Week Ending 27th of March

🐣🌱 Nursery Weekly Update – Week Ending 26/03/2026 🌱🐣

We have had a wonderful time beginning our new focus on Jasper’s Beanstalk as we start to explore the changes that come with the start of spring! 🌼🌿 The children have really enjoyed the story, learning all about Jasper planting his bean and discovering the importance of patience and how to take care of plants.

We got hands-on this week as each child had a turn planting their very own bean! 🫘 The children showed great care and responsibility, and we are very excited to see what happens next. With some careful looking after over the Easter break, we are hoping to return to some sprouting beans! 🌱 Once they begin to grow, the children will be able to take them home to continue caring for them.

The story sparked lots of imagination, with the children sharing their ideas about what might be at the top of their beanstalks! ✨ This curiosity led us to also enjoy the classic tale Jack and the Beanstalk, making lovely links between the two stories. 🏰🌿

In maths, we have been exploring 3D shapes. The children were introduced to a range of shapes including cylinders, cones, square-based prisms, cubes and cuboids. 🔺🧊 They enjoyed sorting the shapes into groups and talking about their properties. We also explored different lengths by creating our own beanstalks using multilink cubes, comparing and ordering them from shortest to longest. 📏

Our finger gym activity has been a big hit this week! The children carefully threaded laces through leaves, supporting their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and concentration. 🍃🧵

In our tuff tray, the children have loved exploring dry beans—scooping, pouring and transporting them using a variety of spoons and containers. 🫘🥄 This has supported their play schemas and early exploration skills.

Our spring-themed home corner has also been very popular, with baskets, eggs and egg cartons inspiring lots of imaginative play. 🐣 The children have been practising turn-taking, sharing and exploring quantities as they played together.

We have also enjoyed a range of Easter-themed creative activities, including colouring, stamping, sponge printing and even using spray bottles to press tissue paper and observe the effects. 🎨✨

      

Week Ending 20th of March

We have continued to enjoy our focus story The Knight Who Wouldn’t Fight, with the children showing great engagement and beginning to recall key parts of the story. 📖✨

Our brave knights returned to Knight School this week, where they practiced their spear throwing skills, focusing carefully on their aim and developing their shoulder movements. 🎯⚔️ The children showed great concentration and determination as they improved their coordination.

The children also took part in a challenging knight training obstacle course! They climbed pretend castle stairs, pulled themselves up, crawled through tunnels and carefully balanced across bridges. 🏰 This has taken place both indoors and outdoors, helping to develop their strength, balance, coordination and overall physical skills. We were so impressed with their resilience and enthusiasm!

In maths, we have continued exploring shapes and their properties. The children confidently recapped circles, squares, rectangles and triangles, and were excited to learn some new shapes including pentagons, hexagons and rhombuses. 🔷🔺 They also enjoyed spotting shapes in the environment, linking their learning to real-life objects around them.

Our finger gym activity has been a great success this week! The children used elastic bands and boards to create different shapes, stretching and positioning them carefully. This activity has supported their fine motor skills, hand strength and shape recognition. 💪✨

We have also been learning about the different parts of a castle, including battlements, moat, turret, drawbridge, portcullis and even The Old Bailey! 🏰 The children enjoyed labelling and talking about each part, building their vocabulary and understanding.

During carpet time, our Big Gems took on a fantastic challenge of giving instructions to make a jam sandwich! 🍞 At first, the children told the teacher to simply “put the jam on top of the bread,” which led to lots of giggles. 🤭 As we explored this further, the children began to give more specific instructions such as opening the jar, using a knife and spreading the jam carefully. With teamwork and improved communication, we successfully made a jam sandwich together! This was a great activity for developing language, sequencing and thinking skills.

      

Week Ending 13th of March

This week in Gems we have had a fantastic time beginning our new topic all about Knights, Castles and Dragons! ⚔️🏰 The children have loved stepping into the role of brave knights as they started their very own Knight School training.

Our knights began their training by practising spear throwing, carefully aiming at targets. This activity helped the children develop their aim, coordination and shoulder strength, all important skills for a knight in training! 🎯⚔️

The children then tackled our knight obstacle course, where they had to climb, balance and jump just like they might when exploring a castle or chasing a dragon. 🐉 The children showed fantastic determination and enthusiasm while completing the course. These activities supported their physical development, particularly core strength, shoulder strength and flexibility.

Our finger gym activity has been a big hit this week! 💎👑 The children enjoyed decorating crowns by carefully adding gems from numbers 1–5, helping them to practise number recognition while also strengthening their fine motor skills.

In maths, we have been learning about shapes. The children explored and talked about the properties of different shapes including triangles, squares, rectangles and circles. 🔺⬛🔵 They did a fantastic job recognising shapes and discussing what makes each one special.

We have also made the most of our outdoor learning this week. In our woodland area the children enjoyed some tree painting, exploring creativity in nature. 🌳🎨 The outdoor obstacle course has continued to be very popular and has encouraged lots of active play.

Our small world play has been full of imagination this week. The children loved using our castle set up with figures to create their own knight and dragon adventures. 🏰🛡️Outside, they have also enjoyed playing with our new track and dinosaurs, building stories and working together during play. 🦕🚗

In our tuff tray, the children explored the sensory texture of rice while carefully moving it into different shape outlines. This activity supported both their sensory exploration and shape recognition.

    

Week Ending 6th of March

 We’ve had great week in Gems Nursery as we continued exploring our much-loved story “The Three Little Pigs”! 📖 The children have really enjoyed extending their learning beyond the story and thinking about different types of buildings and places in our local environment.

 

This week the children looked closely at pictures of places they may recognise around them, including Lidl, Tesco, the High Street, the Cinema, Bowling Alley, local parks and other attractions. 🏬🏪🎳 We talked about what these places are used for and how they are different from one another. It was lovely hearing the children share their own experiences of visiting these places with their families!

 

To make our learning even more exciting, we turned the school into a picture hunt! 📸🔎 We placed pictures of these local attractions around the school and the children went on a search to find them, using a checklist of smaller images to tick off as they discovered each one. The children showed fantastic observation skills and loved the sense of adventure.

 

Our small world play has been very popular again this week both inside and outside, especially now that the children have their new dedicated small world area in the outdoor space. 🌿🏘️ The children have been creating their own stories and scenarios using the buildings and characters, showing wonderful imagination and teamwork.

 

The construction tuff tray with sand and diggers has continued to be a huge hit! 🚜🏖️ Many children have been busy digging, filling, moving and covering the sand as they play. This is fantastic for supporting children who are exploring transporting and enveloping schemas, helping them develop their understanding of how objects move and fit together.

 

In phonics, our Big Gems have been learning about alliteration. Using fun rhymes and silly phrases, the children have been listening carefully for words that start with the same sound and having a go at creating their own. This is a brilliant way to build early sound awareness. 🔤🎶

 

Our Little Gems have been enjoying bringing the story of The Three Little Pigs to life during carpet time using our story sacks. 🐷📚 The children loved exploring the characters and props while retelling parts of the story together.

 

This week we also celebrated World Book Day! 📚✨ The children shared some of their favourite books with their friends and we visited the library, where everyone carefully chose a book to enjoy together. It was lovely to see the children so engaged in stories and sharing books.

 

With the brighter weather, our outdoor area has been incredibly popular. ☀️ The children have been enjoying lots of physical play including ball skills, obstacle courses and parachute games. ⚽🏃‍♀️ They have also spent lots of time in our outdoor shop and sand area, developing their imaginative play and social skills.

    

 

Week Ending 27th of February

In Gems Nursery we have enjoyed the much-loved story “The Three Little Pigs”! The children have been joining in beautifully with the repeated phrases from the story and love huffing and puffing along with the Big Bad Wolf!📖💨 There has been lots of storytelling, retelling and imaginative play inspired by this classic tale.

We’ve seen some wonderful fine motor skill development this week. The children have been busy using the small LEGO bricks to carefully construct houses and buildings, showing great concentration and control as they clicked the pieces together. 🧱👏

In the playdough area, the children explored using different sized sticks to create their own houses. They experimented with pushing, pressing and positioning the sticks to build strong structures – just like the three little pigs! 🏠🌿 This has been a great way to strengthen those important hand muscles.

Our construction-themed tuff tray has been a big hit! With sand, bricks and diggers, the children have been exploring mark making using the different diggers, transporting sand from one place to another and learning about construction signs. 🚜🚧 Some children even used the small bricks to design and build their own houses and buildings, linking their play beautifully to our story.

We’ve also seen some fantastic physical development this week. The children practiced their ball skills, weaving in and out of cones with the ball at their feet, showing great coordination and control. ⚽🏃‍♂️ They also embraced the challenge of an obstacle course around the garden, carefully balancing and climbing using the large wooden blocks and planks. What super determination and teamwork!

In phonics, our Big Gems were excited to meet Robot Rick, who is helping us learn all about alliteration. 🤖✨ The children enjoyed listening carefully to words that begin with the same sound and having a go at thinking of their own silly alliteration phrases.

    

Week Ending 13th of February

We thoroughly enjoyed sharing the traditional story of The Great Race, learning how the animals raced to decide the order of the Chinese zodiac years. The children loved listening to the story and joining in with discussions about the animals and their adventures. 🐀🐂🐅📖

Our Little Gems focused on the lovely story Maisy’s Chinese New Year, which provided a simple, engaging introduction to the festival and supported our younger learners beautifully. 💛📘

The children have had so much fun exploring our Chinese New Year sensory tray, filled with red and yellow rice, red and gold objects, coins, red envelopes, and golden bags to scoop, fill, and empty. This supported sensory exploration, fine motor skills and lots of curiosity! 🌾🧧✨

Our Chinese restaurant role play area has been extremely popular! The children enjoyed pretending to order food, use chopsticks, pack food for delivery, and add coins to the till. This role play supported communication skills and early mathematical development through exploring money. 🍜🥢💰

We’ve also loved dragon dancing both inside and outside! Outside, the children worked together using a dragon mask, moving in a line around the playground. Inside, we used instruments and scarves to develop bilateral movements and rhythm – so much joy and energy! 🐲🎶🧣

Inspired by The Great Race, the children took part in running races, just like the animals in the story. There was lots of cheering, laughter and teamwork! 🏃‍♂️🏁

We also explored mark making in the sand using chopsticks, supporting fine motor control and early writing skills in a fun and meaningful way. ✍️🏖️

To extend our learning even further, we tasted some Chinese-style food including noodles, prawn crackers and spring rolls – yummy! 😋🍜

      

Week Ending 6th of February

What a wonderful and colourful week we’ve had in Gems Nursery as we enjoyed the much-loved repetitive story “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?”! The children have loved joining in with the repeated phrases, confidently naming the animals and colours they could see in the story. 

We’ve had a huge focus on recognising colours during both carpet times this week. Our Big Gems took part in an exciting colour hunt around the classroom and school, carefully spotting and naming different colours in their environment. 🎨👀

The children also enjoyed exploring colour mixing, discovering some magical results! We learned that red + blue = purple, yellow + blue = green, and yellow + red = orange. There were lots of excited reactions as new colours appeared before their eyes! 🟥➕🟦🟪

Our colourful tuff tray was a big hit, where the children worked together to place the correct coloured pasta into the matching sections. This was a brilliant opportunity for teamwork, communication and problem-solving as they collaborated to move all the pieces into the right places. 🍝🌈

We saw some fantastic role play once again in our Vets area. The children showed great care and empathy as they looked after the animals, using medicine and bandages and confidently acting out roles such as vets and nurses. 🩺🐶

In our investigation area, we explored animal footprints using the animals from the story, carefully distinguishing between the different prints and matching them to the correct animals. 🐾🔍

We also enjoyed following instructions during our time in the small hall. Animal mats were placed around the room, and when the music stopped, the children listened carefully to instructions such as “Find the mat with the black sheep on!”. This was a fun way to practise listening, attention and movement. 🎶🐑

    

Week Ending 30th of January

What a fantastic week we’ve had in Gems Nursery as we explored the much-loved story “The Tiger Who Came to Tea”!

The children have really enjoyed retelling the story using the pictures, confidently recalling what the tiger ate and drank. We loved hearing them quote, “He ate all the sandwiches, all the cakes, all the milk and all the water!” 📖✨

In our finger gym, the children became tiger feeders, using fine motor skills to pick up and name different food items from the story. This was a great way to build hand strength and coordination while encouraging lots of lovely language. 🥪🧁🤏

Our maths area was buzzing with pattern-making as the children created ABAB patterns using orange and black multilink cubes to match the tiger’s stripes. They were so proud of their work and even corrected the teachers when a pattern went wrong! 🟧⬛🟧⬛

In the creative area, the children developed their shoulder strength and control by painting big, bold tiger stripes. Using large up-and-down movements with their paintbrushes, they created some wonderful tiger artwork. 🎨🐯

Our tuff tray was a big hit, filled with rice, teacups, saucers and cupcake cases. The children loved filling and emptying, pouring and scooping, and talking about full and empty, building their understanding of capacity through hands-on play. 🍚☕

We also enjoyed our music and movement time with “Down in the Jungle”, clapping, boogying and moving our bodies in different ways. Lots of smiles and giggles all around! 🎶🕺

Our Vets role play area has been incredibly popular. The children took great care of their animals using stethoscopes, bandages, thermometers and syringes. There was lots of imaginative play as they organised their own scenarios and worked together to look after their much-loved pets. 🐶🩺🐱

      

Week Ending 23rd of January

What a wonderful week we’ve had in Gems Nursery as we explored the lovely story “Owl Babies”! 🦉✨

In our finger gym, the children became owl carers, carefully using tweezers to feed the baby owls some wiggly “bugs.” This activity was fantastic for developing hand strength, coordination and focus. 🐛🤏

Our sensory tray was filled with rice and painted owls of different sizes. The children enjoyed transporting the rice from one place to another, comparing big and small owls and talking about their sizes — linking beautifully to the characters Sarah, Percy and Bill from our story.

In the creative area, the children loved designing and making their own owls using a range of materials. Each owl was unique, and the children took great pride in their creations. 🎨🦉

Our Little Gems had lots of fun moving like different owls — using big, wide movements for Mummy Owl and tiny, gentle movements for the baby owls. This helped them explore body awareness, balance and changing positions in a playful way.

Our Big Gems learned about nocturnal and diurnal animals, discovering that nocturnal animals come out at night and diurnal animals come out during the day. The children enjoyed sorting and talking about which animals belong in each group. 🌙☀️

In phonics, we had lots of laughs with our Silly Soup game, learning about rhythm and rhyme. We also enjoyed our favourite books “Oi Dog” and “Oi Cat”, and had so much fun rhyming our own names:
“Mrs Barnes sits on yarn. Mrs Bray sits on hay!” — lots of giggles all around! 😄📚

    

Week Ending 16th of January

This week, our book focus was “Bear Snores On”. The children loved learning about hibernation and discovering what animals do during the colder months.  Our Little Gems enjoyed the book “What Do You See in Winter?”, where the children helped find and count different winter-themed objects — a great way to develop observation and number skills. ❄️🐻

In our creative and fine motor areas, the children explored mark making in flour, using their fingers and tools to create different lines and shapes. They also enjoyed winter animal footprint painting, learning to distinguish between different marks and patterns made by various animals. 🎨👣

The children worked on pattern making using counting bears, showing great focus as, they created repeating patterns. In our finger gym, they had lots of fun creating bear faces, strengthening their hand and finger muscles through playful activities. 🐻✨

For our “What’s in the Box?” activity, we discovered bird feeders and fat balls. The children were excited to hang them up outside and use their bird checklist to spot and identify birds visiting our outdoor area. This led to some lovely discussions about caring for wildlife in winter. 🐦🌿

We also enjoyed playing the “Don’t Wake the Bear” game, where the children carefully passed jingle bells around a sleeping bear, trying to be as quiet as possible. Lots of giggles and great listening skills were on display!

To finish the week, the children moved through our obstacle course, pretending to be hibernating animals. Some chose to be bears, snakes, tortoises and squirrels, demonstrating wonderful imagination and movement skills. 🐿️🐢

    

Week Ending 9th of January 

We truly hit the jackpot with the snow at the start of the week! ❄️ This tied in perfectly with our book of the week, “One Snowy Night”. The children were fascinated by the snowy scenes and enjoyed the anticipating of who was knocking on the door of Percy's hut each time.

During carpet times, our older children have been learning about animals that live in cold climates, talking about how they keep warm and where they live. 🐧🐻‍❄️
Our “What’s in the Box?” activity was a big hit this week too! Inside was a mystery selection of clothing and accessories for both cold (winter) and hot (summer) weather. The children did a fantastic job of differentiating which items were suitable for winter and explaining their choices — great thinking and vocabulary development. 🧤🧢👒

Our younger children have enjoyed learning about winter animals during their carpet times using the stories “That’s Not My Penguin” and “That’s Not My Reindeer”. They loved exploring the different textures and joining in with repeated phrases. 📚🐧🦌

In our creative area, the children explored tin foil painting, observing the shiny surface as they made marks. 🎨✨ Some children were even able to paint star and snowflake-like shapes, showing control and imagination.

Outside, we focused on exploring the environment safely while investigating ice. 🧊 The children discovered different shapes of ice frozen in tyres and tuff trays, and used wooden hammers to carefully chip away. Some pieces of ice had hidden objects inside, which the children worked together to “rescue” — lots of excitement, problem-solving and teamwork!