Here's something special for you to enjoy today!

The Duchess of Cambridge to lead an online assembly on mental wellbeing among children

Today, the Duchess of Cambridge will lead an online assembly for the Oak National Academy during which she will speak about the importance of mental wellbeing among children. The theme of the Duchess’ assembly is ‘spread a little kindness’ and is based on a lesson plan which is available on the Mentally Healthy Schools platform. This platform was developed in collaboration with children’s mental health charity Place2Be and encourages children to explore ways in which they can show kindness and recognise the benefits of kindness to others.

The Mentally Healthy Schools platform can be accessed here:

https://www.mentallyhealthyschools.org.uk/

The assembly will be live on the Oak National Academy website at 11am on Thursday 18 June and can be accessed here:

https://classroom.thenational.academy/assemblies/

A recording of the assembly will be available to view on the Oak National Academy website following the event.

Dear Parents and Carers,

I hope you had a lovely half term and enjoyed the sunny weather we were lucky enough to have! 

Daily work will continue to be set on this class page, so that home learning can continue for those children that will be remaining at home. For those of you sending your children back to school, these plans will also be used in the classroom on the days that your children are in, to ensure everyone is getting the same curriculum and learning opportunities. This means that for the half of the week that your children aren't at school, please continue to use these lessons to complete their week's learning.

It's a great half term of learning, lots of beanstalks, dens and secret hideaways!

Take care of yourselves,

Lauren

Hello Everyone,

It was lovely to have a chance to talk to you all last week. I'm glad it sounds like you're all doing a great job of keeping your children busy! All the activities I put on here are similar to the kinds of things we would be doing in school, so have a go and try not to worry if things don't go to plan. At the very least, try to focus on doing some Maths, mark making and phonics if your child is starting Reception in September. And most importantly, TALK to each other and HAVE FUN!

A few parents requested worksheets similar to those I collated in the learning packs we sent you back in March. So I will start including them. Please try to keep learning as concrete as possible, using real objects to support learning and understanding.

Our insect and minibeast topic this week is focusing on spiders, so brace yourselves if they're not your favourite creature :) I'll be showing the children why they're something to celebrate, not fear. They eat flies after all!

Have a lovely week x

Lauren 

To all my lovely Nursery class, Parents and Carers,

Firstly, we miss seeing you all! I hope you are all keeping well and finding nice things to do to fill your days. I've tried my best to think of some nice activities for your children to do over Easter, that hopefully you will enjoy too. See the link below.

Try to do your best and keep up the daily tasks as these will make an enormous difference to your child's development. Keep it short and sweet and weave it into play when possible. 

All other activities are intended to provide fun, explorative and multi-layered learning. Extend it however best suits your child. Whether that's also making dinosaurs out of recycling, growing plants from seed, cooking foods that include the vegetables you are trying to re-grow or having taste tests of new foods they haven't tried before (especially as supermarket shortages force us to go for things we might usually overlook..).

Lastly, be kind on yourselves and don't feel under pressure to spend all hours of the day teaching your children. Language is the biggest indicator of future success, so have conversations, enjoy their company, play and make the most of this special time together. 

I will start posting new daily activities on the 20th April. Until then, have a lovely two weeks and HAPPY EASTER!

Lauren

Dear Parents and Carers,

I hope you're all doing well!

I will now be posting daily activity ideas for you to do with your children. In Nursery, we often keep activities available to the children for a number of days to allow them to revisit and review what they were doing. If your child really enjoys an activity, keeping it out is a great way to enable deeper and more meaningful engagement. If they aren't interested, put it away and try something else on the list! A dual approach of joining in with their exploration and stepping back and giving the space really helps them understand how to access the activity, but also gives them a chance to figure things out for themselves.

Take care,

Lauren

Daily online sessions for you to enjoy

Lots of people are starting to do daily live sessions, which are great resources for learning. Or some well deserved downtime! Here's what I've found so far:

Oliver Jeffers - daily storytime on his instagram page at 6pm (@oliverjeffers). They are then posted to his website here

Reading_and_beyond - daily story on her IGTV on Instagram at 9am (you can also watch old ones too). She is also posting a daily photo of a book inspired activity (with minimal resources!) you can do with your child.

Daily PE - Joe Wicks (The Body Coach TV) is hosting daily PE sessions live on youtube at 9am, which are then available to watch at any time.

Fun exercise - although not a live feed, you might also enjoy Andy's Wild Workouts on iplayer here 

Hello Everyone,

I hope you're all doing well, the YN team are thinking of you! I wanted to give you some tips on how to best support your child's learning at home. The EYFS ethos is to encourage learning through play, so pleas don't feel you need to remove your child from their toys in order for them to learn. Obviously it doesn't hurt to do some 1 to 1 activities at a table, to really focus in on their learning, such as short phonics sessions or handwriting practise. Although aim to keep these short (attention spans at their age are 5-10mins) and only have a few a day.

MATHS

Play is a great opportunity to explore concepts of length/height, weight, capacity and shape. Perhaps they can open a shop and use 1p or 2p coins to sell the items (drawing around different sized bottle lids on cardboard makes great coins!). Help them price up their toys/food with small amounts up to 5/10p. Or could they serve you food? Are they able to share out the same amounts on 2 plates? Perhaps you only want 3 vegetables? What if you only want half the cake? 

WRITING

Encourage them to help you think up what meals to cook. Not only will they enjoy being included in choosing what to eat, but you can have a go at drawing the menu or what ingredients will be needed. Can they draw the correct pasta shape? What shape is the potato/box of cereal? What colour is it? 

UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD

Make the most of any interests, questions during play or curiosity when watching tv or a film. See if you can find out more using the internet with your child. If you need ideas, have a look here for inspiration of fun and easy experiments you can do. ICT can be a great tool for learning, so have a search for apps or websites that are age appropriate.

Home Learning tips

- Try to limit the toys that are out each day. Rotate things around to avoid them getting bored of what they have (and the mess it creates!). It also focuses learning and play and encourages them to stick with something for longer.

- Attempt to have a different book related activity every day (eg. set up a craft/drawing activity, construction themed around the book, making a small world in a baking tray/dish)

- Have an open ended activity/sensory play - sink play (look up #sinkplayfriday on Instagram for ideas), cutting (scissor skills are a favourite), sticking, threading

By adding a bit of structure to your day, it will help all of you feel more in control and will add purpose and creativity to your child's day.

Good luck with it all, I'll keep adding helpful links and activity ideas to keep you busy.

Lauren

Reading with your child

For ideas of some Great Books to read with your children, click the links below. Both are great for Nursery aged children!

For children aged 0-3 years https://www.booktrust.org.uk/booklists/g/great-books-guide-2019-babies-and-toddlers/

For children aged 4-5 years https://www.booktrust.org.uk/booklists/g/great-books-guide-for-children-4-5-year-olds/

Reading is a great way to support your child's language development, creativity and most importantly, a lovely few minutes spent together. 

To our Nursery families,

To help keep you all happy and healthy in your homes, I've thought up lots of activities and links that you can easily do with your children with little mess or stress.

Great ways to keep your children active indoors!

Cosmic Kids Yoga – Yoga themed to Disney films and tv programmes. It’s AMAZING. 30 mins guaranteed concentration. Eg. ‘Frozen’ Yoga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlg052EKMtk

5 a day. Great 5 min active movement. Only a few on youtube sadly- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLMGJ9S0seE

One finger one thumb - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxFI7C2ZrBc

The Bean game - shout out any of the following and have the children do the actions

Runner bean: run

Jumping bean: Jump

Baked bean: curl up in a ball

French bean: “ooo la la”

Broad bean: stretch out arms and legs making body as big as possible

Other action songs you can find on youtube (although there are hundreds more to choose from!)

Penguins Attention

Open and Shut them

Down in the Jungle

Indoor gross motor control games

• Sit on the floor with legs wide open facing other person. Roll the ball to each other. Extend by bouncing once.
• Standing with legs wide. Again, roll ball to each other, aiming to get it between each others’ legs.
• Bouncing or rolling balls into a hoop/ masking tape shape stuck to the floor.
• Throw ball in front of ourselves, trying to keep it as close to their bodies as possible and then catch it (rather than throwing randomly in the air, often away from themselves). The aim is to have control over the ball, not to throw it high or far!
• Can they bounce a ball and catch it?
• Balancing objects on different parts of their bodies. Can they walk, hop, skip and keep it there (without cheating!).
• Name each wall of the room by a feature, such as sofa/table/painting/door depending on what each side of your room looks like. Have your child hop/slither/crawl/roll etc to each part of the room. Can they think of obscure and new ways to travel to each side?
• Pretend to be different zoo or farm animals. What will you do with your body? How will you hold your arms? Legs? Do you need to go low, bend over, slide or flap?
• Listening to music, can they adapt their speed, movement to the music (good music to use for this: Hall of the mountain kings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrIYT-MrVaI , any music by Saint Saens Carnival of animals such as the elephant or fossils, batman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSaDPc1Cs5U , bob the builder.. anything really!)

Fine motor control activities

• Using tweezers/kitchen tongs to transfer objects into bowls/small receptacles
• Threading beads, pasta, nuts/bolts into wire/wool/string
• Putting screws into colander holes and attaching bots the other side
• Putting spaghetti/pipe cleaners through colander holes
• ‘tidying up’ very small objects like lentils or rice one by one using pincer fingers that may have ‘accidentally’ been spilt for them
• Playdough – rolling into tiny balls, snakes. Making structures using small playdough balls and sticks/spaghetti/pens/pencils
• Lego! Or any other small construction.

I wish you all well and good luck!

Lauren