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.
The children continue to embrace our core stories and this half term has been no exception. The children have really enjoyed the core story of Jack and the Beanstalk, they quickly became familiar with the text and able to retell the story and use key phrases within their play. The children have been planting some seeds on Woodland day, explored different sized and shaped beans in their tactile play and had baked beans for snack. Both the Buzzy Bees and Butterfly classes joined up during World Book week to listen to the story and help act it out as a large group in the nursery garden, where after throwing the beans out - mysteriously a beanstalk grew in the garden in the following days!
The children had a fabulous experience of author and artist Ellie Sandall joining us during world book week, where she read the story of Balancing Bernie and followed this with activities such as balancing the soft toy dogs and decorating their own dog picture.
A huge interest in the Buzzy Bees has been potion making and experimenting. We have gone with the children’s interests and regularly, the children mix together all sorts of concoctions to create their ‘magic potions’, from creating wizards and dragons to turning each other into lizards! The children have gone on to asking to make experiments and explosions. We have so far experimented with making and melting ice, seeing what happens when mixing vinegar and bicarbonate of soda and watched the reaction of coke and Mentos! All these activities are creating wonderful opportunities for their creative and expressive language, their imaginations and developing their scientific knowledge when to see what happens when different things are mixed together.
The children are really starting to develop their skills in zipping up their coats, something we’d love you to continue to support at home, as this is something that will really help them when they move on to school in September. Encouraging them to put on their own shoes and doing their fastenings is another way we can support their independence as they get ready to move on to their new school.
Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to the final term with your children, we will be reading the story ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’ next half term, and have lots of exciting things planned for the summer term!
The Buzzy Bee Team
Spring 1 2024
Our core Story of “Whatever Next” linking with the theme of space has been a fabulous success in capturing the children’s imagination and fascination. The children have naturally been curious about the planets and space, and have been wanting to learn the names of the Sun, Moon, Star, Earth and other planets. They have engaged in role play in both our indoor and outdoor rocket role play areas, enjoying dressing up as astronauts. Their counting down from 5 has become excellent and some amazing rocket sound effects can be heard during their play!
Children have been making their own jet packs as part of their role play and model making, using bottles and boxes to make them, often strapped to their back. Their imagination and creativity in building has also been seen by the elaborate rockets, spaceships and vehicles being built in the block area and with various construction materials, such as Lego, Knex and Mobilo.
We have had a wealth of stories and factual books on offer based on space and the children have loved looking at these, talking about the pictures and finding out new facts. The children have gained other favourite books alongside ‘Whatever Next’ including the story ‘To the Moon and Back’. The children are able to recall parts of the story ‘Whatever Next’, talk about the characters and what they get up to.
The children have loved exploring the ice in the garden, helping set out pans of water to freeze over night and then breaking it up the next day! A true natural science experiment!
Woodland days continue to be a fabulous adventure for the children, they enjoy swinging in the hammock, finding the lost items and fitting them back together each week. They have enjoyed using tools to create things, and to dig. We must thank you for sending the children with hats, gloves, coats and scarves, this ensures the children are toasty warm even on some of the coldest days!
Next half term we look forward to reading the story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and focusing on growing, hoping that by the end of the summer term we will have some plants to harvest, or at the very least having seen their flowers grow!
This half term in the Buzzy Bees, just like the Butterfly class, we have been looking at and listening to the traditional tale ‘The Gingerbread Man’. The children have been enjoying this story and learning about the different characters. We have been using small world characters and props so the children can use them to retell the story, they have especially enjoyed using the Gingerbread man cuddly toys to sing the phrase “run run as fast as you can you can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread man” during their play with friends. This role play has continued in the nursery garden and formed part of their running and chasing games. We have drawn, painted, made play dough gingerbread men, eaten gingerbread biscuits for snack and will be making our own gingerbread men biscuits. We have added a mixing bowl, wooden spoon and the ingredients into the home corner for the children to role play making gingerbread dough, as well as in the nursery garden where they can pretend to sell and make their biscuits in the bakery. We have built bridges using different blocks over ‘rivers’ and have even experimented with Gingerbread men biscuits to see what happens when they fall in water/ milk or a cup of tea! This really promoted lots of thinking and language!
We have done several woodland sessions with Ali in the Woodland garden. The children have been practising putting on their wet suits and wellies. Also, they have been playing in the mud kitchen, using real spades in the digging pod, sweeping leaves with brushes, doing various scavenger hunts for different things, making a group firework picture using spray bottles and learning how to safely use a small hammer. The children have been really enjoying playing and exploring in this area.
Buzzy Bee and Butterfly classes core story; Next term – Spring 1 our new core story is ‘Whatever Next!’ by Jill Murphy.
Have a lovely break and thank you for your support.
The children in the Buzzy Bees have settled really well. Many of those who are returning children have come back in September as though they’ve never been away, even those moving from Ladybirds. Those new to Caverstede have become used to their new routine and classroom and are doing really well. Some days can still be a little tricky for some of them but they are feeling comfortable with the adults in the room and are happy to seek reassurance when and if they need it. The ‘Owl Babies’ story has been a useful story as it talks about mummy owl coming back so this has helped with our children settling into nursery
We have started to introduce group times at the beginning of the day and a large group time when getting ready for lunch. At these times the children are singing the ‘hello song’ amongst other songs you’ll see on our knowledge organiser and other familiar nursery rhymes. We also talk about the days of the week and count how many children are in the group that day, giving daily opportunities to singing, counting and talking about the day and weather.
The children have really enjoyed exploring the new hospital area in the outdoor area where many of the adults have been taken, operated on, bandaged up and made to feel a whole lot better! We have also had a mini ‘pop-up shop’ role play for a few days which the children embraced, taking it in turns to be shop assistants, customers, and most of all they enjoyed handling the money and doing their shopping!
We are supporting the children with their sharing and turn taking, doing this through role modelling, and supporting children on how to ask and wait for a turn. We know that this can be really difficult stage for the children and this will be something we will be working on throughout the year. Also we are supporting them with their independent skills, encouraging them to have a go at putting on their own coats/hoodies as well as their own shoes. This is something you could help encourage at home too.