In Crew White this morning, we have continued to build on our ideas by mapping feelings of the main character, Francis, in our writing. Once we thought about how the character was feeling, we then created phrases using ‘show me not tell me’ to challenge the reader to infer how the character is feeling, rather than telling them. The feelings map helped us to see how emotions change throughout a story, ranging from positive to negative. Watch this space for our drafting coming soon!
This week the children have been writing their own narrative based on The Journey Home. I have been so impressed with their hard work and can’t wait to see them finished and published next week!
This week, Crew McGlone have been focusing on the story of ‘Storm Dragon’ by Dianne Hofmeyr. We have really enjoyed taking part in a sensory story to help support us with the structure and sequencing of events in the story.
Our writing this week saw us create ‘I can see’ sentences using a stimulus of a depiction of the storm dragon. We talked about the different parts of the storm dragon we could see, some of us even challenged ourselves by adding in some detail to our sentences to give a clearer description. We even used our sentence building knowledge in provision when drawing our own pictures.
We have also absolutely LOVED using our imagination and leading our own learning when accessing provision – we have created shelters to protect us from the storm, large scale models of the storm dragon, small world scenes of the story, created our own role play sensory story, made a collaborative collage dragon, made models out of playdough, made our own spyglasses to search for storm dragons, and lots of things in between!
During the Summer term, we place a strong focus on supporting our nursery children to develop their independence and resilience as they prepare for their transition into Reception. These are key aspects of the Early Years Foundation Stage, particularly within Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Physical Development.
Throughout the year, we have been working hard to strengthen the children’s fine motor skills, and this term we have introduced a focused activity known as “apron entry.” During this activity, each child is given their own clipboard and a shortened pencil, which helps to support correct grip and control.
The children are encouraged to draw an object, letter or shape from the board, with a particular focus in this session on creating circles of their own chosen size and quantity. This open-ended approach allows the children to explore their creativity while also developing important early writing skills.
It was fantastic to see the children’s growing ability to concentrate, as well as their confidence in using an effective pencil grip and forming recognisable shapes. These small but significant steps are helping to build the foundations for future writing.
Well done, Crew Frost—keep up the great work!
A selection of beautiful work and provision from Crew McGlone this week, including name writing, sentence writing, expedition and independent learning in provision.
Unfortunately the English language is very tricky to learn. However, with the help of Fred, our children absolutely love giving it their all to be the best readers they can be! We use ‘Fred talk’ to decode words and then blend them together, we then are able to get quicker and become speedy readers. Alongside working hard to read the words, these children work even harder to spell them in sentences, remembering the fundamentals like capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. Not forgetting the beautiful handwriting! I am beyond proud of how hard the children work during their Read Write Inc lessons 🐸
Last week in nursery, the children enjoyed a creative and engaging Easter-themed activity that supported several areas of their development.
The children began by developing their fine motor skills as they carefully cut out their own Easter egg shapes. They loved learning all about the oval shape! Activities like cutting help to strengthen the small muscles in their hands, which are essential for writing and their physical development.
Once their eggs were cut out, the children showed wonderful independence and confidence by taking ownership of their work and writing their own names. Writing their names helps children to give meaning to marks they make, while also fostering a sense of pride in their achievements.
The learning didn’t stop there! Many of the children were so engaged that they chose to extend the activity further. Using cotton buds and a range of colours, they explored creating two-part repeating patterns on their eggs an important early maths skill to master!
Using cotton buds also provided another opportunity to refine fine motor control, as the children carefully dipped and dabbed to create their designs. At the same time, they explored colour, creativity, and self-expression, supporting their development within Expressive Arts and Design.
We loved seeing the children so motivated, independent, and proud of their creations. It was a wonderful example of how a simple activity can support multiple areas of learning while allowing children to follow their own interests and ideas.
Well done, Crew Frost!
Crew McGlone have been enjoying the story ‘Flat Stanley’ in their writing lessons. We have enjoyed getting to know the story, whilst working on our oracy skills. We took key events from the story and created verbal sentences to describe what was happening in each image. We thought about our sentence, before then ‘nesting’ our idea. We then shared this with our talk partner before Miss McGlone chose children to share their sentences to the rest of the crew.
Today we compared newspaper and non-chronological reports before beginning to write our own newspaper reports about a brand new species of jaguar that has been discovered!
In today’s handwriting lesson we looked at ‘the misfits’. I was blown away with how the children showed great listening skills during the input and then showcased their beautiful work by producing this handwriting. They all worked extremely hard and this really does show! Great work Crew Ramsey keep it up 🙂
