Class Teachers: Mrs Quinton and Mrs James

Early Years Practitioners:  Mrs Harrison and Mrs Monaghan, 

Additional Support Teaching Assistant: Mrs Holland

Additional Support Teaching Assistant: Miss Herd

Lunch time supervisor: Miss Tweed

Welcome to the class blog for the Monkshouse Minis nursery class! Here you will find a snapshot of some of the wonderful learning that has occurred each week. Parents will be able to see posts in greater detail and with more photos by logging in to their personal Tapestry account. 

Cohort 2023-2024

Term 4

Week 6 

The children have really enjoyed all things Easter this week as we prepared for our Easter Tea performance! They did a fantastic job of performing our songs and made wonderful Easter bonnets creations for our parade. Well done - Monkshouse Minis!  

Week 2

This week we have enjoyed having a story focus of 'Lost and Found', by Oliver Jeffers. We have has penguins all over the nursery and we have done some great work! We even made a class fact file all about penguins so we are all experts now!

Term 3  

Week 6 

This week, the children had a special day on Wednesday to learn all about Chinese New Year. They listened to stories, did beautiful willow pattern and blossom painting, had a Chinese banquet and of course took part in a dragon dance too! It was a great learning day!

Week 3

This week, as part of our Superhero topic, we have had visits from two real life heroes! We had a nurse visit and she told us all about what she does to make people better and showed us the equipment that she uses to do this. She then let everyone practise being a nurse and have a turn with the medical equipment. Next, we had a visit from a police officer, who told us all about what he does and showed us the things he needs to do his job and what they are for. The children then got to try some of the police hats and jackets on, they looked just like proper little police officers! 

Week 1 

This week, the Evil Pea has been causing chaos in The Nursery! The children have loved pretend to be Supertato and catch him in their traps! They had great fun making their own Supertatos using real potatoes and drawing fantastic pictures of the other vegetables in the story. Painting with the vegetables was lots of fun as was making our own delicious vegetable soup. Check your freezers for your peas and any escapees, as some vegetables are frozen for a very good reason! 

Term 2

Week 6

"Run, run as fast as you can you can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread man!" This week, we have had great fun and lots of learning in the Nursery - using our focused story The Gingerbread Man. The children made their own gingerbread men with paper and playdough, thinking about the features they would need. They enjoyed acting out the story with their little gingerbread men and even created some new characters and developed an alternative gingerbread man adventure story! This included a flight on a plane to escape the dinosaur and monster truck that were chasing the gingerbread, a trip to Africa and a wooden brick house with a magic button that protected it from getting broken! The Monkshouse Mini's have the best imaginations! 

Week 4

This week we have been doing lots of learning about birthdays, using our focused text Kipper's Birthday by Mick Inkpen as a stimulus. The children have loved talking about their birthdays and looking a photos of each others birthday's on Tapestry to support their discussions. We thought about the different things we do to celebrate birthdays such as birthday cakes, presents, cards, decorations and of course parties! The children have enjoyed making cakes both with playdough and real ones, which were delicious! They have also been busy making bunting, paper chains, cards, invitations and even lists of things you need for your party preparations. We have some excellent party planners in the Nursery! 

Week 2 

Whizz, pop, bang, fizz! The children have had lots of fun in the Nursery this week recapping their learning about Bonfire Night and talking about their real life experiences from the weekend. We then moved on to learning about the celebration of Diwali which also uses fireworks as part of it's celebrations! The children spent a whole day on Wednesday learning about the celebration using the book, The Best Diwali Ever by Sonali Shah and Chaaya Prabhat to provide a basis for their learning. They created Rangoli patterns with playdough and lentils, decorated mehdi hands, made diva lamps, made firework patterns with large ribbons and took part in some Diwali dancing! 

We also learnt about Remembrance Day, creating a range of poppies and learning about why we have Remembrance Day. We were also lucky to receive a visit from a member of the RAF, during which we looked at medals and uniform, which the children had the opportunity to try on. 

Term 1 

Week 7

"Autumn days when the grass is jewelled and the silk inside a chestnut tree, jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled oh the things I love so well!"  This week the children have really enjoyed exploring signs of Autumn. We have been on a leaf hunt, collected twigs, conkers and other wonderful, natural treasures and brought them all back to the nursery classroom to explore further.  The colours, sounds and delightful smells of warm milk and the crisp, cold air have made it quite a magical week.

We have also been learning about different animals that live on a farm. We have sung Old MacDonald Had a Farm and had fun changing the lyrics to have the farm belonging to different members of the nursery class!

Week 6

Urrah urrah rah rah ree! Kitcha kitcha kee kee kee! We have loved reading Bird Song by Ellie Sandall this week and finding out all about birds. The children were fascinated to see a real bird's nest and discover how they were made. They even had a go at making their own from materials they found in the forest. We read Owl Babies by Martin Waddell and lots of children chose to make an owl from paper plates that we then hung on the ceiling. We have discussed the features of birds that we don't have, including, wings, a beak and feathers. 

This week we also continued our reflection and learning about Black History Month. We have talked about skin colour and painted some amazing self-portraits. We used various books to support our understanding on diversity and a special book about Black History Month published by Campbell.

Week 5

Roooaaarrrrrr! Chitter chatter, chitter chatter! Sssssssss! Snap! Snap! Snap! These are some of the sounds we have made this week whilst learning about different animals! We enjoyed reading the books Walking Through The Jungle by Julie Lancome and Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell. 

Staff have been very impressed with the determination and team work demonstrated when the children decided to build dens this week. They used a range of materials including wooden planks, blocks and guttering, den clips and tarpaulin to create some amazing shelters. The children called upon their new friends to help, sharing their ideas to create and problem solve together. It was lovely to listen to all the conversations that developed, and to support the children with more complex vocabulary and sentence structure. Well done Monkshouse Minis!

On Thursday we celebrated Lincolnshire Day by learning about the colours in the Lincolnshire flag and about some of the foods that grow on the farms in Lincolnshire. The children were fascinated to discover that potatoes grow underground!

Week 4

This week we have been learning about colours and this has included sorting colourful bears and listening to stories such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear and The Colour Monster. Using the Colour Monster story, we have thought about different feelings and the colours they relate too as well as getting creative and making Colour Monster group collages! 

We have also learnt about farms this week and what you might find on the farm from animals to crops and vegetables. We learnt that some vegetables grown in the ground and others on plants and then used these vegetables to make a delicious soup to share at snack time! We mustn't forget about the edible farm either, which we had lots of fun playing with!  

Our First Two Weeks!

We have had so much fun starting Nursery. It has been great to meet lots of new children and to explore the Nursery environment. We have really love playing outside especially scooping the mud and pouring the water to make some delicious dishes in the mud kitchen! We have become master builders and used our skills to make lots of different balance paths and obstacle courses. Inside, we have enjoyed craft activities such as finger painting and junk modelling and messy activities like spaghetti and gellibaf!