AUTUMN 1

Croeso nol i Meithrin!! Welcome back to Nursery!! It has been a wonderful first half term together, catching up on the summer holiday news and being in awe of how much the children grew in six weeks!! We missed them! We have also been so lucky to welcome new faces to our Penguin family - all of whom have settled so well!! We have been incredibly busy getting to know each other and making new friendships! It's been fantastic to see the children be so kind and welcoming! Here's a little peek into what we have been busy doing this half term! Enjoy! 

 

LITERACY

The children have shown a great interest in writing this half term!! They are so keen to get a pen or pencil in their hands and write or draw! As we wanted to get to know each other more, we have been drawing self portriats and pictures of our families! We have some excellent artisits!! 

We know that in order for the children to have the strength to hold a pen or pencil, we need to build up the muscles in their hands to be nice and strong! We have been strengthening our fine motor skills by threading and making bracelets for our special people in our lives, mark making and scrubbing the tough trays clean and using tweezers to make towers from cherrios! The concentration faces have been out in full force!! 

We have a weekly mark making session where the children are let loose with pens and are encouraged to write write write!! This is super popular and the children are so proud to be able to write!!

 

 

NUMERACY

The Penguins are keen engineers!! Building and constructing is a firm favourite every day!! The children absolutely love animals and taking care of them so we often have Folly Farm being built or a "habitat for the elephants" as Austin would tell me! Through this play, the children are exposed to number, size and shape, all while being engrossed in a task that they have chosen to do. 

We have daily mental Maths sessions on the carpet where we practise numbers through song and a "guess the number of the day" game! This is always lots of fun!!

Potion making is also very popular. This is an excellent task that the children absolutely love and through this activity they are using lots of mathematical language such as empty, full, pour and fill. They also might get a tiny bit wet which is also a firm favourite!!

Expressive Arts

We certainly have a creative class of Penguins! The creative area is always full!! I have seen such a change in the independence of the children when being in the area - they are now confident to find their own materials and make decisions on what they are making and how it will look. We have had flowers, butterflies, pictures of families and Rangoli patterns. 

We have lots of children who love to dress up and often we have a princess ball on the carpet! The children dance and sing to their hearts content! I love this and it makes us smile every day! 

BIG NEWS!! We have been on the big stage for the first time this year!! We have performed our Autumn / Harvest songs for our families and to see such confident happy children - some who have only been in school a short time - really warms my heart. I am passionate about creating a loving, calm and safe space for our children and seeing them perform and adpat to changes so well makes me so proud of them! I hope you enjoyed our little performance! One of many this year I'm sure!! 

 

Humanities 

We have been learning about the fesitval of light Diwali. The children have enjoyed learning about the festival and the traditions that they do to celebrate. We had our own little festival of light where the children made lamps and rangoli patterns. The children also enjoyed doing Mhendi tattoos on hands - not their hands though!! They were really interested in learning about this tradition and asked lots of questions about it.

We also celebrated "Shwmae Day." We are very keen on speaking Welsh in Meithrin and we think it's so important especially as it ties in with our All About Me and Cynefin topics. We love celebrating where we come from and how lucky we are to have a native language! The children love singing songs and they have even started asking staff "Sut wyt ti?" as they come into school. Arbennig!! 

Health and Well Being

We love being outside!! It's great for our mental health to be outside in the fresh air. Each week we go into the downstairs woodland to explore and investigate. We explore different habitats for the bugs and insects we see each week!! That is so exciting and interesting. The children are so kind and loving that they want the habitats for the bugs and insects to be just right!! 

The mud kitchen is always busy on a Monday!! The messier and wetter the better!! It was particularly popular when we had pumkin pie on the menu!! The children were in their element scooping and pulling all of the seeds out! We even planted some in the hope that pumpkins will grow for us! 

Friday is gym day!!!! YAY!! We love nothing more than climbing, running, jumping and hoping! We have so much fun desiginig obstacle course or going on our very own obstacle course in the park! We have some great athletes in class - look out in the future - some stars in the making here!! 

 

We had a wonderful fitness session with Mr Poppy's dad Thomas for World Mental Health Day!! It was super special!! We worked all of muscles and even picked up dumbells showing just how strong we are!! The children all had a sweat band to work out in -because it was hard work - and they also had a medal each! How wonderful! A massive diolch to Poppy's dad for taking time out of his day to make our day so much brighter!! We loved it!! 

 

Science

We really want to spend more time in our community kitchen this year. First up this year was autumn biscuits!! Yum yum!! The children were able to follow the recipe, with some help, and got their hands very sticky and messy when mixing all the ingredients together! Some children were able to roll the dough out independently - using all their strength! Others were able to push the cutters into the dough. We added some food coluring - red, yellow and orange to make the biscuits look autumnal and even added a touvh of cinnamon in some!! Delicious! We are really looking forward to cooking up another storm in the kitchen next term!

We made a fizzy pumpkin potion!! This caused a mix of real excitiment in the class!! First, we had to scoop all the seeds out, then the children wanted to carve a scary face! Some children drew the face on, knowing what shapes they wanted for the eyes and nose. Once we had carved the face, we then poured a potion into the pumpkin - a sparkly, colourful, magic potion! Then the fun began! We added a powder that made a potion fiz up and pour out of the mouth!! It was Brilliant! The children loved it!!

 

Finally, we had our Harvest singing celebration this week!! Oh what a joy!! The children were so confident and happy and not a tear in sight - from the children anyway!! They were outstanding - we are super proud of our little Penguins!!

 

Have a wonderful half term! We can't wait to hear all about your adventures!! 

 

LLawer o gariad, 

Team Penguins