Nursery - Ducklings Class

15 November 2024 -World Nursery Rhyme Week

This week in Duckings we took part in World Nursery Rhyme Week.  We learnt a different rhyme each day and completed different activities linked to the songs.  The children particularly enjoyed weaving spiders webs, and painting star and animal pictures. 

8 November 2024 - Poppies

We have had a busy week in Ducklings.  On Monday we made fireworks pictures and talked about how to keep safe on bonfire night.  We looked at poppies, talking about their colour, shape and what they represent.  Some children used apples to print poppies, others used their fingers while some draw them in their own style.

25 October 2024 - 40th Birthday

This week Parkgate Infants celebrated its 40^th birthday.  The children made torches and medals to represent the London 2012 Olympics as we looked back at the 2010's.  We also explored the art works of Alma Thomas in celebration of Black History Month and look at how we can keep our teeth clean and healthy.

18 October 2024 - People who help us

This week we have been looking at the different people that  help us in our community. We have been pretending to be doctors with bandages and stethoscopes in the role play area.  In the creative area we have been practising our cutting skills by making ladders for firefighters.

11 October 2024 - Autumn!

This week in Ducklings we have been talking about the colours and signs of Autumn.  The children have been busy making Autumn patterns and animal pictures from leaves.  We have explored how to make the Autumn colour orange through finger painting with red and yellow.  Look out for the changing leaf colours when you are out and about and if you have any interesting Autumn objects please bring them in.

4 October 2024 - Reading!

We have been delighted to see how much the children in Ducklings enjoy reading.  They are always keen to share the books they enjoy at home and often access the book corner in school.  If your child has a favourite reading place at home please share a picture of it with us on Seesaw.

27 September 2024 - Busy Fingers

This week we have introduced Duckings to Busy Fingers, a series of activities which are set up to encourage fine motor development.  

20 September 2024 - All About Me!

This week in Ducklings we have started our topic looking at ourselves and our families.  We have been busy painting our self-portraits and talking about things we like to do with our families at the weekends.  If you do anything special as a family please share it with us on Seesaw.

28 June 2024 -Pirates

We found a map in our classroom on Monday. We followed the map around the school grounds and looked at the x marks the spot place where we found a treasure chest full of treasure! We became pirates and made our own pirate hats and eye patches. We drew our own treasure maps to show pirates where the treasure was hidden. Some of us even built a pirate ship outside.

21 June 2024 - Building Tents

We read a book called 'Mr Bears Holiday'. We drew maps to help him find his way and we built tents in the garden for camping. We talked a lot about holidays and adventures. 

14 June 2024 - The Snail and the Whale

This week, we used the story 'The Snail and the Whale' as part of our learning. On Monday we made salt dough spirals having looked closely at snail shells. We rolled out a long sausage then rolled it up into a spiral. They went in the oven and came out hard. We then chose colours that you can see on snails to paint them.

7 June 2024 - Hello Summer

The Nursery have been reading a book called 'Hello Summer!'. We started to talk about the signs of summer. We looked at some sunflowers and talked about their lifecycle. We painted our own sunflowers, looking carefully at the colours. 

24 May 2024 - Farm Visit

The Nursery enjoyed a visit from the farm. We then used our own small world toys to build farms and sort the animals into groups. We also used the iPads to design our own farms and chose which animals we would have. 

17 May 2024 - Minibeasts

The Nursery children have been looking for minibeasts in our garden. They used the iPads to take their own photos. Some of the Nursery children have started to build a 'Bug Hotel' in our garden. They searched for wood, sticks, leaves, rocks and any other natural resources that they thought the minibeasts would like

10 May 2024 - Animals

To continue our learning theme about 'Animals', we dived down to the depths of the ocean in a submarine. We made our own 'under the sea' bottles. We used lots of mathematical language around capacity - empty, full and nearly full. We rolled a dice to see how many fish we needed, drew them onto plastic sheets and put them into our bottles. We then added some blue colouring using a pipette and a little sparkle. When we shake our bottles we can see our fish swimming around. :-)

3 May 2024 - Chicks

The nursery children have really enjoyed taking care of the chicks and watching them grow. We all had the chance to hold the chicks and stroke them. The farmer collected them on Friday to take them back to the farm where they have a large barn to stay in now. 

26 April 2024 - Baby Chicks

19 April 2024 - Learning about Animals

The Nursery have started their new theme of learning about Animals. We went on Safari to Africa and started to think about the animals we would see. We used toy animals to make our own African Savanna and drove a Jeep to visit the animals. 

22 March 24 - Tadpoles

We found frogspawn outside so collected it and put it in some water. We have started to see the frogspawn growing and some tadpoles have started to hatch. We looked at the lifecycle of a frog and listened to a tadpole wiggle song. We hope to see them grow into froglets and then frogs. 

15 March 2024 - Jasper's Beanstalk

We read 'Jasper's Beanstalk' and then planted our own beans. We talked about what a plant needs to grow and made our own posters. 

8 March 2024 - Book Week

We have had a very busy week enjoying book week. Our book was 'One ted falls out of bed'. We built beds using construction toys and retold the story using musical instruments. We dressed up on Thursday as different characters and shared books with Year 1. We have also been enjoying the sunshine outside. 

1 March 2024 - Oliver's Fruit Salad

We have been reading Oliver's Fruit Salad. The children have used their senses to explore and name different fruits. We have talked about where fruits come from and where they grow. The children told us what their favourite fruit was and we collected this information and displayed it in a pictogram. Today we used our cutting skills to chop different fruits and mix them together to make our own fruit salads.

16 February 2024 - Lunar New Year

The Nursery have been learning about Lunar New Year. We made our own Chinese dragon masks and went on a parade through the school. We decorated red envelopes with gold writing and had surprise chocolate coins put inside. We cut out lanterns and ordered numbers on dragons.

9 February 2024 - vegetable soup

The Nursery children have been reading 'The Enormous Turnip' and 'Oliver's Vegetables'. We named different vegetables and then chose 5 vegetables to go into a soup. We peeled and cut the vegetables, then boiled and blended it before finally tasting our vegetable soup. 

2 February 2024 - mark marking

We have been mark making outside. We have been using paintbrushes and water on walls, chalks on the ground and different pens on an enormous cardboard box. We were using lots of gross and fine motor movements. 

26 January 2024 - making marks in the paint tray

The nursery children have been making marks in the paint tray. Some children drew patterns, others wrote the first letter of their name and some even wrote their whole name. It felt cold and squishy but we loved it. 

19 January 2024 - Baking bread

The Nursery children had great fun baking bread this week. We read the story 'The Little Red Hen', talked about how unhelpful the dog, cat and duck were. We looked at a recipe for making bread and the children wrote shopping lists for what we needed. We then all helped to make the bread, sieving the flour, mixing the ingredients together and kneading the dough. We baked the bread in the oven and then took the rolls home to eat.

12 January 2024 - Exploring heavy and light

Nursery have been exploring heavy and light. We have been holding different objects and seeing how heavy they feel. We used bucket balances to see which objects were heavier and lighter. We then explored the bucket balances in challenge time using conkers and pebbles

15 December  2023 - Festive

Nursery have been very creative this week. We have been practising our cutting skills and using lots of festive resources to make our own Christmas cards and crowns.  

1 December 2023 - Cold weather

The weather has started to become really frosty and cold. The water tray froze overnight and when we arrived at Nursery we had lots of ice to explore. Where did it come from? How does it feel? What happens to the ice when we hold it in our hands? We had great fun exploring.

24 November 2023 - Echo the hearing dog

We had a visit from a hearing dog called Echo. Echo helps a boy called Jake, who has hearing loss. Echo has been part of their family for many years and has been trained to help Jake when there are sounds that he can't hear. Echo hears the alarm clock in the morning and uses his nose to nudge Jake until he gets up and turns the alarm off. Echo is a really clever dog!

17 November 2023 - Nursery Rhymes

10 November 2023 - Remembrance Day

We have been talking about Remembrance Day and looking at photos of poppies. We created poppy paintings using string rollers and apples. Some of us drew our own poppy pictures. We carried out a one minute silence to think about all the soldiers that had worked really hard. 

3 November 2023 - Halloween

We have been enjoying Halloween and Bonfire Night themed activities this week. 

20 October 2023 - Fire Fighters

As part of our learning about 'People who help us', we had a visit from some fire fighters. They showed us their uniform and their fire truck. They talked to us about keeping safe and how they can help others.

13 October 2023 - Listening walk

We have been on a listening walk around school. We wore our listening ear headbands to help us tune into the different sounds. We heard birds, footsteps, people talking, buzzing from the factories, gates creaking and aeroplanes. 

6 October 2023 - Owl Babies

We have been enjoying many stories in Nursery. This week our favourite has been Owl Babies. Here are some photos of us using the props to retell the story. 

29 September 2023 - Signs of Autumn

This week we have started to look out for signs of Autumn. We have noticed that the leaves on the trees are starting to change colour. We have spotted orange, red, yellow and brown leaves. We have painted our own Autumn trees using broccoli to print with. 

22 September 2023 - We're so busy

In the nursery we have been playing listening games. Here we are playing 'Bears like honey'. We have also read the book 'From Head to Toe' by Eric Carle. We enjoyed moving our bodies in different ways like the animals in the book. 

15 September 2023 - Our first week

The nursery children had a really busy first week getting to know the environment and each other. They had lots of fun exploring all the areas and resources. 

Please click here to see our class page from 2022-23