children. Our safety message for parents is e safety and we will be sending home some information of how parents can ensure their children are safe online at home.

Red Robins

Amanda's Christmas craft activity has been Christmas robins. The focus for this activity was shapes. The children re created a robin using a circle for his body, square eyes, a triangular beak an oval tummy and rectangle feet. Amanda discussed the different shapes with the children and labelled them for those who were unsure. We talked about the names of the shapes over and over as the children used glue to make their own robin, choosing where they wanted to stick the shapes. Amanda extended the activity for those who were knew the names of shapes and asked them to see if they could find particular shapes in the environment such as the circular clock or snack plates etc.
Mathematics - Shape, space and measure - Shows an interest in shape and space by playing with shapes or making arrangements with objects. Shows interest in shapes in the environment. Shows awareness of similarities of shapes in the environment.

Fahmeeda's Kitchen

Fahmeeda's Kitchen focussed around making Samosas. The children made paper samosas first, Fahmeeda encouraged them to fill their paper samosas with paper ingredients and use glue to act as the flour solution to stick them together. Children learnt about how to fold the samosas and many learnt that they made a triangle shape. Fahmeeda then made real samosas encouraging the children to fold the pastry, fill the samosas and stick them together. The children learnt about how to make real samosas and the filling that went inside them, they used their senses to experience the smell, look and feel of all the ingredients. The samosas were then fried and the children took them home, the spare ones were also enjoyed by the staff over lunch time. This week I remised with one of the children about what they had made with Fahmeeda, he was able to re tell me that Keema was used to fill them and they were a triangle shape, well remembered Kenzie.