Welcome back!

This half term we will be learning about the seaside! We hope for some sunny weather. We will be reading books about the beach such as Sharing a Shell, Olly the Octopus and myths and legends about the sea. Through this topic we will be:

• Creating temporary art using natural materials to put in our willow area.
• Recording our feelings and experiences through drawing, mark making and emergent writing.
• Using our voices and bodies to respond imaginatively to sounds and music.
• Considering the effects of pollution on the natural habitat.

Alongside these the children will be blending and segmenting words, exploring letters and sounds and recording their work through a range of mark making experiences. They will be looking at adding one more and early subtraction skills in their mathematical work. We are also looking forward to the possible visit from a local lifeguard!

This week we have started our new topic, Scrumptious.

Over the coming weeks we will be making and tasting lots of different types of food, finding new tastes that we like. We will be finding out about food from different places around the world using our senses to see how they are different or the same. We will be doing lots of cooking and experiencing the changing states of food, looking at how things freeze or boil. We will also be considering ways in which we can have a balanced diet and thinking about where food comes from. There are so many fun activities to come, we are very excited!

This week we had a Welsh banquet to engage the children with the topic. We tried many different types of food from our local area and talked about the way it smelt and most importantly, tasted. The children used Welsh words to describe the food as this week was also Brackla Primary School's Welsh week. We tried cooked leeks, Welsh rarebit, Welsh lamb and mint crisps, bara brith, Welshcakes and Welsh pancakes. We all had a try and then voted on whether or not we liked each taster. We put together a graph to show which food was the most popular, it was the pancakes. 

Welcome back to our Nursery children

and welcome new parents and children to Brackla Primary school.

We are very excited to start our new topic of 'Pitter Patter Puddle Play'. For this topic we will be looking at water and all of its uses. We will be finding out about what water is used for in home and at school. We will be looking at how to play with it safely. We will be considering why plants need water to live, we have our own class plants to look after. We will be finding out about animals that live in water. We have our own class fish, Peppa and George, who need water to swim in. We will be looking at the school pond in the wild area and seeing what plants and animals live in it. We will be using water to cook food making yummy treats such as jelly and pasta. We would welcome any items brought in from home to share with the class.

This week we went on a puddle hunt and looked around the school for the biggest puddle, it was on the junior yard and we had lots of fun jumping in it in our wellies. 

For this topic we will be needing spare clothes in our bags just in case and wellies kept in school. 

Reminders for new parents: 

• Drop off time will be 1:00 at Reception door. Collection time will be 3:15 at the Nursery yard door. For current parents collections will remain the same.
• All items of clothing will need to be clearly labelled - including shoes.
• Children will need spare clothes in their bags.
• Having wellies in school would be very useful for our water topic. 

We look forward to a packed term! We know it will be lots of fun!

Miss. John, Mrs. Vincent, and Mrs. Deere

Welcome back!

We very much enjoyed last term's topic of Holes, Spaces and Hiding Places. The children learned 'We are Going on a Bear Hunt' by Michael Rosen and went on bear hunts in the school grounds. We enjoyed getting our hands dirty planting our vegetables and flowers ready for spring. We have been keeping active in our PE lessons and have been working hard on our Welsh. We have been using big writing to improve both our gross and fine motor skills and have been writing outside in chalk and inside on our interactive whiteboard or on giant pieces of paper. We hope you enjoyed our open afternoon and coffee morning performance. The children were very excited to show everything that they have been doing. 

This half term in Nursery/Reception our topic will be Glow and Glitter! We are very much looking forward to learning about seasonal changes as we move into Winter. We will be experimenting with ice to see how it melts and we will be building our own class igloo. We will be looking at different animals that live in cold countries and finding out about the stars in our sky. 

Our Reception children will be continuing their work on letters and sounds. So far we have looked at 

 s a t p i n

We have been finding words that start with each sound and learning to say and write the letters. We are starting to blend the letters into words like in, it, sat, pat.

We have also been given our first reading books and we hope that you have enjoyed them at home as much as we have in school. The children have been learning the names of the characters and beginning to understand how to hold a book correctly and understand where the story starts and ends. We ask that you bring your reading folder into school every day so that we can read together. 

We are very excited for the term ahead! 

Miss John and the Nursery/Reception team

Welcome back from all of the staff in Nursery/Reception!

Since we got back we have been getting to know all of our new staff, there are lots of new faces! We have already been very busy and have all settled in really well. We have been playing with our friends and meeting new friends too. We have had lots of opportunities to focus on numeracy and literacy through active, fun games. We have also been taking advantage of the last of the Summer weather and have been getting outside as much as possible. Our Reception children have especially been focused on having a go at writing, which is lots of fun! We are improving our pencil grip all the time! This week we have been making our classroom very colourful with our arts and crafts. At the moment we are creating a rainbow made out of our own hand prints and we have already made a fantastic Noah and the Ark mural for our wall! We have been looking at all of the different types of animals that joined Noah on the Ark and thinking about the noises that animals make. 

This term our topic will be Holes, Spaces and Hiding Places and through this we will be learning about Autumn. We will be making dens and thinking about the environments in which different animals live. We will be thinking about sizes, shapes and amounts in maths and will be reading lots of Percy and the Park Keeper stories, so read along at home for extra fun!

We have also been enjoying having lunches in school and showing the new Nursery children how to do it. If you would like your child to have school dinners they are £2.10 per day, when paying please make sure payment is enclosed in a named envelope and handed either to our Nursery/Reception staff or the staff in the school reception. If you would like your child to have their own packed lunch we would very much appreciate a clearly labelled bag or box and we ask that there are no sweets or fizzy drinks.  We also ask that any items of clothing are clearly labelled with the child's name, including shoes.

We will use these pages to keep you up to date with everything that we are doing within our class and hope that you will enjoy seeing all of our work through photographs and videos.  Here are some of our year so far. 

Miss F John