Of course, the snake and the lion are the scariest animals of all, so lots of shrieks when we lifted the flaps to find the animals hiding underneath! We all had a lovely conversation about our pets and which pets we would love to have in our homes too.

The children carefully looked at the safari animals on their sheets and chose which pattern matched their fur or skin. They then worked really hard to cut around the patterns using such fabulous scissor skills, showing independence and confidence.

The children have loved playing imaginative games with the safari animals in their small world environment using logs, pine cones, coconut shells and bricks to create animal homes for them, as we all think that wild animals should live in their natural surroundings. The children particularly enjoyed playing with the scary animals who were chasing the other animals away!

We have been watching David Attenborough’s It’s a Wonderful World - please do watch it if you can. It's absolutely delightful and the children have loved watching out for the animals in the video and calling out the names of the animals they could see, including an albatross! The children then used the interactive board to draw their favourite things on planet earth. They carefully thought about what they love the best and chose to draw an elephant, a dinosaur, a snake, a roller coaster and two giraffes! Such wonderful drawings and lots of careful thinking about what they wanted to draw. Mrs Sayers drew a dog which the children thought looked more like a monkey!

The children carefully peeled the spot stickers from the sheets and made patterns on their snake and then did more cutting and snipping around the lines to make a curly spiral snake.

There was a lot of chilly play with the ice this week. The arctic animals - penguins, polar bear, walrus and other sea creatures - were treated to a morning of playing on the ice. The children loved trying to balance the icy penguins on the iceberg and added ice too, to make it more slippery for the animals. There was lots of lovely imaginary play and very cold fingers!

Using the book as a guide, the children chose to draw one of the animals on their paper and then hid it under a flap, just like in the story. Lots of great thinking again as the children recalled the descriptive language of each animal and why the animal was not suitable as a pet. The children drew pictures of warthogs, zebras and crocodiles and told us they were too scary, too big and too happy.

During snack time today, one of the children noticed that there were two more baby photos on our display. After lots of conversation and discussions, the children worked out that the babies were myself and Mrs Sayers! How funny that we were babies too... a very long time ago!

Our special leaf in Pre-Prep Assembly this week was awarded for having amazing football skills. We had noticed over the last couple of weeks that a strong kick was being used to kick the ball. It was another proud moment for us, especially as I was able to present the leaf due to Mrs Cooper and Form 1 being out on a school trip.

For Environmental Awareness Week, we chatted about recycling and reusing things that we have finished with and do not need any more. Using the plastic milk bottles left over from our snack time drink, we reused the bottom of them and turned them into jellyfish! The children carefully threaded the crêpe paper through the holes and added googly eyes to make jellyfish that had tentacles with big stings! The children tried hard to remember to recycle paper into the paper bin and turn off the taps after washing their hands too.

We went for a lovely autumn walk. Some of the children wanted to find Spiderman world. We saw lots of autumn leaves and had fun on the climbing equipment too. We waited ages for a train to go past, so we thought that the drivers were all having a long tea break as not one went past! Back at Nursery, we heard lots of trains go past the garden and we tried to guess if they were passenger trains or freight trains going past.

Next week, we are looking forward to our story of Blue Balloon and also our Harvest Festival, where the children will be singing their autumn songs. It would be lovely to see you all there!