Blackfell Primary School

Welcome to Nursery

Welcome to Nursery. We have all enjoyed our first week in Nursery and we have all had lots of fun. We have been exploring our new outdoor and indoor environments as well as learning routines and making lots of new friends. We have all settled in very well and are having so much fun! Take a look at the activities we have been taking part in this week.

Planting

In Nursery we have been improving our nature garden by planting some scented plants into our fresh soil. We have discussed what we need to do to look after the plants and talked about what the plants need in order to grow. We have enjoyed smelling the plants, describing the different scents and choosing our favourite scent.

Our First PE Lesson!

We had so much fun in our first P.E lesson. We warmed up then we listened to instructions on how to play a game. Firstly we played 'The Bean Game', where we had to walk around the hall. When Mrs Stockman shouted out a type of bean we had to make the shape of that bean. There were different movements for each bean type. We had lots of fun being; runner beans, jumping beans, broad beans, French beans, bakes bean and even beans on toast! 

In the second game we had to pretend to swim around the hall and pretend to be different types of  fish. When Mrs Stockman shouted  shark we had to run and jump into the nearest safe hoop. Each time we swam around the hall, a hoop was removed. We had to hold onto each other and work as a team in the hoops as the groups inside of the hoop got bigger each time. We tried very hard not step out of the hoops into the shark infested water. If we didn’t make it into a hoop in time before Mrs Stockman counted back from ‘5’ or if we accidentally stepped out of the hoop, we were out. 

We really enjoyed our first P.E lesson and can’t wait until our next one.

D.I.S.C.O!

Nursery had a really fun time dancing at the disco . They all looked fabulous as they arrived at the disco in their party outfits. They listened to the music and showed off their amazing dance moves as they joined their friends on the dance floor. Everyone chatted to each other and they enjoyed going to the tuck shop to buy some treats. It was lovely to see everyone having fun. We are really looking forward to the next disco!

Anti-Bullying Week

This year, Anti-Bullying Week took place from the 11^th to the 15^th November. Anti-Bullying Week has a different theme each year. This year’s theme was ‘Change Starts With Us’.

During Anti-Bullying Week, we have been raising awareness about bullying. During which we learnt about bullying and how to deal with it.

Throughout this week, we have enjoyed listening to and sharing stories about Elmer the Elephant - who was different to the other elephants. We have also enjoyed making patterns, colouring in our own Elmer the elephants and doing jobs in the Elmer themed areas around Nursery, Reception and outdoors.

Odd Socks Day!

This year, Anti-Bullying Week took place from the 11^th to the 15^th of November. Anti-Bullying Week has a different theme each year. This year’s theme was ‘Change Starts With Us’.

On Tuesday 12^th November, the whole school had an ‘Odd Socks Day’ to celebrate what makes us all unique. We loved wearing odd socks for the day and showing off our socks to our friends and teachers. This was to help raise awareness that it is okay to be different.

A King Is Born

Nursery and Reception really enjoyed taking part in their nativity play,'A King Is Born', this week. They have all worked very hard whilst practicing and all of their hard work has definitely paid off. The children thoroughly enjoyed performing in front of their families. They sang excellently and with so much confidence! All of the teachers are so proud of them all.

Decorating The Christmas Tree

During the first week of December, we have all played our part in helping to put up our class Christmas tree. We have enjoyed helping the teachers to make our Nursery look festive. We took turns to help the teachers to put the lights, baubles and tinsel on the tree. We had lots of fun decorating the Christmas tree and we all think it looks great.

Election Day

During circle time, on election day, we discussed what voting was and what it means to vote. Just like our country, we also had a very important decision to make in Nursery. We had to vote for one boy and one girl each - from Nursery - to win the 'Resilience 5R' award for this term. We had to sit at our Nursery polling station and choose one boy and one girl's name to write on a piece of paper and then put it into the box. We each choose the boy and girl which we each thought had worked very hard, who had not given up and who had always followed our school rules this term. 

Magical Me

One of our topics for the Autumn term in Nursery is Magical Me. During our first week we have taken part in an exciting art activity where we recreated ourselves in our nursery uniform, using paper plates, paints and materials to create a collage effect. We had to decide on which materials we wanted to use to recreate our faces and bodies. We had lots of fun re-creating ourselves.

Our First Trip To The Library!

We really enjoyed our first trip to our school library in Nursery. We had a great time looking at all of the different books that are available for us to share with our loved ones. We each chose a book to take home to share with our grown-ups. Once we had chosen a book to take home, Mrs Stockman read us a story. We cannot wait to go back every Friday morning throughout our time in Nursery!

PSHE Week 2- Self Awareness

On our second week of PSHE Nursery and Reception joined together to share our thoughts on Self-Awareness, we split off into four groups to discuss our theme and to participate in an activity. We began our morning by talking about our different features, we all got into pairs to see and talk about how different we looked from each other. We then took it in turns to describe our friends to our groups. We then all worked together in our groups to put ourselves in order of height smallest to tallest! We have had a great morning working with our friends on our PSHE theme, stay tuned to find out what our theme will be for next week!! 

Well done Nursery and Reception!! 

PSHE Week 4- Social Skills

This week in PSHE our theme was Social skills. We split off into our Friday morning groups to have  a discussion and take part in a group activity. We discussed what social skills were and what it meant. we had some different picture cards with different scenario's  on and we had to decide as a group if it was friendly or unfriendly and to sort them into the relevant groups! We had a great morning with our sorting activity and talking about how to be friendly and not unfriendly!! 

Well done Nursery and Reception!!

PE - Fireworks!

Nursery have really enjoyed PE this week as they have been imagining themselves on a dark evening, about to make their way through a crowded field towards a bonfire. They had to step carefully through the crowd, before beginning work on a dance called ‘Shooting stars’. This dance was based on careful hand movements and controlled spins. They started with a warm up: working with a partner, rubbing arms, running on the spot. Then they done some stretches and bends - then both sequences put together.
Next they had to pretend that they were approaching the bonfire. This included running with quick, light steps, then taking one large, exaggerated step together.
They then took part in the 'Shooting stars' part of the lesson in which they pretended to be fireworks. During this part they had to hold some coloured tissue. Holding the tissue, they used detailed hand movements, clenching fists and spreading fingers. As the lesson progressed, they had to add spins to the hand movements. They then added onto their dance again by adding jumps to the developing shooting stars dance.
Lastly, they took park in a cool down which involved some controlled stretches which were copied from Mrs Stockman.
They had a really fun time pretending to be fireworks!

Road Safety Week in Nursery

Road Safety Week was held from 18th-24th November within our Nursery. The theme for the week was, “Step up for Safe Streets”. The aim for this year was for the children to learn about, shout about and  celebrate the amazing design-led solutions that will allow us all to get around in safe and healthy ways, every day.
During our time in Nursery this week, we have discussed the different types of crossing, and what we should do when preparing to cross the road. We have also demonstrated what we need to look out for whilst crossing the road and also what we should teach   others about how to be safe when crossing the road.
On Wednesday 20th, this was a special day called ,”Beep Beep Day”. This day aims to help save little lives. On this day, we all went    outside onto the school grounds to practice crossing the road  safely using; a pelican crossing, a zebra crossing and a lolly pop lady.
We enjoyed listening to Super Cats Road Safety story this week which reminded us of everything we have spoken about throughout the week. It also allowed us to be able to see what happens if you do not cross the  road correctly and safely. We have all made a promise to stop, look both ways and listen whilst crossing the road in the future.

Making Christmas Cards

In Nursery we have been very busy making Christmas cards for our parents and carers. We have had lots of fun painting our fingers, hands and feet to make the cards. We have also enjoyed being very creative and deciding on what we want to put onto our cards to make them decorative and unique. After our cards had dried, we all signed them by writing our own names!

Christmas Jumper Day

On Friday 13th December, it was Christmas jumper day. We enjoyed coming into Nursery wearing our festive jumpers and accessories. During our morning in Nursery we showed off our jumpers and discussed what was on them with our friends.  We all looked fabulous!
Some of us stayed at school for a little bit longer and enjoyed having a Christmas dinner with our friends in the school dinner hall. We pulled crackers and sang Christmas songs. Our dinner was delicious! 

Chatterbox

Our holiday homework for Nursery was to decorate a box containing items which are related to our favourite Disney story. We were all given a chance to share our chatterbox with our friends in  Nursery. We really enjoyed making our chatterboxes with our grown-ups at home and sharing them with our friends at Nursery.

PSHE Week 1 - Belonging 

During our first week of PSHE, we joined with Reception to share our thoughts on our weekly topic of 'belonging'. In order to help us to understand our theme we listened to the 'Owl Babies' story, which was read by Mrs Stockman. We discussed the feelings of the characters and how their feelings changed throughout the different parts of the book. We shared our thoughts, as part of a big group, on what it felt like to feel welcome and also on what it means to belong in places such as our family, our local community and in our school community.

PSHE Week 3 - Managing Feelings 

In our third week of PSHE, our theme was managing feelings. We worked in our four groups, with an adult and each group were given a feeling to look at in depth. We either had happy,sad, angry or scared. 
Before we could start to learn how to manage our emotions, it was important that we learned how to recognise and name them first. We each looked at our emotion and discussed with our adults what that emotion is and discussed how to recognise when we are feeling that emotion. Each group read a book which helped us understand happy, sad, angry or scared. By using the books they helped us to understand what each emotion feels like, when we might feel that emotion and how to identify if others are feeling like that. 
Lastly, we took turns in our circle to hold a feeling stone whilst we shared our experiences of emotions and things that make us feel happy, angry, scared or sad.

PSHE Week 5 - Rights and Responsibilities

The theme for our fifth week of PSHE was ‘Rights and Responsibilities.’ During our group time we looked at different jobs that we do around Nursery and Reception and looked at symbols to represent the different areas in which we work in. Firstly, we discussed what our ‘rights’ were in each area—so what we are entitled to do and what we should expect to see in that area when we enter it.
Next, we discussed our ‘responsibilities’ in that area. Our   discussion involved talking about; what we should be doing in that area, what we should behave like in the area and what we need to do to make sure that area is kept the way it should be when tidying up—how we would replenish the area.
We all shared some excellent ideas and are all fully aware of our rights and responsibilities in our areas around Nursery and Reception.

PSHE Week 2 - Friendships

The theme for our seventh week of PSHE was ‘Friendships.’ During our group time we discussed what a good friend is and what makes a good friend. We identified the personality traits of a good friend and shared our ideas on how we could all show good friendship to people around  Nursery and Reception. Some of our ideas included; helping people when they need help, playing together, drawing together, helping friends when they fall over, sharing toys together, using nice and kind words, looking after everybody, sharing snacks with people, asking how our friends are feeling and eating together.

After our discussion, we made a friendship web—using some string. We each took turns to hold the ball of string and shared a sentence on how we can be a good friend in school. We then had to hold onto the piece of string and roll the ball of string to one of our friends for them to share their ideas. We had lots of fun making the friendship web and we have all shown an excellent understanding of what makes a good friend.

Jack Frost - Washington Art Gallery

On 6th December, Nursery and Reception went on their annual trip to Washington Art Gallery to see Jack Frost. Before they went, Nursery enjoyed eating their lunch in the dinner hall alongside Reception and the rest of the school. 
At 12:30 we made our way outside and got onto the coach which took us to the art gallery. At the gallery we were all very sensible and well behaved. We enjoyed watching and joining with the performance - and we were even invited up onto the stage to join in with a song!
We all had a fantastic time and there were lots of smiles throughout the day. It was a great start to our Christmas celebrations.

Making Firework Calendars

In Nursery we have been making firework calendars, for our parents and carers, ready to take home for the beginning of the new year. We used either; cut up toilet roll tubes, large pipe cleaners or small pipe cleaners and we dipped them into a colour of our choice. We give them a twist and then made a swirling motion onto a piece of black card so that our final outcome looked like an exploding firework! We then added another colour on top(using the same method) to make the calendar very colourful. Lastly, we sprinkled some glitter onto the fireworks to add some extra detail. We really enjoyed our messy art and we hope our parents and carers like their new 2020 calendars!

Presents From Santa!

As we entered the Nursery door on Monday 17th, we noticed that our Elf On The Shelf was sitting next to some presents. Santa had been overnight and left us a book each. We were all very happy and excited.