This week in nursery, we explored numbers, phonics, and creative play through hands-on, sensory activities. From messy bubble painting to imaginative storytelling and thoughtful story time, the children had a fun and engaging week of learning.

This week in Maths, we focused on understanding the concept of what comes before the numbers 1 to 5. The children have been practising identifying the number that comes before within the range of 0 to 5, building strong early number sense.We enjoyed activities like pegging numbers onto a washing line and jumping along number paths to practise our counting skills.

In Phonics, we explored Phase 2 sounds: i, n, m, and d. The children enjoyed games and activities to help them hear, say, and begin to recognise these sounds in words. They are developing their phonological awareness and growing in confidence with early reading skills.

Our Home Corner was transformed into a real food exploration area! The children used all their senses to explore and describe different types of food. They crushed, peeled, and ground all sorts of fruits and vegetables, such as onions, pineapple, melon, peppers, and cabbage! We also talked about making healthy choices when it comes to food.

The Book of the Week was "Sharing a Shell". The children really enjoyed listening to this longer story and were able to recall much of what happened. They engaged in thoughtful conversations about the characters, discussing the importance of sharing and being kind.

In the Tuff Tray, we created a beach scene with sand, water, animals and people. This sparked lots of imaginative play as the children developed their own stories using the small world figures. We added sandcastle buckets, and the children built their own sandcastles.

At the Creative Table, we had a range of exciting and engaging activities. They enjoyed doing observational drawings of shells, looking closely at the details and trying to copy what they saw using pencils. We also had a brilliant time bubble painting—this was definitely a favourite! The children were fascinated by the colourful bubbles and loved blowing them onto the paper. We got carried away and it got so messy, but was full of laughter! Alongside this, they painted sharks using a variety of brush strokes and tools, and experimented with mark-making using cotton buds, creating lovely textures and patterns. These activities encouraged the children to practise using one-handed tools with control, and to explore different textures and ways of joining materials together.

In the Water Tray, the children became potion makers! They used coloured water, glitter, containers, and pipettes to create magical mixtures. They described how full or empty their containers were and made comparisons between sizes and capacities.

NELI

Finally, we wrapped up our last week of NELI with the beautiful story "Stardust". The story follows a little girl who wants to be a star, but feels overshadowed by her sister. We discussed feelings and talked about how we can all be stars in the classroom by being kind, helping others, and trying our best. Special words we explored this week included wish, family, star, and win.

 We hope you have a lovely weekend!

Anemones team.