Week Beginning 04/06/18
Welcome to the final term of Nursery! We are so proud of how much progress the children have made this year and we hope you are to! We are excited to have fun filled few weeks before the children start their new adventure in Reception.
Healthy Eating
Our topic this term is healthy eating. We have enjoyed growing vegetables over the last few weeks and have become interested in foods that are good for us. This week we went to the local greengrocers to find out what healthy foods they sell. We made some predictions before our visit….
“They might have carrots there” Holly
” I think they will have strawberries” Jace
” They might sell watermelon that is healthy” Harley
“They have a lot of fruit there and fruit is good for you” Jack
We were excited to find that some of our predictions were correct! We bought some fruit and vegetables to take back to school and put in our role play greengrocers. We also had some ideas about what else we need in our shop.
” We need paper and pens so we can make recipts” Elliyah
” We need a sign on our shop” Bonnie
” We need a till for the money” Esther
” We need a price on the foods” Ghulam
Week Beginning 21/05/18
Smithills Farm
We all enjoyed our visit to Smithills Farm. We saw lots of animals such as cows, lambs, goats and kids, llamas, pigs and piglets, chicks, rabbits and we even went on a tractor and a donkey ride!
Week Beginning 07/05/18
Minibeast hunt
We have been very interested in finding out about minibeasts and where they live. So, we decided to go on a bug hunt! Clipboards at the ready, we went to explore the field.
We looked in the herb and flower beds to see what minibeasts we could find. We then carefully collected the minibeasts we had found and brought them back to Nursery to take a closer look. We did some fantastic observational drawings.
Butterflies
We were very excited this week when two of our butterflies emerged from their cocoons. We learnt that when butterflies come out of their cocoons their wings are still wet, so the butterflies flap and shake their wings to try remove excess ink.
Phonics
We have been working very hard in our phonic group times this term. Some of us have been writing CVC words! We have been using our robot arms to break the words into sounds before writing them. We are very proud of ourselves!
https://www.youtube.com/watchv=ksblMiliA8
https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/WhatIsPhonics.htm
Week Beginning 30/04/18
Life Cycles
We have been very excited about the changes we have seen in our caterpillars and tadpoles over the last few weeks.
Will said ” Wow look they are so big”.
Cassisus said ” They are upside down and making their cocoon”.
Scarlett said “They are building their cocoons, then they will come out and be a beautiful butterfly”.
We have been drawing lots of pictures and using our phonic knowledge to label what we have drawn.
Week Beginning 23/04/18
Height
This weeks in maths we have been learning about height and beginning to use the vocabulary tall and short. We have been ordering towers from shortest to tallest and developing our reasoning skills by explaining our answers.
Ellias and Jack counted the cubes in their towers and decided whose tower was the tallest and whose tower was the shortest.
Ellias “I’ve got seven cubes”
Jack ” I’ve got three cubes”
Ellias ” mine is the tallest because I have seven and that’s taller than three”
Jack ” and mine is the shortest”
Leen ” I have eight cubes”
Alliyah ” I have eight cubes”
Miss Weaver ” Which tower is the tallest?”
Leen ” None of them, they are both the same, we have the same amount”
ICE CREAM PARTY
We have been enjoying the warmer weather and this week we had an ice cream party with reception.
Isabelle said ” This is the best day ever”
Sophie said ” I love ice cream”
Jayden said ” it’s so cold”
Ghulam said ” It’s really delicious”
Cassius said ” It’s melting because the sun is so hot”
Week Beginning 16/04/18
Life cycles
This week we had some very special new arrivals…….caterpillars and tadpoles! Over the next half term we are going to be learning about the life cycle of a frog and a butterfly. We are going to be caring for them and learning about each stage of their life. We have had lots of fun observing them this week and talking about the changes we have started to see.
Bonnie said ” look they are eating all of the food and starting to get bigger”
Ghulam said ” they are growing and this one has got some legs, they will turn into frogs and be able to jump really high”
Planting Beans
We read the story Jasper’s Beanstalk and talked about what a bean needs to grow. We then planted our very own beans just like Jasper. We followed the instructions and made predictions about what we think will happen to our beans over the next few weeks.
Lillie said ” I think mine will grow into a big beanstalk and grow up to the sky”
Jacob said ” Mine is going to have lots of flowers on it “
Sophie said ” I think it will get bigger and leaves will grow”
Week Beginning 26/03/18
Our artist visit
This week we had a very special visit from an artist called Rowan. She came to tell us all about her job. She showed us pictures of her paintings and things she has made. She brought with her some vegetables that she had made out of recycled materials!
Rowan then helped us create our own paintings of vegetables. We carefully thought about the shape and colours of the vegetables before we started painting. We then had an art show to show of our friends our paintings.
Planting Potatoes
This week we started learning all about spring, growth and change. We have been reading a special story called ‘Olivers Vegetables’ and we planted some potatoes just like Oliver did in the story. First, we looked at the potatoes and talked about the shoots that had sprouted, then with our talk partners we discussed what a potato needs to grow. We had some great ideas.
Leen said “seeds need soil to grow and water from the rain”
Ghulam said “They need sun”
Emmanuelle said “Rain will make it grow, put it in the soil!”
We then read non-fiction books about planting potatoes before going outside to plant them.
Easter Bonnet parade
This week we enjoyed showing our Easter bonnets to the rest of the school in our parade.
Week beginning 19/03/18
Easter stay and read
Thank you to all of the family members who came along to our Easter Stay and Read and made it so enjoyable for the children. We hope you all enjoyed helping the children to complete the Easter activities. We look forward to seeing you all at our next Stay and Read.
Vets
This week we have been learning all about vets and what they do to help animals. Some of us talked about when we have took our pets to see the vet.
Jack said ” when Sandy had a poorly tummy we took her to the vert and she made her better”.
We watched videos and went to the library to find non-fiction books. We found that vets help lots of different animals.
We drew some animals that we would like to help if we were a vet and used our phonics knowledge to label our pictures.
We gathered items that we thought we would need in the vets role play area and assigned roles. We have had lots of fun role playing and helping all of the poorly animals.
Week Beginning 12/03/18
Welcome Carl
This week we started our football sessions with Carl from Manchester City. We had so much fun! We became astronauts and flew into space to save the stars from the aliens. We travelled to different planets and used our footballs to flip the star cones and save them BUT we had to be very careful not to get caught and when we heard the aliens we had to lie on the floor and hide our footballs.
Thank you book people
This week we received a special delivery from The Book People. We all got our own book to take home and some special activities to complete. We were all very excited to read the book with our families.
Week beginning 05/03/18
World Book day
We were excited to celebrate a slightly delayed World Book Day. We enjoyed reading our story A Busy Day for Birds and dressing up like the different birds from the book. The costumes were fantastic and we loved acting out the different parts of the book.
We also had a special visit from Year two, who came to read us some stories. We talked about our favorite characters and then drew a picture of them.
World maths day
This week we also celebrated World Maths Day. We talked about what we learn in maths and the jobs it could help us get when we are older. Emmanuelle said ” you need to know about numbers to be a doctor because you have to count the medicines to give to the poorly people”. Levii said ” you have to know numbers to be driver so that you know how fast to go”.
We took part in lots of fun games to celebrate maths.
SaveThe Sounds
This week we have been learning about fire fighters and how they help people. We read lots of books about fire fighters and talked about fire safety. We played a phonics game outside where we pretended to be fire fighters and save the sounds that we were on fire. We listened to the phonemes being shouted and sprayed the corresponding graphemes with our fire extinguishers.
Week Beginning 26/02/18
We hope you had a lovely half term break! The children were very excited to share what they had done over the holidays with their friends.
Aspirations
Our topic this term is aspirations and we will be talking about what job we would like when we grow up. We will be having special visitors come into school and talk to us about what they do.
Fruit kebabs
Some of use have shown an interest in being chefs when we are older, so this week we created our own fruit kebabs. We talked about hygiene and making sure your hands and surfaces are clean when preparing food. We then tried a selection of fruits, such as mango, watermelon, plums, pineapple, blueberries, strawberries and grapes and talked about the smell and taste of the fruits. Next, we decided which fruit we wanted to use on our fruit kebab, before cutting into small pieces and carefully putting onto the kebab sticks.
Snow
We were very excited when we came into school on Tuesday morning about the snow that had fallen overnight. We talked about where snow comes from…. Elliyah said “snow comes from the clouds they are full of snow.”, Scarlett said ” it comes from the clouds when it’s cold.”, Ellie-Mai said ” It comes from the sky.”, Grace said ” it comes rain. We decided to go and explore the academy garden. We sensibly walked to the field and looked at the footprints we were making on the way. Jace said ” listen it’s crunchy when you walk on it”. Esther said ” my footprints are bigger than yours Ellias.”
Week Beginning 12/02/18
Pancake Day
This week we have enjoyed celebrating pancake day. We carefully measured out all of the the ingredients and worked as a team to follow the instructions. We then decided if we wanted sugar and lemon on our pancake before we ate them with our friends.
Valentine’s Day stay and read
This week to celebrate Valentines day we invited family members into nursery to enjoy taking part in some special activities with their loved ones. We made Valentine’s Day cards, painted pictures of our favourite people, decorated biscuits, made bracelets and of course read lots of stories. Thank you to all over the family members who came along and made the day so special for our amazing children. Our Next stay and read will be on the 20th March to celebrate Easter.
Observational paintings
We have been working very hard painting spring flowers. We carefully looked at the shapes and colours of the flowers before starting. We then drew the flowers in pencil before using the water colours. Our paintings will be on display in the reading area if you would like to come and take a look!
Week Beginning 5/02/18
We have been very interested in transport this term and finding out about all the different ways we can travel.We have been very interested in trains after Mrs Cornes told us about how she used the train to go to London and showed us her ticket. We watched videos and read non-fiction books to find out about the different types of trains.
Lots of the children said that they had not been on a train before, so we decided to make our own train station in the nursery garden. We talked about what we will need at our train station….
“ We have to have seats” Holly
“ A till so you can buy a ticket” Lillie
“ We need wheels” Levii
“ A map so we can see where to go” Elliyah
A driving seat for the driver” Nneoma
“ Tickets” Ellie-Mai
Self Portraits
This week some of us painted our self-portraits. We talked about our facials features and the similarities and differences we can see between us and our friends. We then carefully looked in the mirror and chose appropriate colours to paint our faces.
Week Beginning 29/01/18
Blackley Airline
This week in Nursery we have opened our very own airport complete with an aeroplane. We have enjoyed making the aeroplane and deciding what we need in the airport. We have been packing our suitcases, getting our passports and travelling to different countries.
Phonic hoop game
This week we have been playing a game to help us read graphemes and say the corresponding sound. We have been jumping into hoops, reading the grapheme and saying the phoneme out loud, we did this quickly and then blended the phonemes together to say the word.
Maths
In maths this week we have been playing some different games that help us to practise counting and recognising numerals. We played a superhero jigsaw game and especially enjoyed Bingo.
See what numerals your child can recognise out and about, such as door numbers, car registration plates and prices in the shops.
Week Beginning 22/01/18
Aeroplanes
This week we have been very excited about our new topic, transport. Lillie, who has recently been to Australia, told us all about how she travelled on six aeroplanes to get there. We carried out some research and went to the library to find some non-fiction books about aeroplanes. We found that there are lots of different types of planes and we were very excited to share what we had learnt.
Phonics
In phonics we have been very excited to start Phase 2 this week! We have been learning about phonemes (a unit of sound) and how they look when written (graphemes). We have been learning the sounds s, a, t and p using jolly phonics actions and songs to support our learning. Please see the links below to see how you can support your child at home as they learn new sounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COJdn6sbbsk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ksblMiliA8
https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/WhatIsPhonics.htm
Welcome to Nursery!
We are extremely proud of how quickly our nursery children have settled into the nursery routine this term! Since our home visits in September, we have seen the children grow in confidence and make fantastic progress. Each morning they will wave goodbye to their parents and carers and immerse themselves in provision, independently choosing activities and sharing experiences with friends. Their enthusiasm to learn and explore has shone through and has impressed us all!
Week Beginning 15/01/18
Writing journey
This week we all independently wrote our names, remembering our pinchy parrot pencil grip. We have made a lot of improvement! Our pencil grips have matured. Our letter formation is continuing to develop and our fine motor skills are becoming more finely tuned. Your child’s name will be on display in the writing area.
Transport collages
This week we have been using shapes to create transport collages. We decided which mode of transport we would like to make and then we carefully looked at the shapes. We selected shapes by name and described some of the properties of the shapes.
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Levii made a boat. ” I need a triangle, it’s got three corners, 1,2,3″
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Week Beginning 27/11/17
Name Writing
This week we have been practising writing our names using line guides. We have been remembering to hold our pencil near the point with two fingers and thumb, using our pinchy parrot song for support. Please help your child develop their fine motor control and writing by practising with them at home. You can find line guides in your child’s group time area by the reading charts.
Week Beginning 20/11/17
Phonics
We have been learning all about rhyming words in phonics. Rhyming words ‘sound the same at the end’ and we have been listening out for them in stories, songs and rhymes. We have made up some silly rhyming names for each other and have started to play some games about rhyming words too, ask your child if they can tell you about ‘Silly Soup!’ . We will continue to explore rhyming words next week.
Blackley Academy Car wash
Blackley Academy Car Wash is now open in the Nursery garden! It’s been a busy opening week and the customers have been impressed with the professional service. We have been cleaning each car with sponges and cloths before sending them through the automatic car wash. Petrol is also available at the car wash. The most popular role has been using the till to sell tickets for the car wash and counting the money.
Week Beginning 13/11/17
Space
This week something very exciting happened, we found SLIME in our garden. We became investigators to try and find out where the slime came from. Nyah said ” It’s come from the sky”, Lillie said ” It’s come from aliens in space”,Maddie said ” It’s come from the alien in space”. We decided to become astronauts to learn more about aliens and where they live. We built rockets and spaceships to help us get to space and learnt about the different planets in our solar system.
Week Beginning 6/11/17
Our first reading books
This week the children received their first home sharing book! The children were very excited to take their first book home to read with their families. Reading is such an important life skill and in nursery we want to foster a love for reading and would really appreciate your support in making reading an exciting and cherished part of the day. Please read with your child everyday and write a comment in their reading record, e.g Jack enjoyed looking at the front cover and talking about what he thinks is going to happen in the story.
Bonfire Night
The children came to school this week very excited to tell us about their weekend watching fireworks and celebrating bonfire night. Kayton said ” I saw loads of fireworks in the sky”, Elliyah said “ They went bang bang bang, there was lots of different colours all over“, Sophie said ” I went to see a big fire and it was really hot”. We created our own firework pictures using special Brusho powder water colours. Harley said “Look all the colours are running in he water”. Emmay said ” It looks like the fireworks I watched”.
Number Formation
This week we have been practising writing numerals in our outside writing area. We have been using number rhymes to help with formation and it has been very popular. If you would like a copy of the number rhymes to help your child practice their number formation at home please speak to your child’s key worker for a print out.
Week Beginning 30/11/17
The children have quickly settled back into the nursery routine and we have enjoyed celebrating Halloween. We have been investigating pumpkins, talking about where they come from and exploring what is inside them. Before we opened the pumpkin we made predictions about what we think is inside. Elliyah said “I think there is slime in there”. Levii said “nuts are inside”. Emmanuel said “there are juices in there”. We then designed our own jack-o-lanterns and voted for the best one before finding out if our predictions were true or false.
We also became witches and wizards and created our own potions using bats, pumpkins, rats, witches finger nails and magic dust. Holly said “It’s a magic potion, it’s going to make a wish happen”. Isabelle said ” I want the potion to make a cat”. Maddie said ” I think that it will go poof and then it will give me a broomstick to fly”.
Week Beginning 16/10/17
Making Toast
This week we have practising a life skill- making toast as part of our Futures Curriculum. We very carefully followed the instructions about how to make a piece of toast and then we decided if we would like butter, jam or both!. We are very impressed with how sensible the children have been.
Tap a shape
This we have really enjoyed using the tap a shape resources to create pictures. We carefully chose our coloured shapes and used the pins and hammers to secure them to the board. Look at our beautiful creations……
Talk for Writing
This week we moved on to the ‘invent’ stage of our Talk for Writing project and we created our own story maps using the changes we made last week. Some of us changed the character in the rhyme; instead of a spider we have had rhymes about a frog, Poppy the troll, a puppy and Spiderman! Some of us changed the rain to slime, snow, and glitter, while others changed the water spout to a mountain, a tree and a ladder. Look at our beautiful story maps……
Week Beginning 9/10/17
Phonics
We are now in the second week of phase 1 phonics. This week we have been listening to some secret sounds… using just our listening ears, we have been trying to identify different sounds, some familiar like coins jingling, others new like a shaker with pom poms inside, we had to listen really carefully to hear them!
Maths
This week in maths we have continued to work on representing numbers 1-5 . We can represent numbers in lots of different ways including with Numicon pieces, cubes, lose objects, holding up fingers and drawings. We have made our own number books this week, choosing how we would like to represent numbers 1-5. Some of us chose to draw around numicon and cubes, others drew our own pictures to represent number.
Talk for Writing
This week we moved on to the ‘innovate’ stage of our Talk for Writing project, we used our imaginations to change elements of the rhyme, Incy Wincy Spider. Some of us changed the character in the rhyme; instead of a spider we have had rhymes about a frog, Poppy the troll, a puppy and Spiderman! Some of us changed the rain to slime, snow, and glitter, while others changed the water spout to a mountain, a tree and a ladder. We were very impressed with how imaginative the children are!
Week Beginning 2/10/17
Talk for writing
This week we have introduced talk for writing to orally rehearse the nursery rhyme Incey Wincy Spider. We created a story map with pictures to help us remember the song. We have had lots of fun practising and some of us have even created our own story maps.
Scissor
This week we practised holding our scissors correctly and cutting on a line. The children were very sensible using the scissors and tried their best to cut in a straight line. We will continue to practise our scissor control and grip throughout the year.
Exploring the field and the garden
We explored our nursery garden this week and had lots of fun running on the field and racing our friends. We practised rolling over and enjoyed rolling down the grass banks. We were very interested in the plants that are growing in the herb garden, we found lavender, thyme, mint and fennel. We took some cuttings to use in our mud kitchen recipes.
Week Beginning 25/09/17
We have had a busy week in Nursery. The children are now settled into the school routine and are working hard. We have noticed lots of changes in the environment and some of the children brought in conkers to show their friends. The children were very interested in the conkers and where they came from so we decided to go on a walk and search for more autumn treasure.
We were very excited when we found a horse chestnut tree with lots of conkers and husks that had fallen to the ground. Lilly said “The husk is spiky, you have to be careful”. Scarlett found a conker that was still in the husk and said ” It’s not ready to come out yet, we have to wait”.
Writing Cards
This week the children have been very interested in finding their friends names on their pegs and trying to write them, so we introduced a name booklet into the writing area. We have had lots of fun writing cards to our friends using the new name booklet, concentrating on our pencil grip and distinguishing between pictures and text. The children are beginning to recognise the letters that are in their name. Holly, when writing a card to Lilly, said ” I’ve got that in my name”.
European Day of Language
This week we celebrated the European day of Language and the launch of the academy’s new french curriculum. We came to school dressed in the colours of the french flag and enjoyed learning some french nursery rhymes. We continued to practise our pencil grip when colouring in the french flag.
Welcome to the nursery!
We are extremely proud of how quickly our nursery children have begun to settle into the nursery routine. When the children arrive they confidently say goodbye to their families and join group time. We have been practising good group time sitting and listening through stories and singing.
We have enjoyed exploring our new nursery classroom and our outdoor area. We have been very excited to try new activities with our friends.
Some of us have now started to stay at school for our dinner. We have been practising lining up and walking to the dinner hall. We have enjoyed choosing our food and eating with our friends.
We have had lots of fun enjoying the reading area and learning about our new author this term- Eric Carle. We have loved reading his books and talking about our favorite characters. Some of us drew a picture of our favourite character!
We have also been enjoying painting our self portraits. We have been looking closely at our facial features in the mirror and talking about our similarities and differences and what makes us unique. We then carefully chose paints that matched our skin, hair and eye colour.
This week we have been exploring numbers in our outside maths area. We have been on a number hunt in our garden to see what numbers we can see. “Look its the number three” Lilly. “I can see a seven over there by the bikes”Sidiki. We have also been using our number stones and tiles to practise counting from 1-10.
Class Staff
Miss Chloe Szulek
Teacher
I have been a Nursery teacher at E-ACT Blackley Academy for four years, joining the team as an NQT after I graduated from MMU with a BA (Hons) in Education. I am passionate about Early Years education and have always loved working with this age group. I am also the Outdoor Learning Lead at the academy and am working towards Level 3 Forest Schools practitioner status.
Mrs Leanne Cornes
Teacher
I gained my national diploma in early years in 2002 and have worked in schools ever since. I have worked at E-ACT Blackley Academy since it opened in 2012 and also worked at the school when it was Victoria Avenue primary school since 2006. In my ten years working in Blackley I have got to know children and families very well which is a real privilege. I particularly enjoy working in early years as I feel it’s so important to give very young children great experiences to help to create a positive attitude towards learning and school life.
Cara O'Brien
Teaching Assistant
I have been a Nursery practitioner for 6 years and I joined E-ACT Blackley Academy in 2015. I have previously worked with children under the age of 3 and I have experience working with DSEN children.
I am part of the walking bus team and you may see me around Blackley bright and early in a bright orange coat.
Chloe Weaver
Teacher
My name is Chloe and I am a class teacher in reception. I am new to E-ACT Academy and I have just moved to Manchester from Wales. I specialised in Early Years education in my postgraduate teaching degree and I have an undergraduate degree in geography. I am excited to start my career at E-ACT and work with a fantastic EYFS team.
Rachael Dunnington
Teaching Assistant
My name is Rachael and I am a teaching assistant in Reception. When I am not at work I am kept very busy with my family. My Partner, Rob, and I have a daughter called Heidi and we love going on days out. I enjoy reading, shopping and meeting up with family and friends. I have always wanted to teach, and finished University with a BA Hons degree in Primary Education back in 2010. I then worked in a private nursery as a team leader before starting at the Academy in 2015. I am excited to make a difference to each child I meet.
