NURSERY

Autumn is one of the most beautiful seasons and a real period of change in the natural world. It is also a particularly exciting time for children, as distinctive sounds and smells fill the air, and the once vibrant green shades of summer give way to warm yellows, reds and browns. Fruits and nuts are also harvested, days become shorter, and animals prepare themselves for the cold winter months ahead. Changes like these are ideal for inspiring children’s interest in the outdoors and following the children’s lead. This is the time of the year they can hunt for conkers, play in fallen leaves, learn all about the autumn harvest and freely explore the outdoors in cooler weather. They may notice cobwebs more, spot squirrels and discover feathers on the floor

In Nursery we have started to explore this wonderful season and will continue to do many exciting activities and listen to wonderful stories to extend our vocabulary.

Enjoy some of the activities we have done show cased in our Nursery photos.

RECEPTION

This Week in Reception

The launch of their first business enterprise, R’s Pizza, has meant a busy, action packed week for the children in Reception. Allowing the children to decide on a goal and follow their interests in this way has resulted in a week of spectacular learning opportunities that the children have embraced with enthusiasm, resilience and such tremendous motivation.

It all began with the building. The children decided that all good restaurants needed walls, windows and a door with a bell which resulted in some online research into what type of building façade they preferred. We then went outside to study brickwork patterns, learnt how to mix primary paint colours of red, yellow and blue to make the perfect brick brown. The children then used sponges to create their restaurant wall.

Designing and making a door was a big challenge but one that our intrepid Reception learners were determined to conquer. With a little help, they measured the width and height of the gap where they wanted the door to be and then worked collaboratively to hunt around the school for the perfect material to use. They knew that it need to be strong but not too strong in case a grown-up needed to cut it to size. A large cardboard box was finally discovered and was carefully measured to see if it would fit the gap. It did and was soon cut to size and a window and door handle were added. The children came up with all their own ideas and the adults were simply part of the construction work crew. Hanging the door was another big challenge and the children tried several different approaches (glue and sellotaped pieces of paper) before settling on masking tape. The worked together to measure the lengths of tape that they required and used lots of rich mathematical vocabulary in the process. It was learning at its absolute finest and simply magical to watch.

With the restaurant now complete, the children then worked hard to design menus for their customers. However, after deciding on pizza, macaroni and cheese on toast they began to want to add other dishes to offer their customers. This led to the introduction of a Today’s Specials board. The children then set about making sushi from cotton wool and felt strips and cupcakes from bright pink play-dough.

Learning how to run a restaurant and the jobs they needed to fulfill proved great fun. Mark and Alexia loved being on the front desk, meeting customers and showing them to their seats. They were also in charge of taking the customers money as they paid their bills and they used a number line to make sure that they had added up the items on each bill correctly. Mark learnt to ask his customers, “Cash or credit card?” and Alexia reminded us not to look and told customers to keep their pin number secret if they paid by credit card.

Tsubasa, George, Andrei, Tim, Timur and Yuto chose to work as table waiters, writing down the customers’ orders and taking the orders to the kitchen to carefully gather all the items on their lists. Not one single customer was disappointed or ended up with the wrong order. The boys also decided to make themselves badges with their names on, just like the servers in a real restaurant.

Everyone, of course, took turns to be a customer.

Not content with make-believe food, the children then asked if they could have real pizza in their restaurant. Miss Kristina and I thought that this was a great idea! Carefully following our instructions, they went on to create some mouthwatering pizzas that they proudly baked themselves. Along the way, the children learnt lots of new vocabulary as they spread the tomato sauce, sprinkled on the cheese and sliced the mushrooms.

But best of all was finally tasting their creations...”delicious!” was the unanimous respo