We were so proud of all the children singing our Chinese dragon song and, of course, parading around the hall with our Chinese Dragon and the musical instruments! They have worked really hard to put on this performance and to be so confident to perform in front of so many families at three years old is an amazing achievement. It was so lovely to see you all and thank you for being so supportive and such an amazing audience!

This week our story has all been about sharing fairly. We all loved the way the bear and the weasel were so determined to have two of the mushrooms and the reasons why they thought they should have two and not one! We all laughed when the cheeky fox came along and took a mushroom to solve the problem... until they had pudding and there were three strawberries! There were a lot of discussions about how they could share the strawberries fairly and we chatted about how we could share them fairly with our families too, by cutting them into halves or quarters or going to the shops and buying some more!

The children loved making their friendship bracelets. It was very tricky to thread the tiny beads onto the thread. We were amazed at their determination to push the thread through each of the tiny beads to create their own friendship bracelet. The children loved looking at each of the beads to find their favourite ones and we loved listening to the cheers of I’ve done it when the children had managed to thread their own beads!

Everyone loved drawing faces and some outfits too onto a string of paper dolls for our friendship banner display, with the children naming each one with their favourite family and friends. We were even lucky enough to read the story of The Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson, which one of the children brought in from home. We have been thinking a lot about our Nursery Class Rules this week when we talked about kind hands, kind feet and kind words with all of our friends.

One of the favourite activities this week has been sharing the biscuit bones with the Nursery soft toy dogs! Each child had their own pet dog and we played a game by throwing the dice and counting the spots to see how many biscuits bones we could count out for our dogs. There was some brilliant counting and even some subsitising when looking at how many spots were on the dice. The children carefully counted out the correct number of biscuits bones into their dog bowls and at the end we counted them all up to see which dog had the most. We then extended the activity by putting some biscuit bones in the middle and sharing them out fairly, so lots of simple addition and subtraction was going on to ensure all the dogs had the same amount of biscuit bones and that it was fair for them all. The children then decided the dogs were tired after all the playing and eating so they made sleepover beds for them and the dogs! 

More dice rolling was involved in our counting and sharing game where the children had to count out ten objects for their bowls and then roll the dice and carefully count the spots and pass on the correct number of objects to their friend sitting next to them. The children were keen to keep hold of their favourite objects which they had chosen! Following on from this, the children again rolled the dice and this time they could choose the number of objects from their friends' bowls after counting the spots on the dice. We all agreed that everyone was kind and considerate to their friends, unlike the bear and weasel in our story who were very grumpy with each other! 

The children were then fabulous at sorting the objects back into the correct pots.

We have been exploring loose parts this week using laminated sheets with pictures of the sides of the dice and various containers for the children to count out the correct number of objects. There have been some amazing patterns using the glass gems, pom poms, shells and golden buttons, as well as collections made into cupcakes and chocolates in various containers with some lovely descriptions such as rainbow, strawberry and blueberry for each of the cakes.

On Thursday and Friday, there was love in the air as we decorated hearts with different sparkly and shiny colours and we made Rocky Road for everyone we love! We all loved watching the chocolate melt and then the biscuits were snapped into tiny pieces which were added to the sticky mixture along with the marshmallow and raisins. The children chatted about their families and the love which they have for everyone, as well as their friends and Mrs Sayers and me too! How lovely! We all hope you have a very happy Valentine's Day. 

In the garden, the children also made love potions by snipping the petals and herbs into pots of water. We have to say the smell was amazing! There was also a tray of red rice with red and pink objects to explore with spoons, scoops and little pots. It was great fun filling up the pots with our favourite colours and objects. 

We also celebrated Pancake Day (a little early as Mrs Bennett got the dates all muddled!) and there was squeezy lemon juice and sugar to sprinkle on the top. It was absolutely delicious! We also sang our song Pop a Little Pancake in the Pan which we sing with Ms Norford in our music lessons, thinking about all the toppings we would like on our pancakes.

The children were amazing at having a go at writing the letters of their names for their Special Books. There were some fantastic letters being formed by carefully looking at each of the letters in their names. 

We spied Mr John from our Nursery window, whilst he was busy pruning the roses for the spring! We wish you a very happy half-term and we look forward to seeing you all again after the holiday.