We have been busy exploring our local area of Llanedeyrn. We set off from St Philip Evans School, with a list of things to spy and count, including a church, a bus stop, a street sign, a bin and a zebra crossing. We worked in partners to play I Spy, who could find the things we needed first?

We walked out of our school, past the church... TICK! and the zebra crossing... TICK! We learnt what a zebra crossing was and how we use it. We must stop and wait at the pavement, the car will stop and let us cross to the other side of the road safely. We then got to the bus stop... TICK! We saw lots of buses passing us during our walk and one driver even gave us a beep beep of his horn and a wave! We saw the number 57, number 58 and number 1 bus.

We saw lots of houses on our walk, we looked at the numbers on the doors and on their wheelie bins and counted the windows on the houses! We even said the colours of the houses in Welsh! We looked carefully at all the different houses, there were bungalows and flats too! We then walked over the bridge, past the park and finally got to the Maelfa!

We saw lots of people busy doing their shopping. At the Maelfa, there are many different shops. There is a butchers to buy meat, a hair salon to have your hair cut, a newsagents to buy newspapers and magazines, an opticians to have your eyes tested and a chip shop for a special treat! We chose to go in the Nisa store to buy the things on our list.

We got ourselves a trolley and browsed the aisles for the best bargains! When we had finished, we went to the till to give the shopkeeper our money, we packed our items into our bag and off we went!

We then went to the library in the powerhouse. Lots of us had been before! We had a read of some of the books and chose a book to bring back to nursery, together with our partners. The books have to be scanned on a special machine, we scanned our library card and took the receipt. We will take extra special care of these books as we are borrowing them.

Our little legs were tired after our trip so we walked back to Nursery before going home to put our feet up!

We have used our programming skills to direct the bee-bot to different places in Llanedeyrn.

We rolled the dice to see where the Bee-bot wanted to go. The bee-bot went to the bus stop, the library, the chip shop, our school, the church and the Nisa shop.

The bee- bot cards helped us to remember how to programme it to where he needed to go. It was very important to remember to press the ‘clear’ button first!

We had to use our counting skills to see how many spaces the bee-bot needed to move. We worked together as a team and communicated in order to successfully programme the bee-bot!

Oh no! We’ve had a litterbug on our hands in Nursery!

When we came into our classroom, there was a HUGE mess all over the floor! Somebody had littered everywhere... but, WHO could have done such a thing?

We picked up all the rubbish straight away to make our classroom clean again. Then, we sorted all the rubbish into different piles for recycling. We had cardboard, paper and plastic. We looked carefully to see if we could see the recycling label on the different packets and boxes in our room. We have learnt that when we recycle, old things are made into new things, instead of making more waste!

We read a ‘Recycling’ story with Peppa Pig. Peppa learnt about recycling and taught us new things too! Peppa Pig took her recycling to the recycling centre and put the bottles, tins and paper in the correct recycling bins.

We sequenced the story and sang Peppa’s recycling song.

During our circle time activities, we used our senses to imagine being on the riverbank and discussed what happens when people litter in the water and in our local area.

In our small world area, we used bin lorries and refuse workers to sort the rubbish, just like when our rubbish gets collected from our houses every week!

We went on a litter pick around our school to collect all the rubbish that litterbugs had left around our beautiful school. We brought back all of the rubbish and checked what could be recycled. We put reflective jackets on and used the litter pickers because litter can be dirty so we don’t want germs on our hands!

It is so important that we check our rubbish at home to see if it can be recycled! Korbin recycled a ‘Moo’ drink bottle and Harper recycled her fruit pot. They saw the recycling logo on the packets!

During the season of winter, the weather is cold and we must wrap up warm with coats, hats, scarves and gloves. We dressed up in our warm, winter clothes to go outside in the cold!

We met Pete the Penguin who had a problem! He couldn’t find his home and was feeling sad. We tried to help him!

On Thursday, we came into Nursery and Pete the Penguin had a problem! He was looking for his home and had managed to get himiself trapped in a big block of ice! We thought about how we could rescue him from the ice...

First, we tried using tools and all our strength to hit the ice to get the penguin out, but that didn’t work and took a long time.

We remembered that we had learnt about hot and cold things

in our classroom and we knew that the ice needed to melt so we could save Pete the Penguin. Everyone had lots of ideas!

We put the ice in a box on the radiator, we even gave him a bath in a bucket of water to see if that would work! Next, we put the ice under the hand dryers in our bathroom but eventually we saved Pete the Penguin by running the hot water tap on him and finally he was free!

Penguin Pete was still looking for his home, we found out that people were not looking after our planet and his home had got too hot and the ice melted away! We built him an igloo to see if he would like to live there. We worked together as a team to build with our blocks in the construction area. An igloo doesn’t look like our house because it doesn’t have windows or a door like ours!

 All of the nursery children visited Poppelwood to meet Father Christmas.
When we arrived, we went with Santa’s elves to write our letter to Santa. We had to tell him if we had been naughty or nice and write what we wanted from him for Christmas. We talked about how we’d been nice this year, by sharing with our friends, helping our mums and dads and tidying our bedrooms.
Next, we went to Santa’s grotto but... OH NO! He was fast asleep! We sang a Christmas song to wake him up but that didn’t work so we sang even louder!

When we met Father Christmas, we went one at a time to give him our letter and tell him how we’d been good and asked nicely for the presents we would like this year, remembering to say
please and thank you. We posted our letters in the postbox and had a special present from Santa.
   

We have been reading the story “Owl Babies”.

In the story, three little owls, Sarah, Percy and Bill are feeling sad, worried and lonely because their Mother Owl has flown away. The baby owls don't know where she has gone! They all sit together on Sarah’s branch to close their eyes and wait for Mother Owl to return.

We’ve been using our owl puppets to role play the story as well as using feathers and twigs in our mark making and making owls in the creative area.
We have been thinking where Mummy Owl could have gone. Some of thought she’d gone to work, or maybe the shops! Then we wondered if she’dgone to buy sweeties for the owls like our mummies and daddies do. But no, we realised that’s not what owls do! 

On Thursday, we read the next part of the story... and Mother Owl CAME BACK!
We were so excited to see that the Mother Owl had come to visit us in our classroom!
She brought her friends too; we met seven birds altogether! We learnt lots about owls and had a go at seeing if we would make a good owl. We had to stand up straight like a soldier and balance on one leg, because that's how owls go to sleep! Owls sleep in the day time when we are awake and wake up in the night time when we are asleep. We also put on our binoculars to see what it would be like to see like an owl as they can’t move their eyes, they move their heads around from side to side. We also learnt that some owls have 70,000 feathers! And we even saw a few owls going to the toilet too...
We then had a go at touching some of the owls. We had to be really careful. We felt their soft, smooth feathers. Alison from the Owl Sanctuary was showing us how to be sensible and she chose sensible children to have a go at holding an owl using a special glove!
It was very exciting and we’ve even been given a free ticket to the Owl Sanctuary in Ebbw Vale so we can go and visit Mother Owl and her friends again soon

Lots of us in nursery have begun learning our sounds. We have been having Read Write Inc phonics sessions each day to learn how to hear, say, see and write our sounds.

We’ve been learning the sound ‘m’ for mountain, monkey, mum and map.

First, we had to hear the sound and we practised saying lots of words beginning with the sound ‘m’.
After we’d seen the sound and recognised its shape, we went on a hunt to find the sound ‘m’ around our school! We used our iPads to take photos of the ‘m’ sounds we could find.
Later in the week, we learnt how to write the sound ‘m’.
We have to go down Maisie and then over the mountains.

We say: “Maisie, mountain, mountain” to help us to write the sound! 
We brought in things from home which began with the sound ‘m’ for our sound table. We have been saying the words and hearing how they start with the sound ‘m’.

We have been photographers in nursery! We are so lucky to have iPads in our class, so we have been showing off our digital skills!
We now know the camera button we need to press to take the photo or sometimes we can just swipe the screen.

We have been trying hard to make sure you can see the person’s face clearly on the screen and then we hit the white circle... SNAP!
Most importantly, don’t forget your cheesy smile!

We even had a practice at taking a selfie...