Nursery

Bellenden Nursery Topic Web: Spring 2019

Jungle Animals

Books :    Walking through the jungle, Rumble in the Jungle, Elmer, Giraffes can’t dance, Handa’s Surprise, Dear Zoo 

Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSE)

Children will be supported to become more independent in the nursery environment, particularly in selecting their own activities and in all self-care.  They will be encouraged to form good relationships with adults and secure friendships with other children.  Adults will help them become confident in initiating conversations with their peers, expressing their preferences and interests and in showing their own feelings and emotions.    

Activities:

• Self register, daily reminders about being independent with coats, aprons and snacks
• Introduce “review of the day” – children share achievements with their peers
• Play circle games and matching games in order to understand turn taking
• Read stories about caring for each other and use role play and puppets to explore “making good relationships
• New role play areas introduced (jungle) to promote collaborative play 

Physical development (PD)

The children will take part in various gross motor skills.  They will experiment with different way of moving (eg running, jumping, slithering, sliding).  They will move like different animals in the jungle.  They will start to learn ball skills such as throwing, catching and kicking a ball.  They will also refine their fine motor skills by using various one-handed tools, including pencils.

Activities:

• Animal threading shapes
• Folding paper to make jungle animals
• Stop/go games using traffic light colours
• Drawing jungle scenes
• Exploring a range of balancing and sliding apparatus
• Ball games
• Assault courses 

Communication and Language (C&L)

The children will learn to listen to their peers and respond appropriately.  They will be encouraged to follow directions.  They will start to understand more complex sentences and concepts and will be introduced to new vocabulary.  They will be supported to retell a past event, recalling the events in the correct order. 

Activities: 

• In role play and other free play children will be supported to play positively with each other
• Children will be given opportunities to invent their own stories (eg pretend to be Handa, what animals steal your fruit?)
• Introduce tales tool kit (a storytelling resource which promotes language and new vocabulary)
• Talk about a new object at circle time – introduce its name and talk about what it’s used for (have objects out for free play afterwards)
• At carpet time there will be times for children to tell the rest of their group about important events in their lives 

Literacy (L) 

The children will begin to memorise and repeat words and phrases from favourite stories.  They will be able to talk about their favourite storybooks.  They will start to identify rhyming words and recognise alliteration.  In writing they will start to distinguish between the different marks they are making. 

Activities: 

• Storytime in large and small groups
• Nursery rhymes (use props) and rhyming games
• Name writing
• Write cards, make own books
• Draw their own Handa’s Surprise story and talk about it
• Songs related to jungle animals 

Mathematics (M)

The children will continue to learn to recite number names in the correct order up to 10 and beyond.  They will start to match numerals and quantities.  They will be encouraged to represent numbers using their fingers, marks on paper or pictures.  They will begin to recognise shapes and patterns.  They will start to use size and positional language. 

Activities:

• Counting songs
• Counting games with transport counters
• Making a graph about how to get to school
• Making patterns and pictures using 2D shapes
• Making their own 2D shape using straws and connectors
• Order giraffes/elephants by size 

Understanding the World (UW)

The children will be encouraged to talk about significant events in their lives and describe special times they have with their families.  They will be encouraged to talk about things in the natural world.  They will begin to talk about why things happen and how things work. 

Activities: 

• Circle time/small groups to talk about events in their lives
• Make family puppets
• Play feely bag games, describing objects found in the natural world without seeing them
• Watching videos of jungle animals
• Making own books about favourite jungle animal – what facts do they know about their animal? 

Expressive Arts and Design (EAD)

The children will learn to experiment with the way musical instruments sound and how sounds can be changed.  They will make up their own rhythms and begin to move to the rhythms they have invented.  They will begin to construct with blocks building horizontally and vertically making enclosures and spaces.  They will join construction materials together. 

Activities:

• Painting with different fabrics, papers and materials
• Listen to music with different rhythms and paint/draw pictures in response to the music
• Riding
• Junk modelling
• Make animals out of large cardboard boxes
• Making a zoo for the small world animals with enclosures