On Friday 4th November, the children celebrated the Hindu festival Diwali in School. We learned that this is known as the Festival of Light, we found out about the customs and cultures of this festival, shared photos of how people celebrate and tried some delicious food and drink! The children were able to dress-up and dance – we had a wonderful time!
Thank you to all our wonderful parents for the generous donations for Harvest Festival! All of the food items that were donated today will be taken to a local food bank to help families in need.
School has just been awarded the prestigious ‘Learning Outside the Classroom’ Mark – Gold Award, in recognition of the outdoor and off-site opportunities which we offer our children (aged 2-4) and the work we do in terms of promoting learning outside of the classroom with other professionals. We are very pleased about this as it offers us recognition of something which is an absolutely integral part of our provision and which research shows is vital to children’s development, well-being and learning.
We are now one of only 20 schools in the UK to have this award and 1 of only 2 nursery schools http://www.lotc.org.uk/lotc-accreditations/lotc-mark/lotc-mark-accredited-schools/
LOtC Mark is intended to recognise existing exemplary provision, and to support schools in enabling all children to have access to meaningful LOtC experiences. Full details can be found here http://www.lotc.org.uk/lotc-accreditations/lotc-mark/
21st September
The Big Toddle
We have been very busy in school today, raising money to support Barnardo’s. There has been a tasty cake stall running all day and the children have made masks, flags and ribbon rings to accompany them whilst they toddled their way around the field! Altogether, we raised £75.00 to support this very worthwhile charity.
The Elephant children and their parents have been involved in a fantastic project working with an artist, Sian, from Nottingham Contemporary Art Gallery. They have been on a trip to the gallery and been inspired to create their own work of art. This work will form part of an exhibition at the gallery from 22nd-24th July. We would encourage all of our families to go along and have a look as it is free and there is lots to look at and lots of fun activities for adults and children to get involved in. Over the summer holidays, the exhibition is full of giant box models! Elephants’ parents are invited to a special launch on Friday from 1-2pm.
You can see a film of the children talking about what they loved here
and a film of the whole project here.
Well done to the Kangaroo Group (ably supported by Mrs Tracey and Miss Burrows) who have won an award for the film which they created as part of this project. This is very well deserved and we are very proud of all the hard work they put in! You can see the full length film above.
The children in the Kangaroos group have been taking part in a special project with other schools in the area (sponsored by Jigsaw24). It has been very exciting and they have worked with Mrs Tracey and Miss Burrows to produce a film which will be shown as part of the ‘Lights, Camera, App-tion!!’ Film Festival at the New Art Exchange on Gregory Boulevard. Showings will take place during w/c 20th June with the children involved visiting on Monday afternoon. They have learned all about making films using an app on the Ipads and you can watch their trailer to get a flavour of what they have been doing. If you wish to get tickets to the official showing on 20th June, please contact the New Art Exchange to book. All tickets are free but you must have a ticket to see the show. The finished film will be available to view on this website the following week. Enjoy!
We had a fantastic day celebrating Chinese New Year. Our governor, Councillor Alan Clark came to visit and join in the fun. We practised Chinese dragon dancing, tasted Chinese food and had a go at using chopsticks, learned about different Chinese customs and handled different Chinese things such as special decorations. We all had a wonderful time!
Today we welcomed the firefighters to school. They brought their fire engine with them and showed us all their fire fighting equipment. The children were able to climb up inside the cab and listen to the sirens. Afterwards, the fire fighters came into class and showed us their special clothes that protect them in a fire. We learned such a lot and had a great time.
We loved it when Police Officer Tom came to visit today as part of our theme about people who help us. Tom talked to all of the children about being a police officer. All of the children had chance to go outside and try on some real police uniform including the helmets (they were very heavy!) We had to cover our ears when Tom turned on the sirens – they were sooo loud! Most of all we loved sitting in the police care and beeping the horn. What a lot of fun!
