Longvernal Forest Nursery enjoys full access to the school's two Forest areas and boasts 2 Level 3 qualified Forest School practitioners. 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 Early Years curriculum.

Read the poster below to find out what your child will be learning in term 6

Please read the poster below to find out what Acron class will be learning in term 5.

It has been another jammed pack fun term in Acorns Nursery. We started straight back to school with pancake cooking, making the batter in nursery. The children helped with cooking and eating  their pancakes in the forest as well as in the nursery. We used it as an opportunity to show how maths and reading are part of everyday life and some children spotted numbers on the scales and in the recipe.We also focused on maths language and how full things are and describing where things are: for example’on top’ or ‘under.’

The following week was another exciting one, as it was World Book Day which at Longvernal is a whole Book Week! The first day, we had a great time inviting special adults into nursery to do activities with us and climb aboard the visiting library bus and borrow a book. The following day, we all showed up to nursery dressed as our favourite book characters. The nursery teachers all dressed up on the theme of ‘The Hungry Caterpillar and acted out the story for the children, which they loved. We had a ‘Bring a book from home show and tell’ and the children thought about why they liked their books and talked about what happened in them. Please come and see our display in nursery to find out what we said.The children had a turn at acting out their own story creations in the reading hut.

One highlight was the Year 6’s coming to read to the children;  really helpful for those children moving up to Reception next year when future Year 6 children will be appointed as their ‘Buddies.’

Our topic this term is ‘Are we there yet?’ and we have been looking at how we get about. We've looked at walking plus we have been  thinking about healthy activity. We loved looking at bikes; children in Acorns are very good on their bikes and even made marks using their bike wheels. We looked at how there haven’t always been cars and that bikes and walking were what most people used to get around a long time ago.

We made maps of the school grounds by going on special walks and noting the landmarks around us. Then we came back to nursery to mark out our own.

Shapes have been at the forefront of maths this term, looking at all the shapes that you could see on the vehicles. We were naming them and describing them by counting and comparing sides and corners.

We then looked at emergency vehicles and what the people who drove them did and how they helped other people during emergencies. We turned giant boxes into our own emergency vehicles with lots of paint and took turns in using them. The children also set up a petrol station and had to call the police as no one was paying for their fuel!

Then we thought about where we might go on trains, planes and boats. Children shared any experiences they had. they then had paper plane throwing games to work out which plane went the highest, furthest or lowest. They floated some boats then looked at other objects that might float like a boat or sink. They built giant train tracks all around nursery and had a great time, junk modeling their own vehicle of choice. 

The following week we looked at construction vehicles and all the wonderful ‘doing’ words that come with them, such as mixing, digging, tipping and lifting.

We are looking at how people might choose to celebrate Easter and how some people focus on the newness of Spring or chocolate egg hunts and some may think about Jesus at this time of year. We are making lots of Easter / Spring related crafts which will be coming home soon.

In Forest School the children have been noticing the changes of the season and were lucky enough to see frogspawn in the pond and the frogs actually laying it. The children have planted spinach seeds which we hope will grow, as we plan to cook with it when it’s ready. The children will be sowing and watching more seeds grow next term and observing the changes that take place and - most importantly - caring for them. The Year 6’s visited again with their teacher Mr. Dobson leading on guitar, to teach the children the Spring Chicken song; the children responded by dancing and joining in.

Please read the poster below to find out what your child will be learning in Nursery

Term 3 in Acorns has been fun-filled all about traditional fairy tales. We started with Jack and The Beanstalk and the children helped turn their home corner into a castle, before exploring the non-fiction side of castles, which had us exploring who really lived in castles. This led to the children discovering that there were servants and a lack of technology, so they ended up washing, pegging out and pairing the king’s and knight’s smelly socks. There were no washing machines a long time ago. The children also enjoyed acting out different versions of the giant chasing Jack, and calling out ‘Fi Fi Fo Fum, watch out Jack here I come’.

 We then explored the Three Billy Goats Gruff and the children created their own version of the troll and building bridges.

Outside and in Forest  School,we have been enjoying the weather that winter brings in the form of frost and ice. We have been exploring the orchard area and the children have loved climbing the fallen trees, recreating some of the stories we’ve been exploring and pretending to build camp fires.

Next we enjoyed The Gingerbread Man, which included cooking, acting out our characters for our very own version of The Gingerbread Man and learning a new song all about making gingerbread. We even had a gingerbread shop to apply our Maths. A very tasty topic!

The last book we looked at in depth was The Three Little Pigs. This leant itself to construction and the children loved building with the bricks and shaving foam cement. They explored what different houses were built out of and counting in the game ‘What’s the Time Mr Wolf?’. They also had a look at a few other fairy tales to see if they could spot some similarities.

Please read the poster below to find out more about what your child will be learning in Term 3.

Acorns Nursery children have had another busy term focusing on our topic ‘Let’s Celebrate. The children started the term looking at Bonfire night and how people celebrate and why we celebrate it. They looked at fireworks and all the sounds they made and focused on the colours of their fireworks to make beautiful pictures. The older ones mixed some colours to see what they could create. We explored music from different genres for Black History Month, and discussed how we all look different and how that is ok. For Diwali we looked at the story of Rama and Sita and why lamps were a large part of the Diwali celebrations. The children then sculpted and painted their own, from clay. The children were delighted to discover that Hindus used fireworks to celebrate. 

Preparations for our Christmas show started early, learning some Christmas songs and the children enjoyed listening and watching them being played on two recorders, to introduce the concept of high and low pitch. The children rehearsed and performed a show of all their singing, dressed up as characters from the nativity story, which many of them loved. We explored many ways that Christmas might be celebrated and then made Christmas pudding play dough for our Maths, looking at how cups are: full, half full and, once tipped out, empty! We also enjoyed the smells. In PE we practised rolling, catching and throwing balls and looking at our jumping skills.

In Forest School, we have drilled holes in conkers to make a conker wreath and used saws to cut sticks to make our Christmas tree decoration bases. We have also explored the seasonal changes and focused on hedgehogs, creating our own using sticks and play dough to discuss their features.

We finished the term celebrating with a party where  the children enjoyed lots of traditional party games and we had discussions around how we can’t always win. We captured the children’s own words about what they enjoyed the best about the Christmas activities in Acorns. There were so many different opinions but a big favourite was our activities morning where parents came in to play with their children.

Please read the poster below to find out about what your child will be learning in Term 2.