Nursery | Donacloney Primary School

Welcome to the Nursery Class page. Here you will find some general information about the Nursery curriculum and the activities on offer. You can also see some of the children’s amazing Art work.

NURSERY TEACHER: Mrs K Castles

NURSERY ASSISTANT: Mrs L Keery

NURSERY TIMES: 9.00am – 1.30pm

HOME LEARNING DURING SCHOOL CLOSURE

Home Learning Activities

March/April Topics- Spring and Dinosaurs

Help your child to do a few of these activities each day, only if you can. Do not put yourself under pressure at this difficult time but remember the most important thing for your Nursery child is to play, read and keep up some physical activity together.

Look out the window and go into the garden. Look for as many signs of Spring as you can see and count them e.g. birds singing, daffodils blooming.
Find a flower and count the petals.
Draw a picture of yourself in the garden. Draw things you see in the garden e.g. a tree, a flower, a bird.
Plant your flower seeds.
Think of all the animals you see on a farm, then think of the baby animals e.g. a cow and calf. On other days think of animals and their babies which live in the zoo or in the jungle.
Move around the house or the garden like an animal e.g. an elephant, a giraffe, a snake, a frog, a kangaroo, a crocodile, a horse. Change direction or speed on a signal. Move fast/slow, forwards/backwards/sideways.
Have a picnic in the garden on a sunny day.
Help to water the plants.
Each day, sing or recite a different rhyme/song from the Spring song booklet. Teach other family members how to do the actions.
Find stories about baby animals and dinosaurs and read one each day. Read stories to your teddies or dolls.
Draw or paint a picture of your favourite dinosaur.
Do some Spring cleaning and wash some of your favourite toys in a basin or bucket of soapy water outside.
Wash some socks in a basin outside and peg them in pairs on a clothes horse.
Use cuddly toys to play animal hospital.
Make play dough into the shape of a flower.
Make a headband out of cardboard and turn it into an animal by sticking on paper whiskers, ears or a face. Use it when singing your animal songs.
Think of a shape and go for a shape hunt for things in the house or garden which are the same shape.
Start a collection of lids from jars, bottles and tubs. Sort them in different ways - same colour, shape, size, material. Count how many of each, how many all together. Draw round the lids to make a picture.
Read Jack and the beanstalk story or find online version. Draw or paint a tall beanstalk. Make the giant's castle out of junk. Build Jack's house or the castle out of Lego or Duplo. Count how many blocks high or wide your castle is.
Find a large page, piece of card or length of wall paper. Lie on it while someone draws round you. Turn the shape of yourself into the giant by colouring in or painting and drawing a face, hair, etc. You could stick on wool or fabric scraps too. Help to cut out.
Think of different types of beans and make up an action for each one e.g. jump for a jumping bean, shiver for a chilli bean, stretch wide for a big broad bean, lie down for a baked bean.
Make an Easter Card for your family.
Make Chocolate Nests with Rice Krispies and melted chocolate.
Make a shaker or use your egg shaker and shake it in time while singing Chick, chick, chick, chick, chicken, lay a little egg for me...
Look at the recently updated photos on this class page and use as a talking point.

Useful Websites and online activities related to our topics of Spring and Dinosaurs

Libraries N I Rub a dub hub- Go to Activities to do at home- Animal Activities and Love Reading

https://www.topmarks.co.uk Age 3-5

Maths activities

Go to Counting and do Teddy Bear Numbers and The Gingerbread Man Game.
Go to Shape and do Shape Monsters
Go to Measures and do Let's Compare

English Activities

Go to Letters and Sounds and do Match the sounds
Go to Stories and Rhymes and do Animals on the farm movie

CBeebies Website

Our Family- Bob and Lenny feed the ducks
Teddles- Don't forget to wash your hands

Follow the link to Topics on CBeebies

Animals- Watch A tale of the start of Spring and Spring
Dinosaurs

Follow link to Watch and sing on CBeebies

Andy's Pre-historic Raps
Ferne and Rory's Animal songs

Follow link to Make and colour

Make a Peter Rabbit Picture
Make a Pre-historic picture

Other Useful Websites to Help With Home Learning

www.librariesni.org.uk

Library NI has 1000s of ebooks and audiobooks which are available to download for free.

https:/www.seusville.com
https://www.starfall.com

Twinkl is a fantastic resource and you can access activities free for one month during school closures. www.twinkl.co.uk/offer

Log on using the code UKTWINKLHELPS

Joe Wicks Live on You Tube Mon-Fri at 9a.m. PE With Joe

A short story for children about Covid-19

covid-19story(manuelamolina).pdf

The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust website has a short animated video for children to help them understand the coronavirus.

Early Years Activities

Early_Years_Home_Learning_Collection.pdf

5minutemum.com Lots of fun ideas for parents

This Visual Schedule may be useful if you want to structure your day

Visual Schedule.pdf

Nursery

Inside

Outside play equipment

Our outside play area

Starting Nursery

If you are starting Donacloney Nursery this is where you will find out all about it.

The Nursery teacher is Mrs Castles and the Nursery Assistant is Mrs Keery.

They will play with you and help you to learn new things.

You will do self-registration and hang your coat up on your own coat peg. You can keep your wellie boots in Nursery and you will need them when you play outside.

You can play at our different play areas.

When you are hungry you can wash your hands and have a healthy snack. You can have milk or water to drink at Nursery.

You can use the bathroom whenever you need to and there are little toilets and sinks which are easy for you to use.

You can choose to go out to play.

Mrs Castles reads a story in the Quiet Room after tidy up time. It is fun doing rhymes and songs too.

Everyone sits together at Dinner Time.

Everyone has fun when Jo Jingles visits.

We learn new songs, play instruments and move to the music.

Dressing Up Day

Everyone came to Nursery in a costume and we made chocolate apples as a treat.

Christmas is a very busy time in Nursery.

Parents help to decorate the windows and get involved in creative activities.

Having fun in the snow

Clifford the Big Red Dog visits Nursery. He is very friendly..

We visit the Book Fair when it comes to school each year. It is a great place to listen to a story.

World Book Day

We always love to read books about animals and on World Book Day everyone dressed up in something animal related. We also enjoyed bringing in our animal books and sharing them with our friends.

We learn about baby animals and parents sometimes bring in baby animals from home or the farm.

We are always busy planting seeds, bulbs and plants.

Daffodil bulbs which are planted in the Autumn time come into bloom in the Spring.

We enjoyed planting window boxes full of pretty flowers.

Outdoor Learning

Our Stay and Play Days

Mums and Dads have the chance to stay and play. It is fun for the children and their parents.

Happy Healthy Kids

Children at Donacloney Nursery have lots of opportunity for physical, energetic play.

People Who Help Us

We have been learning about 'People Who Help Us' and some Mums and Dads came to Nursery to talk about their jobs.

The School Cook talked to us about her job, what she wears and the food and equipment she uses. Everything is really big!

Making healthy Fruit Salad for snack

Pancake Day

Making Healthy Carrot and Potato Soup

Valentine's Day

A very creative Mum helped the children decorate these lovely homemade shortbread hearts. What a sweet idea!

Finding fun ways to use spaghetti

We made Bottle Babies

Football coaching session

Odd Sock Day

When we learn about hedgehogs we use clay to make our own prickly hedgehogs.

The Oxford Island Outreach Programme

Learning about Minibeasts

Learning about birds from the education team at Oxford Island.

Big Bedtime Read

Mums, Dads and Grandparents were invited to our special Pyjama Day Story time. It was lovely to see everyone snuggling up for another story before home time.