Welcome to Ladybird class! We generally have the younger children in Ladybirds, and have spent time setting up the room for this age group. The shelving is lower than in other rooms, allowing easy access to resources. We also have a sleep/quiet area for those children who wish to take some time away from the busy nursery day for a nap or rest. 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 days and revisit their favourite activities. However, we also add resources that may be of interest to the children, such as a doctor’s kit in the home corner.

We have a lovely, covered outdoor space where the children have free flow access to sand, water and physical play activities. In addition, our classroom has direct access to the Woodland Garden. 

 All children have their own coat peg. Upon arrival in the morning, we encourage children to find their peg, put all their belongings away and self-register by finding their name card.    

Who is in the Ladybird Team?

• Hannah - Class Teacher
• Helen - Classroom Deputy / Classroon SENCo
• Amy - Early Years Assistant 
• Laura - Early Years Assistant 
• Alexa - Early Years Assistant
• Briony - Early Years Assistant  

Spring Term 2 - 2025

It has been lovely to welcome all the Ladybirds back to Nursery after the February half term. The children have quickly got back into the routine and have enjoyed singing our core rhyme, ‘The Wheels on the Bus.’ We have encouraged them to role play going on a bus, explore different size wheels by using paint to print and make tracks and also construct their own bus using crates, blocks and wooden steering wheels. The children have also been singing along to our other core rhymes, ‘Old Macdonald,’ ‘1,2,3,4,5’ and ‘5 Little Ducks.’

We were really lucky to have a delivery of some new equipment for our garden the first week back. We have been busily exploring the rainbow cube, sound bongos and chimes.

We all loved having a go at pancake racing, but the best part of Shrove Tuesday was tasting the pancakes at snack time!

We were lucky enough to have a visit from a local author, Ellie Sandall, who shared her book ‘Every Bunny Dance.’ She helped us to try all the different actions from the story and we enjoyed dressing up in the costumes she brought in.

In early March it was World Book Day and it was so lovely to have some of our parents and carers visit us to share some stories with the class.

Comic Relief day was funny and we enjoyed all the activities on offer that day.

The children have enjoyed playing with the Old MacDonald farm activities both inside and out, especially the hens and their eggs in the garden!!

The children have enjoyed making cards and Easter crafts and have particularly loved learning about Spring from the objects in our seasons tray. They have also been really clever at noticing the signs of Spring in our garden.

Have a lovely Easter holiday!

Spring Term 1 - 2025

What a busy start back to nursery we have had following the Christmas holidays! Happy New Year to all our children and families! We hope that 2025 will be a fabulous year for everyone.

It has been lovely to welcome some new Ladybirds to the class and to get to know them and their loved ones. We have enjoyed settling the children into the routines of the day and have shared some interesting and exciting activities based around our theme of space.

Our core story has been ‘Little Tom and the Trip to the Moon’ by Diane and Christyan Fox. The children have explored some messy, gloopy play, creating planet shapes using a variety of tools! They have made golden moon craters, play dough stars and wooden block rockets!

During carpet time we have been learning our new rhymes, ‘Zoom, Zoom, Zoom,’ ‘5 Little Men in a Flying Saucer’ and ‘Open, Shut Them.’ The children have been very enthusiastic with their singing, counting and actions to the rhymes, they especially loved making their rockets ‘blast off!’

It was the Lunar New Year at the end of January and we made streamers to wave and played instruments to accompany the Buzzy Bees and Butterflies during their Dragon Dance. The children experimented with chop sticks and realised how tricky it was to pick things up with them! We also tried to wish everyone ‘Kung Hei Fat Choi’ which is a Cantonese greeting that means "wishing you prosperity" or "congratulations and may you be prosperous". It's a common greeting during Chinese New Year.

In small groups some of the children have started to explore the Woodland Garden, ‘cooking’ in the mud kitchen, sharing stories and rhymes in the Cabin and swinging in the hammock.

When we return after half term we will be looking forward to our next core rhyme. It will be, ‘All Aboard’ as we get on the bus to sing ‘The Wheels on the Bus.’

Thank you to all our families for their support this half term. We are looking forward to continue to support your child during their learning journey at Caverstede.

Have a lovely half term.

Autumn Term 2 - 2024

What a lovely start back to nursery we have had following the Autumn half term! We have continued to welcome some new faces to the classroom and it has been wonderful to get to know them and their families.

It has been a really busy half term! We loved creating firework pictures from paint and chalk and making firework biscuits with colourful icing.

Nursery rhyme week was great fun, trying to learn a different rhyme each day was hard work but with all the different activities to have a go at linked to each rhyme it meant that we completed the nursery rhyme challenge! Well done Ladybirds!

We also loved having our grown ups from home visiting us for some ‘stay and play’ sessions. They were very good at supporting us when we were engaged in our activities and we think they had a fun time too!

Our core story this half term is Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell. It's been so exciting to open up the different boxes and containers to find out what animal had been delivered from the zoo. We are enjoying finding out about a range of wild animals and exploring how they move and what noises they make.

As part of our continuous provision we have a seasons tray to investigate. The Autumn tray is full of leaves, pine cones, books about autumn and even a red squirrel! We have just started to explore all the wintery objects in our Winter tray.

Autumn Term 1 - 2024

It has been a wonderful start to the Autumn Term! We have loved welcoming back returning children and their families and also getting to know all of our new children and their families. Thank you to everyone for all of your support during the settling in period. The children, new and returning, have settled really well and are enjoying exploring all that our classroom has to offer.

To our new parents and carers, it has been lovely getting to know you all and if you have any questions or worries, then please don't hesitate to speak to a member of the Ladybird Team.

Our core rhymes this half term have been “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep”. The children have enjoyed listening to, joining in with and exploring these rhymes through a variety of small world, sensory and role play experiences. More recently we have begun to explore the topic of Autumn through play and exploration of natural objects such as conkers and pine cones. Exploring the natural environment has helped to spark lots of talk and language around number, size, shape and texture, and it has been lovely to see how excited the children have been by this topic. We have also been encouraging the children to mark make using a variety of tools this has resulted in some wonderful pieces of art work!

Next half term our core story will be “Dear Zoo” and we will be looking forward to starting the countdown to Christmas!