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Dunstable
Beds
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Phone: 01582 662600
Email: office@willownursery.co.uk
Nursery News 22nd April 2025
NURSERY NEWS
22nd April 2025 – Edition 368
Find out About
A Dates for the Summer Term 2025
B. What are the children learning about this week?
A. Dates for the Summer Term 2025
Welcome back everyone. We are now into the third term of the school year- The Summer Term. I just wanted to outline key dates across this term for your information.
Tuesday 22nd April 2025, Summer Term begins.
Monday 5th May 2025. Bank Holiday Monday, School Closed.
Monday 26th May to Friday 30th May 2025, Half Term Week, School Closed (26th May is a Bank Holiday)
Monday 7th July 2025 is a training day for staff. School Closed
Monday 21st July 2025 will be the last day of term for all children. School opens for normal hours.
Tuesday 22nd July 2025 school will be open only for the Big Nursery children that are leaving us. The session will be a morning only session from 8:50am to 11:50am.
B. What are the children learning about this week?
The theme this week is animals and vets
This week the children will be learning about animals that we might have as pets and how we should take care of them. The children will be able to relate to their own experiences as they may discuss their own pets and how they look after them at home. Staff will discuss the importance of making sure our pets have enough food and water as well as a comfortable bed and home. They will share with the children that if our pets get poorly, we will take them to a veterinary surgeon, just like a person would visit a doctor if they were unwell.
To support this, there will be vet role play areas set up for the children to use their imagination and learn through play. There will be plenty of soft toy animals that need treatment, food and water bowls, pet medicine and comfortable beds for the animals to nap on. Staff will model vocabulary to support the children and extend their play.
The learning intention this week is to learn how to throw and catch large balls, bean bags and other items. Children will be shown how to throw items to each other in a safe environment and how to hold their arms out in front of them to catch these items.
Our learning intention from the 7C’s is to be able to recognise small quantities without counting. We will be playing simple games with the children where they will try to estimate how many items are in front of them without counting each object. This is a tricky objective to master, so we will play lots of different games to support this. We want children to be able to look quickly at groups of 1,2 or 3 objects and to be able to accurately identify how many items there are. We need children to do this with only a quick glimpse of the items, so that children are not using their counting skills to individually count the items.
Give this a go at home. Use small objects, such as coins, buttons or lego bricks. Hide 1,2 or 3 items in your hand, briefly open your hand, just for a moment to show your child a very quick glance at the objects. Ask ‘How many coins were there?’
Use an egg box to hide 1,2,or 3 eggs inside. Make a game of opening the egg box, briefly, then closing it again, asking ‘How many eggs? Make it fun and playful and you will engage your child’s attention.
