Teaching & Learning Weekly Summary
Below you will find our weekly teaching and learning summary to find out how we develop and enrich your child's teaching and learning whilst they are with us.
If you would like to keep up with what your child is doing in class, please follow our EYFS instagram account where we share lots of photos of our day to day learning @darley_dene_eyfs.
| Week ending | What we have been learning about |
|---|---|
| 24/01/25 | We embarked on our topic "Real Super Heroes" with a visit from the local police. They showed us the equipment they need to keep people safe, letting us dress up in their uniform and sit in their police car. Watching the lights and the sirens was a real treat and I'm pleased to report everyone was very sensible. No-one touched any buttons! The children then came in and did some amazing drawings to represent their experience. The story "All Through the Night" is our focus for vocabulary this week and looks at all the people who work through the night to keep our community running efficiently. See how many jobs the children can remember - the cleaner, the security guard, the police officers, the news reporters, the delivery man, the paramedic, the midwife, the baker, and more. What do these people do? Have a good weekend! |
| 17/01/25 | It's been another dinosaur stomping week as we conclude our learning to the theme of Dreams and Wonder. The children are certainly stocking up on dino facts to share with you, using lots of great descriptive language like fierce, fast, gigantic, scary, enormous and so on. We have also been exploring how dinosaurs might have moved, swishing their tails, stomping their feet, gnashing their jaws etc. Obviously, we can only guess what they might be like (thank goodness) but we have been examining the idea of fossils and how dinosaur bones can tell us lots about a time long ago. Great work everyone. We're looking forward to sharing a new topic with you all next week! See you then. |
| 10/01/25 | Happy New Year to you all. Welcome to the children and families who have just joined our nursery class. The new children are settling in really well with the help of those returning after the Christmas break, so we have spent lots of time playing with our favourite things and getting to know each other. Our main focus has been looking at finding, (and for those returning) writing, our names. We have been sharing lots of rhymes and poems as a group, enjoying the rhythm and rhymes of the spoken word. Our number of the week is 3. See if your children can spot things grouped in 3's, like spots on a dice, or traffic lights. Have a good weekend! |
| 20/12/24 | This week the children have enjoyed a week of festive activities to celebrate Christmas. They loved listening to the 25 stories in our classroom advent hunt and behaved beautifully when the Reverend Berenice came to talk to us about the Christmas story. They also represented the nursery brilliantly when we walked through the town to Addlestone Library for their special Christmas Rhyme Time. The Christmas lunch in the big hall was very exciting, and an afternoon of party games were a real cracker! We hope you enjoy the gifts they have made for you and wish you a happy holiday, and a peaceful new year! |
| 13/12/24 | The children have worked really hard this half term practising their foundations for phonics sounds. We have built on the skills learnt during rhyme time, listening to and identifying sounds, using our voices, exploring rhymes and clapping out syllables. We have also spent time listening to sounds at the beginning of their names and matching them to a letter a week. Starting with 's', 'a', 't', 'p', 'i', ''n'. See if the children can spot any of them when you are out and about in town. Ask them what sound they make. We hope you are pleasantly surprised! |
| 06/2/24 | The children have made us very proud with their excellent behaviour at the nativity performances. I'm sure you'll agree they did a great job singing and dancing after all the practice they've put in. We have been exploring how it feels to be scared like the animals in our story of the week "You're safe with me". We listened to stormy sounds and words used to describe them. The beautiful illustrations inspired our art work and play spaces in the classroom. Remember to check out the Ecollins books on offer and enjoy the weekend. |
| 29/11/24 | This week in nursery we have been exploring icy areas of the world with our story Blown Away. The children have been broadening their understanding of how creatures survive, particularly penguins: how they move, hide, and look after their young, using new words like "dive", "toboggan", and "camouflage". In maths, we have been learning about "repeating patterns". The children are doing well at identifying colour patterns like "red, yellow, red, yellow...." They are finding object sequences more challenging, "stick, leaf, stick, leaf..." so we will continue to work on this next week. Do have a try at home with some household objects or Christmas baubles! |
| 22/11/24 | Nursery children continue to learn about our topic 'Dreams and Wonder' this week with the story "The Big, Big, Sea". This calm and gentle story is about a girl's visit to the beach with her mum, splashing in the cold water in the moonlight. Nursery children had lots of questions about the moon and the sea which we explored through investigation, roleplay and hands-on experiences in the water tray. We considered what animals live in the sea and compared them with animals that live on land. With the current icy weather outside, we will explore the subject further looking at animals in Antartica next week. Stay warm this weekend! |
| 15/11/24 | Nursery have had a brilliant week learning all about Diwali and the Festival of Light. We enjoyed dressing up, dancing, decoration, making rangoli patterns, mehindi patterns, stories, necklace making and creating diyas to take home. In maths our focus has been number 2. Children have been great at problem-solving, identifying 2 items in a range of contexts and sizes. We finished learning about the story "Where's Lenny" and are excited to find out what's in store for next week. |
| 08/11/24 | The week started with a "bang" as the children talked about their experiences of fireworks and their week at home. We had lots of opportunities to express this through paint, glitter and lightbox art. With the colder weather coming, the children are putting on and taking off their coats many times a day. We have been practising taking their sleeves off from the wrist so they stay the right way round, and then trying strategies to put a coat on without adult help. Please keep up the good work at home, because once they can do this they will then be learning how to do up their zips. |
| 25/10/24 | Nursery have had a fabulous first half-term. They have been such super learners and engaged with so many of the teaching opportunities on offer. Despite the Halloween activities of baking cookies, pumpkin scooping, finger painting and potion making, the children's favourite experience this week was looking after the toy animals at the vets. This linked with our focus story "We Are All Different", where we develled deeper into the similarities and differences of our families and home lives. The message is clear that we are all friends. I can't wait for the next half-term. Have a great week at home. |
| 18/10/24 | What a great group of mathematicians we have in the nursery! The children have had another excellent week in their maths learning, sorting and grouping by size and by shape. We continued our understanding of the story "What I Like About Me" by thinking about how we care for our bodies, in particular our feet and our hair. The children measured their feet by taking prints and compared their foot sizes in our roleplay shoe shop. As part of our learning for Black History month studies, we enjoyed and discussed the short film"Hair Love" and read the story "So much". |
| 11/10/24 | This week we have had lots of fun thinking about how we take care of our amazing bodies. The children loved the roleplay Opticians where they could try on different styles of glasses and practised looking at the wall chart. In the playdough area, they could be a dentist and make and repair teeth using a special mould, tools and white playdough. The children have also made good progress in maths, looking at "matching", using these skills in various harvest themed activities. Have a good weekend. |
| 04/10/24 | This week we have been deepening our understanding of being 'brave', 'adventurous', 'kind' and 'patient' by talking about Femi's friends and their 'superpowers'. We read favourite stories about adventures in the woods, and thought about times when we've felt afraid and managed to be brave. Our focus area this week included camping resources for us to explore these feelings through play. Several children enjoyed scaring me dressed as the Gruffalo! I'm pleased to report that all the children are aware of ways they can be kind and patient, making nursery a safe and caring place for us all. Have a good weekend. |
| 27/09/24 | This week we have been talking about ourselves and what's on the inside with the story "A Superpower Like Mine". The children made masks, but also thought about their personal qualities, which could be their superpowers. They recognised that desirable superpowers were things that other people like about them, for example, being kind, friendly and helpful. "The Colour Monster" story helped us build on our colour knowledge as we made links with various feelings. You could watch these stories together at home on YouTube to continue the discussion. All the children said they felt happiness and love when they talked about their parents. |
| 20/09/24 | Nursery have had another great week thinking about our families and the people who love us. We are really getting into the swing of rhyme time, learning a new rhyme each week. This week the children have been learning 1,2,3,4,5 Once I Caught a Fish Alive which involved lots of fun games around colours and numbers. The fish kept hiding in the room so we had to search for them and describe where we found them. Next week we are learning pat-a-cake pat-a-cake and 1potato, 2 potato. Have a good weekend! |
| 13/09/24 | This week, the children have settled in really well and are gaining confidence, showing us a glimpse of what they are capable of. We have been really impressed with how well they embraced PE in the big school hall, exploring streamers, beanbags, hoops and finding their feet on the balancing beam. We also had our first visit to the school library to enjoy this wonderful reading resource area. Each child has a book to borrow for the week, to be returned at the same time next week please. Barnaby Bear our class Teddy has also had his first outing with one of our children and will be sharing his adventures with the class next Tuesday before going home with another child. Who will he visit next? Please can we have a family photo next week to enhance our learning. "my family loves me". |
| 06/09/24 | Well done to all the nursery children who came in so confidently this week. It was lovely to welcome back those children who were here last year. They were clearly pleased to see their friends after the summer break and were great role models for our new children who have been learning the daily routine. We have explored what resources are available, how we can use them in our daily learning and where they belong. |
