02/02/2026

Story of the Week: Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg 

Rhyme of the Week: Jack and Jill

Number of the Week: 5 

 

Each Peach Pear Plum

This week, we read 'Each Peach Pear Plum' and had fun spotting characters from other traditional tales and nursery rhymes hiding in the illustrations. We practised re-telling the story, using the rhyming words to help us remember the order in which we met the characters. We had fun dressing up as the fairytale characters during 'Play and Learn' as well as making plum pies out of playdough during 'Busy Fingers'. 

Two of the characters we met in the story were 'Jack and Jill'. We learnt the nursery rhyme and looked at historical paintings and photographs of wells, comparing how the nursery rhyme characters needed to collect water in a pail to how we are now able to get water directly from taps in our homes. We discussed what humans need water for – drinking, washing, growing food and flowers, swimming etc. 

 

The Foggy Foggy Forest 

We also enjoyed another story this week with characters from other tales and rhymes hidden in its pages, called 'The Foggy Foggy Forest' by Nick Sharratt. A refrain repeats in the story - "What can this be in the foggy, foggy forest?" - that encouraged the children to guess who each character was from their silhouette in the fog. 

We enjoyed creating our own foggy forest artworks, using tracing paper to create the same effect as fog and disguise a nursery rhyme or traditional tale character. We used black felt tips to draw the trees on each layer, which mimics the style of the illustrations in the story. We also made a shadow puppet theatre and had fun guessing the characters from the shadows created by the puppets on the tracing paper screen. 

 

Number 5 

This week in maths, we have been practising counting to 5, saying one number for each item in order: 1,2,3,4,5. We have been representing numbers to 5 in lots of different ways, using numicon, cubes, finger numbers and other counting objects, as well as recognising the written numerals. 

 

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30/01/2026

Story of the Week: Naughty Bus by Jan and Jerry Oke

Rhyme of the Week: The Wheels on the Bus 

Number of the Week: 4 

 

Naughty Bus 

This week, we arrived at school on Monday morning, to a crime scene outside the Nursery classroom. Squirrel Class had been asked by the police to help them investigate what happened. 

We looked for clues within the crime scene and found tracks in the sand, helping us to realise that the mess must have been made by some sort of vehicle...Naughty Bus! 

Nursery then had fun imagining what sort of mischief Naughty Bus might have also got up to around school. The children staged their ideas, took photographs on iPads and then together we orally composed captions to go with each photograph to create our own class story 'Naughty Bus at Nursery'. 

Throughout the week, the children also had fun making their own 'Naughty Bus' out of recycled materials, as well as using Naughty Bus and other naughty vehicles to push pens and pencils around on paper to create marks. 

 

Ten Dots 

In maths, we read the story, 'Ten Black Dots' by Donald Crews. We looked specifically at the pages linked to our number of the week and discussed what the illustrator had created using four black dots.

The children then created their own four black dot pictures by placing four black counters on a whiteboard and incorporating these into a drawing. Together we used these drawings to explore the composition of four (how a number can be made up of smaller numbers) e.g. 2 and 2 makes 4, 1 and 3 makes 4, 0 and 4 makes 4.

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23/01/2026

Story of the Week: The Train Ride by June Crebbin 

Rhyme of the Week: I'm a Little Engine (tune of I'm a Little Teapot) 

Number of the Week: 4

 

The Train Ride 

Inspired by our story of the week, where the main character describes what she can see from the train window, Nursery travelled around the playground on an imaginary train ride. We used our senses to identify what we could see, hear and smell during our journey.

 

Shape Train Prints 

In our maths lessons, we have been linking numerals to amounts, identifying that a rectangle or square has 4 sides and 4 corners. 

We looked at pictures of trains and identified some of the 2D shapes we could see e.g. circle wheels, square windows, rectangle carriages. We learnt that we could print some of these 2D shapes using 3D shapes dipped in paint and used this knowledge to create train artworks.

 

Exploring Friction 

We read another train story this week called 'Runaway Train' by Benedict Blathwayt where the train driver forgets to put on his brakes! The children explored different materials, discussed their properties and predicted which would be best to slow a train down (through friction).

They tested their predictions by letting go of a toy train at the top of a ramp covered in three different materials (bubble wrap, sandpaper or foil) and measured the distance it took the train to stop. 

 

PERFORM Workshop 

We also had a visit from a company that run drama workshops for children, and enjoyed a trip to a toy shop, where the toys come to life during the night time. The children had fun pretending they were ballerinas, dinosaurs, dolls, robots and cowboys and cowgirls, moving round the room in different ways.

 

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16/01/2026

Story of the Week: Blown Away by Rob Biddulph

Rhyme of the Week: Two Little Dickie Birds 

Number of the Week: 3 

 

RSPB's Big School's Birdwatch 

This week we learnt about the RSPB and how at this time of year the charity asks schools across the UK to count the number of birds we can see, so they can check if the bird population is healthy or if any birds are in trouble. 

We went onto the school field and successfully spotted several types of bird, including pigeons, magpies and gulls. The children recorded how many birds they had spotted by circling the correct number on their clipboards. 

 

Washing and Drying Cloths Experiment 

The children took part in an investigation to see how different conditions would affect how quickly a dishcloth would dry. After washing three dishcloths in warm, soapy water, we placed them in three different locations – hanging up outside, inside on the drying rack and over one of the radiators – and predicted which location the dishcloth would dry the fastest, explaining why.  

We discussed the results to see if our predictions were correct. We discovered that the radiator caused the dishcloth to dry the fastest. 

 

Busy Fingers

After reading our story of the week, the children enjoyed Busy Fingers activities themed around the story. The children utilised their fine motor skills to peg washing out on the line like Wilbur the Seal, they applied a comfortable pencil grasp whilst drawing arctic animals like the characters in the story, and they practised their number recognition whilst threading beads onto the tails of kites like the one that all the animals were blown away holding.

 

Celebrations in Nursery

We have been very busy in Squirrels Nursery with lots of preparations for Christmas. We were very proud of the children as they performed a selection of Winter and Christmas songs for parents last week. It was the first time many of the children had sung in front of an audience and everyone had big smiles on their faces, including the adults. Thank you to everyone who attended this special event.  

During our adult-led sessions, the children enjoyed completing a variety of Christmas-themed activities, including cutting out and decorating stars and making repeating patterns with sparkly stickers. 

This week Sam came in to talk to the children about the Jewish holiday Hanukkah. He brought in a Hanukkah menorah to show us and everyone had a turn at spinning the dreidel spinning tops.

On Thursday 18th December we had our Christmas party. We played games in the hall including 'Musical Christmas Shapes', 'Christmas Corners' and 'Put the nose on Rudolph'. When we got back to Nursery, we had a very special visitor.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a happy holiday.

 

 

Week Beginning 24th November

Topic- Birthday Celebrations

Story of the Week-Kipper's Birthday

We have had an exciting week in Nursery as we learnt about birthday celebrations. Our role -play area became the setting for many birthday parties with lots of birthday cakes, candles and cards to write. We read the story about 'Kipper's Birthday' and wrote birthday cards for Kipper the dog. We also made play dough cakes during our Numeracy activity and counted the candles to match the birthday badges on the bears.

On Thursday we had our 'Learn and Share' morning. The activities linked to our curriculum ambitions and provided challenges and new experiences.  The children planted daffodil bulbs in the garden, rescued bugs from slime, made musical instruments, explored the light box and made Cheerio bird feeders. Thank you to everyone who attended. It was a wonderful session.

Week Beginning 17th November

Story of the Week- Peace At Last

The children all enjoyed listening to the story about Mr Bear who couldn't sleep because it was too noisy at his house. We also listened to the story about 'Day Monkey, Night Monkey' and learnt about nocturnal animals. We made owl puppets from cardboard rolls and feathers and explored a dark box with the torch. Here are some photographs of our learning adventures.

 

 

Week Beginning 10th November 2025

On Monday 10th November, the children wore odd socks to school as part of our Anti-Bullying Week. We celebrated our uniqueness and individuality and decorated pictures of socks with patterns and stickers. We also went on an Autumn walk in our key worker groups in the school grounds. On Tuesday 11th November, for Remembrance Day,  Nursery took part in the two minute silence with the whole school. We painted pictures of poppies and talked about the meaning of Remembrance Day. 

Week Beginning 3rd November 2025

We had an exciting week in Nursery learning about fireworks and Bonfire Night. We used cardboard tubes to print firework pictures and learnt a firework poem. We also made Rangoli patterns with sequins and played 'Shape Lotto'.

 

International Week in Nursery

We had a wonderful week exploring the world with our special visitors and activities. We would like to say a big thank you to all of the parents who came in to talk to the children about different countries. We have learnt about lots of different countries including Albania, China and Hong Kong, Madeira and Portugal, France and Russia. We joined with the Reception children to create street  art with chalk linked to Bangladesh and also drew Rangoli patterns in the playground. We had a djembe drumming workshop with Esther on Thursday and learnt to play repetitive beats to accompany new songs. On Friday, the children had the opportunity to bring in artefacts from around the world. We learnt to say hello in many different languages and have enjoyed  becoming world explorers. Here are some photos of our experiences. There are lots more to see in our Nursery floor book.