Buzzy Bees
Welcome to the Buzzy Bee class! The class is made up of mainly 3 and 4 year olds, with some older 2 year olds. Our classroom is the first you come across from the entrance into the nursery garden. One side of the classroom is full of windows with a perfect view of the nursery garden for the children to look out upon as they play in the classroom. In the Buzzy Bee room we have a cookery area, equipped with child sized resources and outfits.
The position of our classroom means we have the furthest to walk to our Woodland Garden for woodland days – this makes the journey across the main nursery garden feel more like an adventure for the day! Although we might be the furthest from the Woodland Garden we are the closest to the library, this makes it easy for spontaneous quiet story times.
In the Buzzy Bees we have a window through into the Caverstede room, which gives the children opportunity to look into the variety of groups that happen through family services.
As with all the classrooms we have divided up the areas using shelving, so children have direct and easy access to the resources available to support their independent play. We tend to have many resources that stay the same, so that children can return to their activities over a period of time and revisit their favourite activities. However, we also add resources that may be of interest to the children, such as wedding outfits, or hairdressing equipment in the home corner.
All children have their own pigeon hole and a designated coat peg. Upon arrival we encourage children to find their peg and put all their belongings away. The pigeon holes can be checked by parents at the beginning or end of a session, for letters or leaflets.
Information for parents can be found in a variety of places including the parents notice board inside the classroom, letters and leaflets in their child’s pigeon hole, and on the whiteboard outside of the classroom door.
March 2023
The Buzzy Bees have had a great term exploring lots of different experiences related to our core story of Shark in the Park. Experiences have included creating telescopes, going on shark hunts, looking at different types of sharks, and making small and large models of sharks.
The children embraced our visit from Ellie Sandall during World Book week, and have talked about it a lot afterwards, recalling the story Balancing Bernie, and talk about it regularly when looking at the display of balancing dogs in the window. Thank you to all the families who joined in with the World book day event by sending in favourite books, or dressing up. We enjoyed sharing all the favourite stories and books with one another, and listened to some of the stories outside whilst having our snack.
We also had a ‘Caverstede Cinema experience’ where the children used their ticket to visit the Caverstede cinema. The staff replicate a cinema experience as close as possible in our Caverstede room, with the lights off, and viewing “The Gruffalo” on a big screen, along with the Butterfly children. The children had a cinema snack whilst watching the film too.
We have celebrated our science week by exploring and experimenting with all types of science theories and experiments from floating and sinking, melting ice, dissolving salt, creating sweet rainbows to exploding volcanoes and creating rockets! The children have really embraced all the different experiences and been recreating some of their own within their play.
Next half term we will be focusing on the book The Pirates are coming by John Condon.
Its been a great start to 2023 this half term. The children have really embraced our core story of the ‘The Gingerbread man’ and are recalling key phrases and refrains such as “Run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread man”. The children have explored a wide range of activities and experiences linked to this including baking and tasting gingerbread biscuits, creating large paintings and acting out the story with props to name just a few.
For Chinese New Year the children have had opportunities to engage in a wide range of crafts, from making paper lanterns to large scale dragon ready for the Chinese Dragon Dance around the garden. We watched videos about Chinese New Year, had a Chinese banquet for snack and participated in the Chinese Dragon Dance around the nursery garden with the other classes too. The children have explored objects, artefacts and books including clothing and chop sticks for the children to use.
For Bird Watching week we created various bird hides for the children to use to spot the birds in the garden. The children loved using the binoculars to see the birds, and many made their own. The children used the bird identifier sheets to help name and count how many birds they have seen in the garden. They children had a tuff tray of bird seed, nesting materials and cuddly chirping birds to explore.
The children embraced the visit from Bertie the dog, talking about their own experiences of animals and asked questions such as “What does Bertie eat?” “Where does he live”. We discussed staying safe around animals and the children listened carefully, about the instructions on how to approach Bertie and stroke him.
We have also been learning about technology and how to keep ourselves safe when using it. We have used different apps on the iPad, including drawing and animation apps, as well as other forms of technology such as metal detectors and programmable toys such as the Beebot and Constructabot!
Our Woodland Days will continue to be Friday until Easter and can I please remind parents/carers to provide warm, suitable clothes for your child, that you don’t mind getting dirty!
Next half term our core story is going to be ‘Shark in the Park’ by Nick Sharratt. We look forward to doing lots of different activities related to the story.
Our core story for the Buzzy Bees this half term is ‘The Three Little Pigs’, and it’s been going down a storm! The children have been thoroughly enjoying listening to this story, talking about the characters so they are becoming really familiar with it, being able to retell parts of the story using storyboards, props and role play outfits. We have turned our role play corner into the third little pigs house, which the children are using to re-enact the story too. The children have been exploring the characters in the story through different art and craft activities including drawing, painting, clay, play dough, and more.
We have learnt about Diwali - the festival of Light, the children made Rangoli patterns using rice and chalk as well as trying some food for snack like chapati, mango chutney and some traditional sweets. We watched how a family celebrated Diwali on CBeebies and learnt a song about a Diva lamp burning bright. We watched some fireworks on our Interactive White Board and made some different firework pictures from paint to learn about Bonfire Night. We sang a couple of songs about fireworks including ‘On Bonfire Night’. For Remembrance Day we joined together with the Butterflies and made red and purple poppies to add to our nursery Remembrance wall and tried really hard to keep quiet for two minutes on Friday 11th November at 11 o’clock. The children went on a Pudsey Ramble for Children in Need and looked around nursery for the characters – Pudsey and Blush. Some of the children made bear biscuits, we had lots of spotty pictures being made using painter dobbers, and had yellow playdough to make our own Pudsey bears.
The children have been enjoying playing outside in all weathers and especially in the rain lately so thank you for sending in spare clothes, coats and wellies. Jumping and playing in puddles has been particularly enjoyable for all of them!
Woodland Julie has led some amazing Woodland day experiences in our Woodland Garden. To name just a few of the things we have been up to; making mini firework inspired explosions using vinegar and baking soda in the mud kitchen, learning how to keep safe using tools, such as using hammers hit golf tees into pumpkins, we’ve collected sticks, played in the mud kitchen, dug for worms, used the wheelbarrows and become really muddy in the digging pit!!
Our Buzzy Bee class sing-a-long is Thursday 15th December at 9.30am or 2.15pm.
Our Christmas party is on Tuesday 20th December so remember to dress up.
Thank you for your continued support.
A warm welcome to the Buzzy Bee classroom. The children are settling so well into the Buzzy Bee’s this term. They are quickly becoming used to the routines of the day and are confident in accessing the resources independently.
We are currently reading the stories “WOW! Said The Owl”, and “Owl Babies” With our older children focusing on Owl Babies, and our younger children on Wow! Said the Owl.
The children have enjoyed listening to the stories in small groups, and one-to-one with an adult. They are embracing activities based on owls such as painting owls, and creating them out of clay. They have looked closely at the feathers and used them in the playdough when representing their own Owls. We will be finding out facts about owls using some non-fiction books and the internet.
We are beginning to look at the changing seasons. Autumn provides us with lots of wonderful opportunities to learn about changes and the natural world. We will use conkers, fallen leaves/seeds etc to do a wide variety of activities, from crafts to counting, measuring and developing their physical skills.
We will also soon be starting to visit our Woodland garden once a week where the children will be able to experience gardening, fire building, den building, bug hunting and much more. Benefits of our woodland days include; confidence, social skills, communication, concentration, physical skills, knowledge and understanding, new perspectives.
We ask that with the changing weather, you send clothing appropriate for the weather, e.g. Wellies and coats. We do provide a waterproof suit for wet days. Our Woodland day for this term until Christmas, is Tuesday, and we will be starting to visit the Woodland Garden from Week Commencing 10th October.