Welcome to Nursery! 

Email: Nursery@kingshill.herts.sch.uk

Welcome to the new school year at Kingshill Nursery!

We are excited to share your child's journey  with both them and you, and look forward to working together throughout the year.

Our class is called 'Armstrong' class after the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. We will be learning all about him later in the year. You can access photos of the childrens' learning both here and through their individual learning journals on Tapestry. We would love you to share your photos with us on Tapestry too. 

Summer 1 - All Creatures Great and Small

Our first Summer term topic has been All Creatures Great and Small. We started our topic with a Nursery trip to Shepreth Wildlife Park to see lots of animals for ourselves. We then talked about our favourites, and which we would like to learn more about.

We started our learning with large mammals such as Tigers, Snakes, Zebra's and Polar Bears. We learnt about where they live, what they eat and why they need to camouflage. 

Next we moved onto Birds and Owls, in particular, as we had seen these at the wildlife park and wanted to extend our knowledge. We used the book, 'Owl Babies' as a starting point. We helped the local birds by making bird seed feeders to hang in the nursery garden or take home to our own gardens. We made a variety of arts and craft Owls to put in our tree in our library.

Next we explored our school pond to see which creatures might live in that new habitat. We scooped out some water and vegetation before looking closely with magnifying glasses. We found newts, water louse and larvae. We were gifted some tadpoles for our classroom so we learnt about the lifecycle of a tadpole / frog and have been watching them grow.

World Bee Day - 20th May 2023

This inspired us to move onto our smallest creature - Bees. We learnt how they make honey by collecting nectar from flowers and that during this process the help to pollinate the flowers by moving pollen on their bodies from flower to flower. We discovered several different types of Bees; Drone, Worker and Queen Bees, and learnt about their jobs.

We made our own model Bees from box modelling resources for a display, and finished the week making honey sandwiches for a picnic. 

Spring 2 - Grow your own

This half term we have been growing our own beanstalks. We read the stories, Jasper's Beanstalk, and Jack and the Beanstalk to help us with our learning. We explored different  types of beans before planting our own. Each child took one home and we kept some in school. Over three weeks we watched them grow and recorded the changes weekly.

We have now introduced Spring and explored flowers more closely, looking at the parts, the life cycle and how insects help to pollinate them. We have done some observational drawing and paintings of daffodils and hyacinths. 

Once upon a time - topic

We have been learning through traditional tales. Our focus stories have been, The Gingerbread Man, The Enormous Turnip, Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, and The 3 Billy Goats Gruff. The children learnt about the characters, settings and events in each story and took part in a variety of learning linked to each book.

Who is Neil Armstrong?

We have been learning about Neil Armstrong - the man our class is named after. We have enjoyed finding out who he is and what he is famous for. We made our own space station in the role play area and have enjoyed taking on the role of an astronaut, heading on adventures into space.

Harvest festival

During Harvest festival we learnt how the crops are harvested then some our turned into flour to make bread. We saw the wheat harvested then taken to a factory to be ground in large machines. We then compared this to an original water mill which had a large water wheel to power the grinding stones. We explored all these things ourselves during child initiated learning.

2021-2022 cohort

Growing and changing

IEYC Topic - The Brilliant Bug Ball

As part of our Brilliant Bug Ball topic we have been learning about worms, ladybirds, caterpillars, butterflies and bees. 

We had a delivery of 5 tiny caterpillars that we nurtured and observed throughout their lifecycle, finally releasing them as butterflies several weeks later.

We are also learning how bees help us by making honey and by pollinating the plants and the flowers as they collect their nectar. We followed this by making honey sandwiches ready to eat at our minibeast party.

On Friday we all dressed up as minibeasts to have Brilliant Bug Ball. We had lots of fun dancing and eating our honey sandwiches.

IEYC topic - Dinosaur detectives 

Nursery and Reception classes had a fabulous day out for their end of topic exit point. We visited Paradise park to see the dinosaurs and then visit the animals. The children were excited after learning lots of information about dinosaurs over the past few weeks. There were lots of questions asked and discussions had about what they could see and the children were able to recall lots of their prior learning from the topic.

We have a new topic - 'dinosaur detectives', and the children have been busy going on a dinosaur hunt and exploring our jungle role play. They found footprints and eggs belonging to dinosaurs and have been trying to work out which dinosaur might have left them.

Chinese New Year celebrations

As part of our Chinese New Year celebrations the children have looked at where China is on a globe compared to the UK. They have heard about Chinese New Year celebrations from one of their classmates and watched video clips of lion dancing and other preparations. We then made our own mixed media Tiger masks for the year of the Tiger and a large Dragon to dance with in PE. The children took turns to use the Dragon as well as play instruments, and wave streamers to music. For snack the children tasted noodles and prawn crackers. The children have also enjoyed playing in our Chinese restaurant role play area, making food for each other and trying to use chopsticks. We have practiced Chinese writing of special words and numerals in our Child Initiated Learning (CIL) and explored amounts with lucky red envelopes containing counters. 

Once Upon a Time - IEYC topic

We have been enjoying some traditional tales as part of our IEYC topic, 'Once upon a time'.

Whilst learning about the story of the Hare and the Tortoise, we used the internet to find out how to care for a real tortoise and how they hibernate in Winter. We also had our own races to be fast like the Hare, and made obstacle courses to be slow and steady like the Tortoise. 

We used puppets, masks and figures to retell stories, recalling key events and repeated refrains with our friends. We also used construction resources to build bridges for the goats and the troll in the 3 Billy Goats Gruff story, and explored a range of vegetables after hearing The enormous Turnip.

Spring Term 2022

Happy New Year 

We hope you had a lovely Christmas break.

We will be starting PE this week on a Wednesday. We will be learning and practising lots of physical skills and also developing our independence skills - taking off and putting on our shoes and socks.

This half term our new IEYC topic is Once upon a time. We had our entry point on Monday when we met a storyteller and made our own stories in groups. We are making them into a book with lots of illustrations to share in our class. 

Autumn Term 2021 - Armstrong Class

Welcome to the start of a new school year. Our Nursery class has a new name - Armstrong class, after the astronaut Neil Armstrong. We will be learning about him later this term. 

On this page you will see some photos and stories of things the children have been learning. We hope you like them. 

Welcome back! We hope you had a lovely half term break. We have enjoyed seeing your photos on Tapestry. 

This week we have been learning about Neil Armstrong - the man our class is named after. We found information about Neil Armstrong and some other famous Astronauts, Uri Gagarin and Tim Peake. We made rockets from flat shapes and also from boxes, thinking carefully about the properties of the objects we were using. We read the story of whatever next and acted it out using props in our playing and learning time. Below are some photos of the learning we have done.

Our first half term has flown by! 

We have been busy exploring lots of natural objects, using magnifying glasses and our senses of sight and touch. 

We have enjoyed playing with pumpkins, weighing, comparing sizes and cutting them open to explore what is inside. We found lots of seeds and were able to notice small groups of 1,2 and 3 using our subitising skills. 

We also used lots of natural objects to make faces. We explored the objects, thinking about their properties then chose things to represent different facial features. We looked for objects which had similarities such as curved objects for our eyes, and long or short objects for our hair.  We have made a display in Nursery and have some photos here to show you how busy we have been.