Longvernal Forest Nursery enjoys full access to the school's two Forest areas. We are lucky enough to have our own Level 3 qualified Forest School practitioner. Come and visit us to explore our purpose-built indoor spaces plus our extensive grounds, 50 tonne sandpit and talk to the team about our play-based Early Years curriculum.

The children have settled in well. To help with a smooth transition, we have been focusing on the importance of asking for help. Our topic this term has been ‘All About Me’. The children enjoyed reading books, painting portraits of themselves and playing different games and puzzles to learn all about different parts of their bodies. They enjoyed sharing their family photos and talking about family members. 

To help us understand about Harvest, the children have enjoyed picking apples, cutting and juicing them. They have also learned how to make bread; they ground the wheat to discover how  flour is made and then made dough. The children enjoyed baking and eating cheesy flatbreads using the story ‘The Little Red Hen’ and ‘Zed’s Bread’ to think about what happens next.We also explored the story ‘Handa’s surprise’ to explore how different fruits taste and feel as part of thinking about Harvest, looking at our different senses and continuing our theme about how we all like different things. Also, linked to Black History Month, we have been looking at how we all look different and all like different things and how we all also have things in common. We enjoyed listening and moving to music from ‘Vivaldi’s four Seasons’, and by different black artists from different genres. 

Also this term, we’ve picked the sunflowers that we grew and explored their seeds and made some artistic representations of them. The children were interested in digging up the mud in the flower bed and found lots of exciting mini beasts.

Whilst thinking about the changing seasons, we have started to make Autumn coloured leaves for our book corner tree, to match the leaves outside. The children have enjoyed finding out about hedgehogs and learning two new tricky words: ‘hibernate’ and ‘nocturnal’. This has prompted them to build houses for hedgehogs to sleep in and lots of hedgehog -themed artwork! The children were delighted to learn that hedgehogs also love to eat minibeasts- in fact so much so they have built homes for the worms too! So many conkers have been found that the children have been using them to become more confident with the concepts of comparing quantity when talking about who has the most. There has been lots of conker counting, lots of number songs and we also looked at patterns in nature.

Taking advantage of the warm spell, the children have been enjoying the play equipment and giant sand pit. We've also had most of our PE sessions outside, where we’ve been thinking about keeping space as we move and staying safe, climbing, balancing, as well as throwing and catching. The children have also enjoyed sessions with a cricket coach on Thursdays.

For our personal, social and emotional development we have been thinking about what someone looks like when they are happy, sad, excited or angry and what might make them feel these emotions. They have enjoyed learning lots of new emotion songs.

Our last week of term is a nod to Halloween, with lots of pumpkin stories and thinking about how people might celebrate. We have used the pumpkins that the children grew, to make potions and the children loved replicating the story ‘Monster Cake’ in the mud kitchen and on the tuff spot with lots of pretend creatures to inspire their imaginations.

Butterflies have loved getting to know the forest area, and have quickly learnt the rules to keep themselves safe. They have climbed and swung on the ropes; loved getting very muddy and have made some art with natural materials, including faces on trees and people with conker heads!