Learning with Leuven

Leven Scales 1

New Kids on the block 1

What have we been do-ing? Rising Stars

2

What have we doingf? Shooting Stars

3

Garden update 4

Chatter Matters 4

Active story making 6

Inside this issue:

We all learn and try our hardest, put in the most effort when involved in

something we enjoy..that’s hardly a ground breaking idea (which is why the

housework waits while I prepare this newsletter!). It’s such a simple con-

cept and yet one that school based education still often fails to embrace

and exploit. Our job in the Early Years is to light the fires of learning by tun-

ing into what the children enjoy doing and weave in what learning they

need to gain from it.

Some children make it quite clear what they like and don’t like doing: par-

ticularly the older children who are quick to say “this is boring...can we go

outside now” or, “Do I have to write it down?”. But how do we measure

the levels of involvement of the younger child, or for that matter those who

may be more “compliant” and less verbal? One of the methods that we use

is the ‘Leuven scale’ which is what the little box of numbers 1-5 refer to at

the bottom of the learning stories. By observing what the child does: body

language, facial expressions we can ascertain how effective is the learning

taking place:

“Level 1. Low Activity: Activity at this level can be simple, stereotypic, repetitive

and passive. The child is absent and displays no energy. There is an absence of

cognitive demand. The child characteristically may stare into space.’

Or high level 5: concentration, creativity, energy and persistence. This intensity

must be present for almost all the observation period.

Having made our observation, we would then use these levels for future planning:

if the activity produced a level of 3 or lower the key person would be looking at

ways of infusing more excitement into their play and by looking at observations

where levels were 4 or 5, use these as stimulus for more of the same.

You can find more information about the Leuven Scales on our parents page of

the website.

“Arriving at the middle of the Summer Term still

wearing water poofs and encountering serious

mud on our nature walks, yet having days when

we have needed hats and sun cream...so a typical

British “mixed bag”. The term has seen some

popular additions in the garden: in particular the

sand pit and new “tree house” (not effectively a

tree house but a play house on stilts). We’ve also

had some exciting visitors from ‘Zoo lab’ and

Bookstart. Whilst welcoming new children to

nursery we are also heading into the final term

for our ‘Shooting Stars’ as we prepare for their

transition to school. So lets’ just take the time to

reflect on last term’s fun and learning”

Mid Summer Term 2014 Newsletter

Nature School 5

After school club 5

New kids on the block

Abbie’s new key children are Max and William who have moved up

from the baby room and new recruit, Finlay.

Thomas also joins us from

the baby room and is Gem-

ma’s key child

Uma Bella is settling in

as Nadine’s key child

Active story making 6

Back page news 7

Emily has been us-

ing the Rising Stars

story of ‘Guess How

Much I love you’ to

explore ideas of com-

passion as well as

linking it with their off

site excursions: look-

ing for rabbits and

what they might eat:

looking closely at as-

pects of our immedi-

ate environment.

She is now moving on

to the story ‘Whatever

Next’ after ob-

serving her

key children’s

interest in the

work that old-

er children

were doing

about space.

Her work as

PSED lead

has focused on

helping children

manage their feelings

through planned circle

time sessions.

What have we been doing?

Next’.

She has been helping

her toddlers make

positive relationships

as they tackle that

challenging concept

of sharing with other

2 year olds!

Gemma has been

helping her new key

children settle and

exploring both the

setting, the village

and surrounding envi-

ronment. They’ve

been spotting animals

big and small.

Work has also started

looking at the new

book of ‘Whatever

The toddler years are

notoriously called the

“terrible twos” and it is a

challenging time for children

as they have to learn

boundaries and come to

terms with new concepts and

feelings.

If you would like any tips and

ideas about how best to

support your toddler then we

have some useful leaflets on

our ‘Parents’ section of the

website.

Page 2 Mid Summer Term 2014 Newsletter

Abbie has also had new key children to help feel at home at Little

Stars and work has been done in recognition that each child is indeed

an individual and requires different approaches and strategies to

make them feel happy, safe and at home at their new nursery.

She has been encouraging her key children on off site excursions to

consider how they keep themselves safe: holding on to the walking

hoops and listening : addressing one of our Ofsted goals of helping

children manage their own risks and thus make active decisions to

keep themselves safe.

If you missed the link to the ‘Guess

How Much I love you’ video on our

website, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v

=JecKdOO7PyU

Encourage children

to notice features

of their environ-

ment.

(EYFS: ‘The World’ 22-

36 months)

For up to date information about What we have been doing, check out our page on the website: http://www.littlestarnursery.co.uk/what-

have-we-been-doing/

Keeping safe on our walks (apologies for the bad

shot, Polly!)

Kate has been taking her key children on musical journeys as we’ve used song, rhythm, movement and dance to explore listening, concentration, imagination, talk and physical development.

“Travelling” to countries and places that we found on the map has also helped us think about different places and people. Whilst we have continued using experiments to find

opportunities for mark making we have also found opportunities for writing and drawing out in the woods or whilst engaged in role play activities. (see cover story!). Her key children also have been showing their growing aptitude for number recognition and play as they’ve created their markers for growing beans as well as using

coins and counting when playing games of shops.

Nadine has been us-

ing her role as Physi-

cal Development lead

in using large scale

“loose parts” play in

the garden as well as

taking her key chil-

dren out on lots of ac-

tive sessions in the

Great Outdoors,

which has included

exploring some of the

new ‘forest school’

tools we acquired as

part of the money

awarded by Nadine

being part of the DPH

award.

Focussed work look-

ing at the book ‘The

Tiger Who Came To

Tea’ has encouraged

her key children to

develop attention and

listening skills which

are important founda-

tions for successful

future learning.

Nadine has also at-

tended training in

’Emotion Coaching’.

Page 3 Mid Summer Term 2014 Newsletter

If you missed the link to the ‘Guess

How Much I love you’ video on our

website, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v

=JecKdOO7PyU

Vicki has tapped into her key chil-

dren’s fascination with Space and

creating by spending the term linking

the two. They have been getting

messy with splatter painting the gal-

axy, designing 3D planets from mod

roc as well as a large scale rocket

from a mass of boxes and tubes.

They have been using information

gathering skills by finding facts about

the planets using DVD and non fic-

tion books as well as having fun with

mark making, adding labels to their

work and astronaut name tags.

• • • Records, using marks that

they can interpret and explain

(EYFS: ‘Mathematics: numbers

40-60mnths; )

Setting off on our musical journey

• Use stories from books

to focus children’s atten-

tion on predictions and

explanations, (EYS:

Communication & Lan-

guage: understanding)

..eg ‘I wonder why the

tiger never came back for

tea?’

We have been busy in

the garden creating

new sensory and ex-

ploratory areas.

Thanks to some donat-

ed tyres from King’s

scrapyard and a rather

large bag of sand we

have an interactive

sandpit that all can

play in. Planting

around the edge has

added interest and

hopefully interesting

scent, colour and tex-

ture).

Colour has been add-

ed throughout the gar-

den as after a trip to

the garden centre at

the farm shop, we

have filled flower beds

Garden update

Page 4 Newsletter T i t le

Mid Summer Term 2014

Top Tip for Talking!

Playful learning is effective learning. Rhyming books are a great tool for developing language skills: classics like ‘The Gruffalo’ or ‘My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes’ en-courage children to finish the end of lines. Other fun and silly rhymes that are good for this is anything by Spike Milligan or Dr Suess (‘Cat in the Hat’). We’ve also had lots of fun playing with rhyming and made up words reading.

Share ‘Ning Nang Nong’ or go to the Parents Page of our web-site to download a copy of our nursery rhyme booklet that gives ideas of making up your own rhyming versions. Or take a look at our favourite rhyming books.

Make learning language fun-

Play around with words, make

up silly rhymes - children of all

ages can enjoy the fun of lan-

guage.

and containers as well

as adding to our herb

garden. And the recent

addition of a new play

house lends itself to no

end of imaginary role

play. In fact what was

designed as a storage

area at the base has

been transformed into a

bedroom with the help

of some crates, cush-

ions, material and a bit

of imagination.

We’ve also used our

imagination and build-

ing skills in making

dens where we’ve shel-

tered from the showers

and toasted imaginary

marshmallows over the

fire!

.”Give opportunities to

design practical, attractive

environments, for exam-

ple, taking care of the

flowerbeds or organising

equipment outdoors.”

(EYFS: The World)

Nature School

Page 5 Newsletter T i t le Mid Summer Term 2014 Newsletter

Further visits to the pond have resulted in

finding tadpoles and some frogs. This has

allowed us to explore the life cycle of frogs

and we’ve created a display that has incor-

porated songs (‘5 speckled frogs’) as well as

looking at fiction and non fiction books that

includes one of Kate’s favourites ‘Tadpole’s

Promise’ by Tony Ross.

We’ve been using spotter sheets to focus

attention on aspects of the environment and

also to allow the children to develop reading

and writing skills.

Thank you Daisy for sharing with us the na-

ture hunt that you carried out in your garden

using one of these spotter sheets.

Thanks to the work done by Nadine at Forest

School training and the work that she will be

submitting for her DPH award, we have been

able to purchase some forest school kits that

include resources such as saws, tarpaulins

and trowels/ forks that extends skills and cre-

ate new challenges out in the woods. We

will soon be acquiring replacement water-

proofs as yes, we are still in need of them!

After school club

Our after school club has been busy planting out in their designated area of

the garden this term. When wet weather made being outside unappealing

to them, they instead got creative in designing pictures and signs to deco-

rate and label their garden.

They have also been playing around with junk modelling and more fo-

cussed work playing around with magnetism and electricity.

We are looking for a creative and motivated person to join the Little Star team in

September 2014 to run our growing after school club. If you know someone who

may be interested then please speak to Kate.

Nature School

The Shooting stars

have been very active

in joining in with the

actions for ‘The Enor-

mous Turnip’ and we

very much hope that

parents will join us on

TUESDAY 3rd JUNE

at 10.30 to watch what

they have been doing.

If you can’t make it, or

would like a sneak pre-

view we have a small

clip on the shooting

Stars section of ‘What

Have we been doing’

page on our web site.

We have used various

painting techniques to

create the wall display

as well as further devel-

oping some fantastic

writing/ drawing and

story telling techniques

as we prepare story

maps, thinking about

how we might be add-

ing words to them as

well.

Extending the theme

some of the children

have grown their own

beans and we will be

awarding a prize to the

tallest plant on the day

of the performance.

Active Story making

Page 6 Newsletter T i t le Mid Summer Term 2014 Newsletter

‘Broad beans’

Bubbles and explosions!

Those parents who joined us back at

the end of last term all had some explo-

sive and bubbly fun as they learnt how

to explode volcanoes and make their

own lava lamps (who all agreed were

rather effective!). You can try out more

fun experiments yourself at home by

getting ideas from this web site:

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/

Don’t forget...for more ideas for things you

can do at home to extend the learning and fun

done at Little Stars, look for the suggestions

your key people document at the foot of each

learning story. We love to include anything

you have done in the journals as well.

On June 15th the girls from Little Stars will be donning their running, or walking shoes and taking part in the Bath 5k Race For Life in aid of Cancer Research. Not only does this give a great excuse to get us all fit (some are becoming more competitive than others!) but also an opportunity to raise money for a worthy cause and in recognition of a dear friend, mother in law and ex colleague who helped start up our nursery in 2008: Jenny, who lost her valiant fight to the

disease at the end of last year. You can add your support by sponsoring us (form next to the register or on the ‘just giving’ site: http://www.justgiving.com/little-star-nursery). We are also planning a fund raising day at nursery on THURSDAY 12th JUNE, when the children are invited to wear pink..(yes even the boys!) and we will be holding our own races for them to enjoy… Alternatively support us on the day and cheer us on. It is being held at Victoria Park in Bath at 11am.

Dates for your diary

Monday June 2nd: School term 6 starts

Tuesday June 3rd: 10.30: Shooting

Stars performance of ‘The Enormous

Turnip’ and bean measuring/ planting

Thursday 12th June: Fundraising day for

Cancer Research / Race For Life

Tuesday 15th July: Pre school trip to

Court Farm

Friday 18th July: end of school term

DON’T FORGET: we will not be closing

in the Summer this year

Festivals calendar

21st June: Summer Soltice (lPagan)

28th June: Ramadan

month of fasting starts

(muslim)

15th July: St Swithan’s

day: watch the forecast on

this day as it predicts the weather for the

next 40 days!

20th July: Columbian Inde-

pendence Day

The final set of phonic sounds will be z, w, v, y, x but

we will also be spending the final term reinforcing the

concept of beginning sounds, re visiting earlier letters

and starting to blend sounds where appropriate.

We are thrilled to have been awarded the Quality

Assurance ‘Bristol Standard’ award for the sec-

ond year running. It is great to be recognised for

all of the continued hard work and commitment

that all the staff at Little Star dedicate.