Notices and Reminders

World Book Day – Thursday 2 March

Thursday 2 March is World Book Day! We are celebrating this national event by transforming the Drawing Room and the Junior Hall into two huge bookshops provided by the Travelling Book Company. Pupils will have the chance to browse the books and make purchases.

As part of this national celebration of reading, each pupil will receive a £1 book token, redeemable against any book purchased on 2 March.

As in previous years, we invite all pupils and staff to dress up as their favourite character from a book, and we ask that £1 is donated to the World Book Day charity via this link

This Week in Woodlands

A warm welcome back to the second half of our Lent term. We have enjoyed seeing your photos, videos and hearing the children talk excitedly about their half term holidays.

As I hope you are experiencing, we rarely take a breather in Woodlands! There is so much to experience, enjoy and learn when you are under 5.

A big thank you to teacher Natalie this week for presenting our Parent Training Session on Phonics for Under 5’s. As I said on the morning, we are very lucky to have such expert and talented teachers in the Nursery.

I would like to thank all the team for their creativity and organisational skills as well. The Woodlanders have been offered so many exciting, fun and new opportunities to learn and develop their skills in the last 5 days. Here is a list of just some of the activities we have provided this week for your children in Woodlands Nursery;

• Dens and Tent play;
• Learning about fireflies;
• Sharing our holiday news, videos and pictures;
• Learning about the letter and sound ‘m’;
• Exploring which animals are nocturnal;
• Exploring emotions through singing and stories;
• Practising our claves skills – loud, soft, fast and slow;
• Balancing on beams and planks;
• Reading map, mat and man;
• Learning medical related vocabulary;
• Drawing like Michelangelo!;
• Making a castle;
• Leaning bleu et vert in French;
• Decorating pancakes with fresh fruit and sweet treats!;
• Cutting skills;
• Team games;
• Making fairy doors;
• PE in the Sports Hall;
• Dressing up and imaginative play.

On Monday we read the story of ‘The Smeds and The Smoos’, by Julia Donaldson.  This charming book tells the story of two alien families who do not like each other because they look and act differently from their own family, but one Smed and one Smoo decide to become friends. The two aliens fall in love and have a baby. Their red and blue colours mix and they have a purple baby. Both families realise that even though they look different and have different ways of living they can still be great friends.

Following on from hearing this story, our children then explored colour mixing; one Smed colour, one Smoo colour, mixing them together to see what happened. Between them, they created a beautiful rainbow of all the colours imaginable. This wonderful story is just one example of how we are teaching our youngest children to embrace people, spread kindness and explore friendships.

To develop our nocturnal and dark dens focus learning, the children listened to the well-known story ‘Peace At Last’ and were very good at spotting the nocturnal animals in the story.

The children then explored Michelangelo’s ceiling paintings and lay on the floor, on their backs and created their own, nocturnal animal ceiling paintings. Creative or what?!  Enjoy some pictures from our week below:

Next Friday, and following the success of a similar event last term, we our hosting another Stay and Play Session at Woodlands.  If you know of any families, with children aged 18+ months, interested in a nursery / pre school place, who you think may be interested in attending, we have a couple of spaces remaining.  Places can be booked here.

Happy weekend to you all!

Shirley Hayman
Head of Woodlands Nursery

From the Junior Librarians

Don’t Wake Mum! by Eden Wells & Sharon Davey

Don’t Wake Mum! is a sweet woodland based story that’s perfect for Spring and even Mother’s Day. The cute little animals decide they are going to make a treat for Mum, who has just got a new job as a Firefighter and needs her rest. However, their baking soon attracts lots of visitors. Despite their best efforts to keep things quiet and under control, the inevitable happens! 

With cute drawings and rhyming text, this is an endearing little book to read together.