15/11/19: Learning this week. Remembrance Day reflections, Anti- Bullying week and the importance of being friendly, making and delivering decorations for the Postmill in South Normanton, surprise flooding and raising money for BBC Children in Need.
The rain hasn’t stopped us from having another good week at nursery and we’ve done lot of learning.
On Monday we continued our discussions about Remembrance Day and talked about the people and animals who kept us safe during the wars. We watched a CBBC video story that contextualised our learning in an age appropriate way and bees did some fantastic talking about it and how it made them feel.
Use the link below to revisit this film.
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It was national Anti-Bullying week so a lot of our learning at nursery was based on helping us to think, talk about and understand about how we treat others and what effect this has on them and to appropriately support the children to recognise when others are being treated badly or bullied. We watched a very old Disney film version of The Ugly Duckling story which had music and no words. It was a great way to begin to talk to the children about kind and unkind behaviour and to help us to think about how other people are feeling and the effects that our behaviour has on them. The children were great at making the links and fantastic at describing what was happening, what the characters were doing and how they were feeling.
We shared a number of other stories too about friendships and what it meant to be a good friend and learned a sign for kind and friend.
This type of learning forms a key part of our Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED) curriculum which helps our children to think and talk about their own and others needs, feelings and safety which is a key priority for us at nursery. It also supports children with their learning about their right to choose friends and express their ideas as long as they are not harmful to others (UNCRC A13) and gives them the opportunity to discuss what it means to be a good friend and how we should treat other people which is a very important part of our safeguarding curriculum as it links to their understanding of relationships.
The floods on Thursday were a real point of discussion too. Lots of our nursery garden was under water which meant that we had to play inside during the afternoon session...we took lots of pictures to help us to remember and talk about what had happened. Luckily by Friday lots of the water had gone and it was safe to go outside again.
On Friday it was BBC Children in Need and staff and children enjoyed dressing in spots or bringing spotty things to nursery. We had a great time with special activities to support our learning about Children in Need and raise money for the charity day. We looked at lots of pictures and talked about 'Children in Need' or 'Pudsey Day' We talked about every child’s right to have their needs met explaining to the children that this meant a safe place to live, warm clothes, healthy food and water to drink for example. We talked about how not every child in the world had all these things and that the money we raised today would help supports children who are less fortunate than us, helping them to have a happier and better life.
As a Rights Respecting School we use these activities and discussions to help our children to learn about the rights of every child and understand that some children are less fortunate than others, do not have their needs met and need some help. It highlights to our children the importance of giving, helping others and being kind to other people which is a valuable part of our Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED) and our British Values curriculum.
Our maths learning this week helped us to talk about and describe shape. We learned that everything has a shape and looked for shapes in different places and made shapes with our bodies, concentrating particularly on using words like pointy, spiky, round, curved and roly to describe them. We also used our handprints and our fine motor skills to wrap some special pointy stars with wool to create decorations for the Postmill Centre in South Normanton Village. Some of our children delivered the decorations and helped to decorate the tree on Friday afternoon and these decorations will be on display in the Postmill over the Christmas period.
