The Bog Baby

Sarah Winkley

This week Nursery children have been thinking about, what does caring for animals look like? The children were immersed in pond life through the exciting and magical text, “The Bog Baby”.

In the story two little girls capture a “Bog Baby” from the pond in Bluebell Woods and take him home in a jar. Although the girls love and try to care for the creature, unfortunately he becomes sick. The Nursery children compassionately thought about why he became ill….Would a Bog Baby really eat cake? Live in clean water with shells? Or be walked on a lead?

We learned a super simple song about pets, which sang all about regular pets, but then suggested that someone might have a pet lion. The children were questioned whether a lion would make a good pet? They decided it would not with some of the following reasons; “It would eat you”, “It would scratch”, “It’d be too big” and “It would smash your house”. This showed good reasoning and we were then Slinky Linky Snakes and linked this back to the Bog Baby; as a Lion and a Bog Baby are both wild animals and would be better in their natural environments where they are safe and can live their healthiest lives.

The children worked collaboratively to create two large pieces artwork of the Bog Baby which they have decorated to add extra magic.

They have also created their own Bog Baby that they can take home and care for using salt dough. Each child sculpted and decorated their Bog Baby individually, making choices about how they would decorate it. They are adorable, just look at our beautiful work!

As part of our Tranquil Tuesday Crew the children we introduced to The Tales Tool Kit resource which helps children create and structure stories, developing language and excitement through 4 key points; character, setting, problem and solution. Our stories were focused around animals which weren’t pets this week to link in with our expedition.

Our Thoughtful Thursday Crew engaged the children in a step by step tutorial of drawing their own Bog Babies, following the teacher model. Their listening and attention was superb, almost as good as their artwork! To check in we consolidated whether or not the Bog Baby Would prefer to live in clean or dirty water? The children expressed their opinions and gave reasons for their answers confirming that he would prefer to be in the pond, in the mud, water and plants.

Just a magical week Nursery, You are Being Kind, Working Hard and Getting Smart!!

Have you filled a Bucket Today?

Sarah Winkley

On Monday, the week beginning the 14th September the Nursery children were greeted by our “Kindness Elves” who had brought them another text and some buckets? The children were excited to know why the elves had brought them a pair of buckets.

As we investigated further into our first case study of what does caring look like? The children explored the text “Have you filled a bucket today?” I was talking about emotional buckets and the children were very excited to think that they each had an invisible bucket. We thought about what we could fill our buckets up with and the children suggested; “water”, “sand”, “slime”, “dinosaurs”, “worms” and “sea creatures”. After reading the text it became clear that we needed to fill each others buckets with happiness and kindness, which would in turn fill up our own buckets. We thought hard about how we could do this and the children were guided and encouraged to sort things that may fill up their or other peoples buckets or also quickly empty them.

We all tried to adopt the name of being a “Bucket Filler” by being caught doing kind things for our friends and grown ups in class. When the children were caught being kind or spreading happiness, they made it onto the Kindness bucket list and were given the title of a “Bucket Filler!” Our class bucket was bursting!

The children made their friends or special people out of pebbles, using their fine motor and creative skills to show who filled up their buckets. They also produced some beautiful drawings inside a bucket, of things that made them happy and filled their buckets. Great work Nursery!

Fairytale Trail Fieldwork

Sarah Winkley

On the 23rd of May, Nursery went on a very exciting Fieldwork visit to support their current learning expedition “Once Upon a Time”. The children undertook a Fairytale Trail, walking around our beautiful local area to find story like settings. We had the pleasure of finding long wavy meadows….

A magical fairy forest, with real fairies! We had to be very quiet to try and spot them, using only our tiptoes and whispering voices….

Over a wicked troll’s bridge….

Through more long, wavy meadows…

Down by the Riverbank to see if we could spot the Troll….

and finally on towards the park where we had a huge Teddy Bear’s picnic!

After the children had finished their delicious picnics, they had lots of fun mixing and playing on the park equipment, meeting new friends from either morning or afternoon nursery who they’d never met before. A beautiful transition opportunity for the year ahead. There were some beautiful drawings of fairytale characters on the children’s work boards and most of the children completed a fairytale object hunt which was lots of fun to spot natural objects that the Everywhere Bear had shown the children before in his postcards in their prior learning. What a beautiful day and visit this really was – great work Nursery!