This Week in Woodlands

Welcome to the Lent Term 2023 in Woodlands.

We are delighted to have 10 new Woodlanders join our little community. A warm welcome to Sam, Max, Elodie, George, Zoe, Seb, Lucia, Tamara, Harry, Tommy and your families. We all hope you will settle in easily and quickly feel part of our happy, kind, creative and fun nursery. we have seen many smiles in the first few days of term, which in turn makes the teachers smile too!

Our learning has been focused on picking up the routines, making new friends, the sound ‘a‘, apples and ants, space and planets, counting and ordering numbers and generally supporting the children to feel known, safe, heard and cared for.

Orange Class took their first Woodland Walk of the year. They were not expecting to find so many signs of Spring on their January woodland walk but guess what…they did? The children spotted many shoots growing up from the ground and some buds growing on our fruit trees. They also spotted mushrooms and many holes in the soil. Orange Class thought that rabbits or badgers or maybe even foxes might be hiding down these holes.

In the N1’s Story and Rhyme Time sessions with teachers Catherine, Tracy and Ruth this week the children have been listening to the story ‘Whatever Next’. It’s about a bear who zooms up to the moon in his cardboard rocket!

The theme this week in Green Class is SPACE! So one morning this week, the children went outside and drew anti-clockwise circles to represent the moon. We then played a fun game, zooming up from the moons drawn on the ground as we sang ‘Zoom zoom zoom, we’re going to the moon’.

The children were very excited by seeing this new toy brought in by teacher Ruth. After they discussed all the parts of a space rocket, they took the stomp rocket outside. The children paired up and each child had a turn of both holding the rocket for their friend and of stomping their foot, to launch the rocket. As you might imagine, this was a very popular activity.

We encourage you all to keep a close eye on Tapestry and to join in with the parent social events organised by Kate and Amy, our Woodlands’ Reps.

Have a super weekend and we look forward to continuing the learning, having fun and developing new friendships next week.

Shirley Hayman
Head of Woodlands Nursery

From the Junior Librarians

Billy and the Pirates by Nadia Shireen

Billy and her sidekick, the amusingly monobrowed Fatcat, are on their third quest to escape Captain Howl. As usual, it’s not a straight-forward task – they quickly find themselves facing singing mermaids and sticky toffee eating sharks.

It all starts when they find a mysterious message in a bottle at sea. When suddenly something terrible happens: they bump into a pesky pirate and his smelly crew. Fortunately for our courageous twosome, they’re no strangers to peril: they always have a trick (or treat) up their sleeves.

Shireen’s comic timing is first class, and her characters are full of brilliant wide-eyed, hilarious expressions while remaining cuddly, relatable and full of comforting warmth.