What's new?

This is the page where you will find out about all events and important notices in Nursery.

Also click here for all the latest newsletters for both Nursery and main school

We are learning about the United Kingdom! We have been very interested in the Queen. We thought about where she lives and how old she is! We found her face on some coins and even built castles of our own with our friends.

We chatted about the first steam engine and who made it! Can your child tell you about these things?

............................................................

Our whole school is learning about different cultures this term and in Nursery we have begun by thinking about how we are all different both in the world and in our Nursery and that makes each and everyone special!

A huge welcome to our new children who have joined us this January!
We are looking forward to playing and learning with you!

Happy New Year everybody!

We are looking forward to a fab 2015!

Happy Christmas to everybody from all the staff at Larklands!

We have enjoyed playing in our 'Santa's Workshop' and doing lots of Christmas activities that help our muscles in our hands get stronger and stronger.

We have been thinking about why we wear Poppies and what we are remembering on Remembrance Sunday. We painted poppies and made them using playdough and other materials. We also tried our best to write the word poppy, carefully forming a p!

Happy Halloween and a safe Bonfire night!

We searched for spooky spiders on the light table, made super junk fireworks, hot spiky bonfire and splashing splatter firework pictures!

'WOW' vouchers

In your child's book bag, there is an envelope of wow vouchers that you can use to complete when your child achieves something new. This could be getting dressed, using good manners, writing their name, counting and lots more. Hand the voucher to your child's key worker who will add it to their learning journey as a record.

Our new children have enjoyed exploring all the activities in the Nursery and getting know our new friends.

September 2014

Welcome back to everybody from all the Nursery Staff!

Remember to clearly label all clothes including shoes and coats with your child's name. Also if any contact details or medical conditions have changed please inform the Nursery teacher immediately.

New Nursery children will start on the day as stated in their letter which they received at the information session on the last session of the 'Getting ready for Nursery course'.
Children who already attend Nursery, normal sessions begin on Tuesday 9th September.

If you are not sure which day your child starts on, please phone or email Nursery
01159324288 option 1 for the Nursery or lnursery@larklands.derbyshire.sch.uk

Time change
Remember, the Nursery hours in the morning have changed. Morning sessions start at 8.40am and finish as 11.40am.
At both morning AND afternoon sessions, the door will be opened 10 minutes before sessions finish for you to chat to your child about their learning that day and to speak to their key worker or teacher about their development and progress.

Look below for events and news from last year!!

Nursery Sports Day

As the world cup approaches, we are also getting excited about our Sports Day that we have planned for the 16th June, weather permitting!
If your child attends Nursery in the morning, their sports day will be at 9.20am and if you child attends Nursery in the afternoon, their sports day will be at 12.30.

Don't forget your pennies for refreshments!!!
And if anyone would like to come and help us with refreshments on the day, we would be very pleased! See Mrs Astle in the Nursery

Time change for September

From September 2014, our morning session times are changing. The new times are 8.40am until 11.40am. This is following the consultation sent out to parents and discussion at Governors meetings.

If you have any concerns, please do not hesitate to get in touch by the number or email address below.

0115 9324288 or lnursery@larklands.derbyshire.sch.uk

CARNIVAL TIME!

Wow! What a superb day we had! Our carnvial started in the big playground where Nursery led the whole school round the building, onto Park Road and back into Nursery. Everybody wore bright clothes and had a carnival musical instrument that they made themselves! The noise was amazing!

We then had a special assembly, where we all performed the 'Rio' dance that Jodie Smith taught us in a PE session during the week and we celebrated all the learning that had taken place over the last few weeks!

What a super end to our multicultural half term and what a wonderful feeling it is to belong to a great school community that we have at Larklands!

This is the Mexican flag!
We have been thinking about South America this week and really loved thinking about the Aztec people who lived a long time ago. We looked closely at Aztec patterns and used 'Purplemash' to make our own Aztec patterns and saved our own piece of work into our work folders on the schools server.

We also used 'Purplemash' to decorate Aztec masks!

When thinking about Aztec farmers and how they worked their land, we made Aztec sticks by decorating a stick in bright colours using patterns they used to decorate their belongings.

We used lots of different tools to recreate, continue and make up Aztec patterns in plain playdough. We chatted about how when we use different tools with our hands we are building up our muscles in our fingers and arms to make us better writers!!!!

When thinking about getting ready for our Carnival week, we talked about food from around the world and what people in Mexico might eat at a party. We tasted some tortilla chips dipped in sour cream and cool salsa.

We made shakers for some carnival dancing and used them to dance with to some Mexican music. We also decorated a Sombrero remembering to use bright colours. We tried very hard to learn the dance to the 'mexican hat song', it made us giggle a lot!

ASIA

During Asian week, we enjoyed learning about Japan and China. We used the internet to find out lots of things about how people live and what they like to do. We loved looking at pictures and videos of kite festivals. There were many different shapes and colours and we remembered this when we made our own kites to fly!

We copied the Japanese flag and thought about what the England flag looked like. We thought it was a good idea for every country in the world to have a flag that was special to them.

We were amazed by some fantastic buildings in Asia. We looked in detail at the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal. We tried to make our own using lots of different construction kits and materials and we worked hard as a team!

We looked at the beautiful trees that are famous in Japan that are similar to our blossom trees in England. We explored how to make paintings of the blossom trees using different materials. We used fingers, sticks and also bottles to print with.

When thinking about different food that people eat in Asia we tried some chinese noodles with some soy sauce on them. Everybody tasted them, and over the week, we used all our senses to explore noodles!

We were very interested in the tiny trees that are called Bonsai tree and were delighted when Dan Roberts from the East Midlands Bonsai Society was kind enough to come and show us some Bonsai trees that he had grown from seedlings. We chatted about the size of the trees and how they were the same as or different to normal sized trees!

A huge thank you to Dan for coming to visit us and if you want to find out more about Bonsai trees they are showing at Trowell Garden Centre on the 25th and 26th May.

AFRICA

This week we have been learning about Africa. We have been thinking about what we do that is the same as children in Africa or things we do that are different.

We were amazed and astonished by artefacts all the way from Africa and used all out senses to explore them!

And the sound of the drums....... wow!
We loved joining in with the African drumming ladies who came to visit! Check out the video on the previous page!

We read the story 'Handa's surprise' and made a wonderful canvas to illustrate the beautiful fruits that are grown in Africa.

We looked at clothes in Africa and made kente cloth patterns. We even made beautiful African bracelets and collar necklaces.

We all loved the story 'we all went on safari' and enjoyed learning numbers in swahili. We chatted about safari animals and Carole (a local yoga teacher) came to do some Yoga poses with us relating to animals.

On Friday we enjoyed making and tasting some Nigerian snacks called 'chin chin', even some of our parents and grandparents were brave enough to try it. It was delicious!!

A big welcome to the new additions to Larklands Nursery .......

We have been chatting about how the tadpoles have grown from the frogspawn that filled our tank. We are watching carefully to see how they will continue to grow.

Come and see how our tadpoles are doing, especially after they have had a holiday to Mrs Astle's house for Easter!!!!!

Thank you to everybody who came to our Family Day, it was a great success. We met lots of new children who will come to our Nursery soon and also had a lovely time with our present children who came for a play and a chat with their families!

DIGGING DAY

What a super muddy day we had!
We had wonderful weather and lots of exciting jobs to do.
We played in the mud kitchen, investigated using the pulley, hunted for ingredients for the perfect mud pie, went digging in the digging pit, found lots of wiggly worms of different sizes, planned together how to work as a team to dig a river, collected up all the leaves checking for bugs and mini beasts, played with the dinosaurs in the mud, drove the cars through the stones, water and mud, did some mud painting, poured, filled and emptied lots of containers of mud, explored how to make mud cement and used it to build a strong wall.
Phew, what a busy busy day!

BREAKING NEWS:
£193 RAISED FROM THE RAFFLE, THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT. THIS MONEY WILL GO TOWARDS OUR GROWING AND MULTICULTURAL TOPICS IN THE SUMMER TERMS.

Don't forget to get your Easter Raffle tickets in Nursery, £1 a strip!
The raffle will be drawn on Family Day, Friday April 11th at 10am.

(Nursery closed for normal sessions but open to the public)

Spring is finally here!

We have enjoyed spotting the signs of Spring in our garden and around the school. We have looked closely at daffodils, Mrs Astle's favourite flower and thought carefully about the names of the different parts.

We have been reading 'The tiger who came to tea' and thought carefully about who we would like to invite to tea at our house! The children came up with lots of super ideas! On 'World Book Day' we then came dressed as that character.

Wow! What super outfits!

We have been chatting about the emergency services and other people in the community who help us. Being able to dial 999 in an emergency is a very important skill and we hope that you continue to talk to your child about what they would do at such a time.

Look who came to visit!!!

This is PCSO Sam Saunders who works in our local area. The children thought of some interesting questions to ask him and he explained clearly about his uniform and his radio.

FAMILY DAY

Nursery is closed for normal sessions on Friday 11th April. We are having a Family Day where the Nursery is open to the public from 8.30 until 1pm.
Everyone is welcome, Mums, Dads, Grandmas, Grandads etc......... This is a tradition that has taken place at Larklands Nursery for many years and we feel that this is where our success lies with our early relationship building with both children and parents.
There will be fundraising activities to enjoy such as a tombola and refreshments are also available. This is a lovely time to meet new children and have an informal chat with the staff!

Don't forget an Easter Raffle is being drawn at 10am in Nursery on this day! Tickets are available for £1 a strip from Nursery, we would appreciate any donations of prizes.

HAVE YOU HAD THE SNUGGLE SACK THIS WEEK?
We have been trialing our new 'Snuggle Sacks' this week and they have been a resounding success. The children are so excited when it is their turn and we have had excellent feedback from parents and about that quality time spent with their child. It has meant a lot to them to switch off the TV, put down their tablet and have a snuggle and a chat!
Click on the picture above to find out a little more about the meaning behind the idea!

What a busy week we have had! Thank you for your patience especially when arriving and leaving the Nursery as it is very busy with grown ups and children! We feel it is important to acknowledge or chat to every parent so your continued patience would be much appreciated.
BUSY, BUSY, BUSY BEES!

January 13th 2014
A big welcome to our new children who have joined us this term, what a brilliant first day! I have been thrilled to see the difference that the 'Getting ready for Nursery' course that we ran in conjunction with Surestart has made, quite a positive impact. The staff are more familiar with the children and the children are definitely more comfortable with their surroundings! So a success all round.

Happy New Year from everyone at Larklands!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYBODY AND WE WILL SEE YOU AT YOUR NORMAL NURSERY SESSION ON TUESDAY 7TH JANUARY!

CHRISTMAS PERFORMANCE DAY DINNER!!!!

What a busy day we had, two performances and a lunch in a full day!!! The whole school staff commented on how wonderful our behaviour and manners were!

Christmas Party
Thursday 19th December
All children to attend in their party clothes - 11am - 2pm

Price - £2 per child
...........................................................

Nursery Christmas Performances!

It's that time of the year and we have begun to practice some exciting songs ready for our show for our grown ups!

Performances are on Friday 13th December 2013
9.30am
and
2.15pm

All children will be taking part in both performances, so they will be spending the whole day at Nursery. For lunch they can either pay for a dinner or bring a packed lunch!
Contact the main school office for ticket enquiries

Feed the birds

This week we have been thinking about how we can help the birds around our school and homes. We noticed that our bird tables were empty and that the birds were looking particularly cold and hungry!!!
We though carefully about what they might like to eat and we even set up our bird cam so we can watch them eat their food!

For homework we had to think about how we could help the birds in our own gardens and we came up with lots of ideas!

Check out these pictures!

Applying for a school place
Remember to apply for a place for your child to go to 'big school' by following the link below:

Just because your child attends Larklands Nursery this does not guarantee them a place at Larklands. Please see Mrs Harrison in the main school office if you need any support.

Let's hibernate!!!!!

We have been thinking about hibernation as the weather gets colder!!!!!! We learned about which animals go to sleep for the winter and where they snuggle down! We even thought about how they get ready to hibernate and then reflected on where we might sleep if we were hibernating!

Where would you sleep??????

Watch out for hedgehogs as you are raking up your leaves, we have been keeping an eye for them in our Nursery garden! We even made some houses for them using materials found outside!

Autumn is here!!!

We have been on an Autumn walk to see if we could find some Autumn treasures and spot the signs of change!
We enjoyed spotting the apples in the apple trees, the berries on the hawthorn trees and the amazing colours of the leaves falling off the trees. We found lots of different shaped sizes and colours of leaves and collected them to use in Nursery.

As the weather gets colder please ensure that your child wears a coat to school everyday. We go outside every day no matter what the weather, as we realise and recognise the importance of fresh air and outdoor play!

Don't forget to name your child's clothes and coat too!!

Earrings and jewellery

We have noticed that some of the children are wearing earrings in Nursery. Our school governors state that no jewellery is allowed in Nursery and if your child's ears are already pierced then we only allow studs to be worn. These guidelines are for health and safety reasons and are explained in our Nursery brochure on our website.

All the Nursery staff would like to welcome the new children who are starting Nursery this September, we are very excited about getting to know you!

Remember to watch this space for exciting news about Nursery!!!!