Category Archives: Meithrin – Mrs Jones

Sparkle the elf arrived in nursery this week and his special mission is to report back to Santa what all the boys and girls are doing. Sparkle the elf has been giving us a few surprises each day as he seems to be getting up to mischief every night, such as making a mess with tissue, building himself a train, drawing pictures, leaving us clues for tasks, etc.

Sparkle’s antics have given the children lots of opportunities to talk and share their ideas about what he is doing.

We have been counting lots of Christmas objects and matching then to the right number to complete our Christmas puzzle.

We have had a Christmas picture hunt in the classroom, where we match the pictures we find to those on our list and tick them off. We then counted how many pictures we had found.

We had a lovely day out on our school trip to Poundffald farm. It was a beautiful sunny day which made our chocolate hunt through the Christmas trees lots of fun.

We saw lots of animals such as pigs, lambs and reindeer. We kept a lookout for Rudolph but he must have been busy helping Santa.

We have been reminding ourselves to do good listening in the classroom and to be kind to our friends, especially as Sparkle the Elf will be reporting back to Santa!

When we discovered Sparkle had drawn a picture of Santa, the children had a go at drawing Sparkle. They looked really hard at the shapes and colours needed for his face and hat.

We are doing some great singing for our show and can’t wait for you to come and watch us.

We have been listening to music on Penpals and moving our bodies in straight lines, zig-zag lines and in circles. The children have also been developing their fine motor skills by making paper chains to decorate Santa’s workshop in our classroom.

We have been singing “We wish you a Merry Christmas” in welsh for our show and are getting very good at it.

We are also trying to remember our Welsh words for check-in – Hapus, Wedi blino and Trist.

We have a dress rehearsal for our concert on the 11^th December so please can all costumes be brought in to school on Monday. If you need any help with the costumes, please ask.

Don’t forget the Flying Start and Nursery show will be on Friday 12^th December.

Have a good weekend.

Ben and Betty have been teaching us the letter sound “j” this week.

We listened to the story “Jack and the Beanstalk” and we practiced our pen control by tracing along the path to connect the characters from the story.

We used Puppet Pals on the i-pad to retell the story and lots of children were very good at remembering what happened. Ask them to tell you the story at home.

We used cubes of jelly to help us with our counting this week, placing the jelly cubes on the number squares and counting how many we had altogether.

We also looked at sizes by playing a matching game on the interactive whiteboard.

We also did some job puzzles which included firefighters, police, chef, dentist, vet, etc. The children had to talk about what each person did.

We talked about whether Jack was right or wrong to take the golden hen and harp from the Giant. Most children decided that it wasn’t right for Jack to have taken things that didn’t belong to him.

We did some junk printing by using rubbish we don’t need to create some art. It was fun to explore the different shapes each object made on the paper.

We have been playing jigsaws this week to develop our fine motor skills. We moved and danced to jelly on a plate making our bodies as wiggly as we could.

We are practising our Welsh counting this week by counting how many children are in school every day.

We also matched pictures in a counting book by counting in Welsh.

We are very excited to go and visit Santa on Monday for our school trip to Poundffald Farm in Three Crosses. Don’t forget to bring a packed lunch with you and dress appropriately for the weather – wellies will be a must if it is wet.

Have a good weekend.

Ben and Betty have been teaching us the letter sound “i” this week.

We talked about needing invitations to invite someone to a party and the children then made invitations to give to you for our Christmas show on December 12th. I hope you will be able to come and watch.

We ordered numbers from 1 to 10 to make an insect picture.

We also counted the insects on the card and put a peg on the correct number.

We also looked at shapes and collected leaves outdoors and made triangles, squares, circles and rectangles with them.

We have been trying to remember to say please and thank-you when we are class and have praised children who have remembered. Diawn!

We have started practising our Christmas songs this week and we learnt the movements we need to go with the music.

On Move-It Monday we watched some Indian dancing and then had a go at doing the moves ourselves. It was lots of fun! We also practised our fine motor skills by trying to rescue the insects that were hidden in the lentils using tweezers.

We played a circle game called “Beth sy’ yn y bocs?” (What is in the box?) We sang the rhyme as we passed the box around the circle and the children had to pick an animal out of the box. We practised the animal names in welsh.

Thank you all for making appointments to see me for parents meetings.

Don’t forget to bring in your child’s costume for the Christmas concert. If you need any help with a costume, don’t forget to come and see us.

Have a good weekend.

Ben and Betty have been teaching us the letter sound “h” this week.

We have learnt the rhyme Humpty Dumpty and practiced singing it with props in the performance area.

We wrote advice for the Kings Men who couldn’t put Humpty together again with ideas of how they could fix Humpty Dumpty. My favourite idea was “Use glitter glue!”

We played a hedgehog counting game this week – rolling the dice and them putting the correct number of spines on the hedgehog.

We used our hands for playing counting rhymes “10 Little fingers” and “Peter Hammers 1 Hammer”

We read a story “Pudsey Like to Help” for Children in Need day and we talked about how we can be helpful in school and at home.

We used red hearts to make a poppy for Remembrance Day and we joined the whole school for assembly in the morning.

The children made a playdough Humpty Dumpty and built a wall for him to sit on.

On Move-It Monday we used different equipment to practice our gross motor skills. We moved in different ways around the hoops and the shared a hoop with a friend when the teacher said stop. We took turns to throw beanbags into the hoops and crawled through the hoops.

We have been learning a new weather song sung to the Adams Family tune!

Sut mae tywydd heddiw,

Sut mae tywydd heddiw,

Sut mae tywydd heddiw,

Mae hi’n bwrw glaw!

Don’t forget parent meetings on Monday – I look forward to seeing you all.

Have a good weekend.

It has been National Film Week so we have focused our literacy learning on a film called “Bubbles” by Gabriela Zapata. The children watched the film and then looked at film stills to discuss how the girl was feeling in different parts of the film.
We went outside to watch bubbles and described the way they looked and moved. The children then talked about where they would want a magic bubble to take them.

We made lots of circles with chalk to create a lovely bubbles work of art.

Our maths work this week was inspired by fireworks.
We learnt a song called “10 Little Fireworks” and used firework pictures to count down as each firework zoomed off into the sky.

We had to try and recognise numbers 1,2,and 3, and then stick the correct number of stickers onto each rocket.

We then used a pretend rocket firework to listen to instructions of where to put it, e.g.  zoom it next to the books, zoom it in front of Rhodri, etc.

Children have also been using the class camera to take photos of their finished art work.

We made chocolate dipped apples on Tasty Thursday and watched how the chocolate changed from being hard to being soft and runny to dip our apples in to.

We talked about firework safety and looked at a poster where a little boy Ben taught us to keep safe on Bonfire night.

We discussed kindness when the girl in “Bubbles” decided to leave the magic bubbles for another girl who was feeling sad.

Children rolled out black sparkly play dough and used ribbons and sequins to make some beautiful firework scenes.
We also got messy doing splatter firework paintings.

On Move-It Monday we listened to a firework rhyme and moved around like rockets, sparklers, catherine wheels and the flames on a fire.
On Firework night we danced in the classed room to “Firework” and remembered the movements to use in our dancing.

We have been trying to remember our manners during snack time this week, practising how to say “diolch” when we are given our fruit and milk.

Remind your child to say “diolch” when they are at home or out and about.

Family Learning sessions have restarted on Wednesdays at 9.30. This is a fun group where you can gain ideas on how to support your child’s learning at home and make some useful games too.
Afternoon parents can come along too as there is childcare for the children. Even if you are not sure, come along and try it once to see how you like it, or speak to some other parents who have been to see how they find it.
Let me know if you would like to attend next week and I can add your name to the list.

Have a good weekend.

Ben and Betty have been teaching us the sound “g” this week.

We read the story “The Gruffalo” and then described the Gruffalo.

We used the props from the story to help us play in the Gruffalo den – we had lots of fun in here.

We played some number games this week to practise our counting.

We also looked for the different shapes in Rangoli patterns and coloured them in different colours.

We learnt about how people celebrate Diwali.

We also found out about why we wore our boots to school for Give Hunger the Boot and read a story about a little girl in Africa who has been helped by this charity.

We used pastels to make Mehndi patterns on hand outlines.
We also made Gruffalo masks, trying our best to remember all the colours on his face!

On Move-It Monday we did Write Dance to Sandy Hill which practised up and down movements.
We also played some parachute games.

We have been practising some welsh counting songs this week  Un dau tri banana – See if your child can sing it to you.

We will be learning the letter sound “h” after half term, so while on holiday, can your child draw a picture of their house to bring into school?
Have a fantastic half term and I will see you on Monday 3^rd November.

Have fun!

Ben and Betty have been teaching us the sound “f” this week.

We had a letter sent to nursery from Old Macdonald. He needed our help because all his animals had come out of their pens and were muddled up. We went outside to find the animals and when we came back we wrote a class letter to let him know that we had found all the animals.

We even had a letter back from Old Macdonald saying thank you for our help!

We sorted the farm animals into their pens and then counted to check if we had found them all.
We used foam on the maths table and had a go at writing the number 4 and number 5.

We had the rhyme props out for 5 speckled frogs so we could sing the rhyme counted how many were left after 1 jumped in.

We drew long lines outside and then measured them with our feet. We counted to see whose line was the longest/shortest.

We read the Rainbow Fish and talked about things the Rainbow Fish did to be friendly and things that he did that were not friendly. We talked about how we can be good friends. The children also told Rhodri who their friends are and what they like to do with them.

We used shiny paper to cut and stick to make our own shiny Rainbow Fish. We will use these to decorate our bathroom.
We also drew a pictures of our friends.

On Move-It Monday we practised our Kringeli Krangeli Write Dance again and the children are getting very good at their movement.
We also played a game of follow the leader, moving in lots of different ways using all parts of our body.

Shwmae Day on Wednesday was lots of fun as it was Welly Wednesday too! We went outside looking for all of Old Macdonald’s farm animals and when we had collected them all we counted them in Welsh (un, dau, tri, pedwar, pimp) and then we sang a farm animal song:
Mr. Buwch (cow) ydw i,
Mr. Dafad (sheep) ydw i,
Mr Hwyad (duck) ydw i,
Mr Ceffyl (horse) ydw i,
and Mr Mochyn (pig) ydw i,

Thanks

Have a great weekend