Stanningley Primary School

Some children decided they were going to perform 'a show' for the other children, they independently set up a stage area and a place for the children to sit and began performing.

The children came to school dressed as a piece of art work to help raise money to buy a special limited edition print for school. The children also had a wonderful time turning Mrs Goodwin in to a piece of art work.

We have been enjoying the story of Jack and The Beanstalk and Jim and the Beanstalk. We noticed similarities and differences in the stories. We found some magic beans ourselves and we planted them. We learnt that plants need water and light to help them to grow and some of our beans grew into beanstalks. We built castles for the giant from wooden bricks and decorated them with natural materials. We even described and drew our own giant!

Leading up to Easter the children listened to the Easter story, and learnt why we celebrate Easter with chocolate eggs. We made some little Easter baskets just in case the Easter Bunny hopped by, and continued to develop our creative skills by making beautiful card’s to wish our families a Happy Easter. The nursery children joined in the whole school competition to decorate an egg. We had some wonderful entries. We also talked about the children who were in hospital and some children brought in a chocolate Easter egg to take to Candlelighters who will give these children a special treat.

We hope our parents enjoyed their gifts as much as we enjoyed making them! We used our creative skills to make the multi-coloured butterfly key rings, by overlapping the tissue paper in the butterfly outline. The children had to use precise movements to ensure the paper overlapped and no gaps appeared. To make the stunning cards we used sponge dabbers and a choice of just three colours to create more colours as we dabbed the paint in the butterfly stencil. We learnt that red and yellow make orange, red and white make pink, yellow and blue make green pink and blue make purple.

Colin and Adam came to see the children and retold the Story of Mrs Armitage in their own special way. We listened and acted out a Poem that Colin wrote, which included all the important parts of the story. Colin also adapted the words to the famous ‘Beside the Sea Side’ song to make it fit with the Mrs Armitage’s Story. We talked about what other decorations the children could add to a surf board and we helped to decorate the big wave during stay and play. Ask your child if they can remember the actions to the poem…. She's carrying her surfboard and wearing her best kit she's brought her little dog along. she's ready where is it? She's bought a blow up island so that her dog can sit she's wearing her new sunhat she's ready where is it? She's shopped for lots of different snacks to keep them nice and fit she eats her vegeburger Yum she's ready where is it? She's hung a line of bunting up the wind blows them a bit she waves at a windsurfer too she's ready where is it? She shouts through a red megaphone and wakes up all the fish she toots a motorhorn as well she's ready where is it? she grabs a sturdy boathook to give fierce sharks a hit she sees a girl who's out too deep she's ready is this it? She toots her horn, she hooks the girl she slithers, swerves and flips she takes miranda safely back. She's ready where is it?

The children helped to raise lots of money for Comic Relief by coming to nursery dressed in red. Thank you for your support.

We have been continuing to learn our numbers, we played a little game to see if we could stand on the numbers that Mrs Goodwin asked us too. You can play this game at home too, all you need is paper and a pen, you could even extend the learning by asking the children to add the correct number of objects to a given number. Pieces of pasta are fantastic for this game.

The children learnt about the parable of the wise man and the foolish man. We retold the story using wooden bricks and material to symbolise the house on the rocks and the sand and water. We watched a story on the interactive white board that had no words and talked through what the children thought the characters were thinking. We built houses in the box craft area and put them on some rocks and on a pile of sand and tested the learning by pouring water over them. We then challenged the children to find different things to build the houses on.

We had a wonderful time at our Christmas party, we enjoyed playing some party games in the hall, and pass the parcel in our class. Santa came to visit us too, he even gave us all a little gift to put under our tree.

The morning children enjoyed the pantomime that came to school on the last day of term. 'Dick Whittington' had the children, laughing and cheering along with the famous line "HE'S BEHIND YOU".

As part of our Christmas celebrations we invited our adults to come and join in our Sparkle Time activities. Everyone could have a turn at decorating our home made biscuits, making 3D trees, creating paper chains, decorating a bauble and designing a tree from triangles. Next we all sat down to enjoy the Sparkle Time DVD of the children singing the wonderful Christmas songs that they have learnt.

The children were invited to come to nursery decorated in SPOTS! Even JoBo remembered to come dressed up. Then they took the pennies that they had brought in and helped to complete our huge fundraising Pudsey Bear portrait.

We enjoyed our annual Diwali celebration and we listened to the story of Rama and Sita. Some children made a diva light out of clay and some children made mehndi patterns using brown paint controlled through a paper cone.

The apples had started to fall from our trees and as well as enjoying freshly cut apple we decided to use some of our cooking apples to make delicious crumbles which the children sold to their friends and family members so that they could enjoy them at home.

A small group of children wanted to make a den in the home corner, so we worked together and used the equipment around us to solve the problems and make a den!

During brain awareness week some children tasted some different foods to see if they could use their taste sense to identify the food and if it was sweet, salty or sour. The children tried a salty crisp, a small piece of chocolate and a piece of lemon. Some children were able to identify the food they were eating but were unable to say if it was sweet, salty or sour.

The children love dancing to our animal jungle CD, especially the monkeys jumping on the bed song. Some children make a train for their friends to join on and move around the carpet making train sounds as they go.

We all have a wonderful time learning some songs with Mr Alex. Mr Alex plays the guitar and we sing along and follow instructions to the music. One of our favorite songs at the moment is in the jungle.

We joined in the worlds biggest coffee morning to help raise money for Macmillan cancer support. We all had a lovely bun that we ate sat in the hall during the coffee morning!