Welcome To Nursery 

Please also see our school Twitter page @stmichaelswales or our class Sessaw account for further information and updates. 

Don't forget to check out our weekly Certificate Winners, Home Learning tasks and regularly updated information for special days and events in Nursery below:

Our Class Learning Journey

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2024

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Week beginning 22nd April 2024

Beginning the week continuing our exploration of the Holy Spirit and Pentecost through Branch 5, To the Ends of the Earth. 

We made fruit and veg from clay, painted and tied them with red ribbon. We gathered together and presented them as gift at the altar in the Prayer Garden and gave thanks to God.

We Give Thanks to God!

We celebrated Earth Day on Monday and made a pledge together on how we could help to look after Earth. 

Showing amounts in our Maths this week, both inside and outside of the classroom as we embrace natural resources in our counting.

Our new sound. of the week was 'm', we explored the Monster Phonics Town Map looking for all the 'm''s until be become magnificent sound spotters.

We've been exploring the wonderful illustrations of American Author, Eric Carle this week in Nursery. We got creative and painted some mini-beasts of our own inspired by his work.

Team work makes the dream work and we've been working in pairs to improve our hand-eye coordination & throwing and catching skills in PE.

If there was an ever a perfect week for Miss Davies to celebrate, it would be this one, Wales Outdoor Learning Week! We went on a bug hunt, We were gonna find some big ones! We weren't scared!

We used our bug magnifying glasses to spot mini-beasts in our Forest School area and collected natural resources in readiness to build our Bug Motel as we start to explore Mini-beast Habitats!

Wales Outdoor Learning Week 2024  

REMINDER: YOUR LITTER BUG HOMEWORK TASK IS DUE IN ON MONDAY 29TH APRIL 2024

(This task can be found on the Home Learning page)

Week beginning 15th April 2024

A week full of delicious produce! We've been applying our skills for cutting, slicing, peeling, stirring boiling and steaming ready for tasting all the fruit and vegetables from our class books, Oliver's Vegetables and Oliver's Fruit Salad. 

"Carrots!" Said Grandpa, "Just the thing for Monday lunch!"

Oliver took a long time making up his mind on Tuesday. "Those crinkly leaves are pretty, are there potatoes here?" "Spinach!" said Grandpa.

On Wednesday Oliver got up early! "Potatoes are very important! They must have big leaves" he said "That's rhubarb!" said Grandpa. They had rhubarb pie that evening. 

It rained on Thursday. Oliver said "I've found slugs and snails, are they eating my potatoes?' Grandpa shook his head. "That's cabbage!"

On Friday, Oliver was sure that he had found the potatoes. When he pulled at the leaves, up came some beetroot.

On Saturday, Oliver played football. The ball landed in a tangle of sticks and leaves, "Peas!" He said, Oliver had 3 helpings that evening.

Oliver rushed into the garden on Sunday, "HERE THEY ARE!"

"Can we have chips now?" Oliver asked.

We've been busy counting the vegetables in Grandpa's Garden,

Exploring our new sound of the week, 'n',

and finding out if vegetables grow above or underground, making healthy choices for our lunch and sorting healthy and unhealthy foods.

To end the week, we took our homemade chips and fruit salad down to Forest School and had a picnic at the log circle. We listened to the story, Albert and the Wind and set out to help Albert find and thank the mini-beasts in our Forest School.

    Picnic at Forest School      Albert and the Wind

Week beginning 8th April 2024

What a lovely first week officially full-time all together in Nursery!

Starting the week exploring our new theme, Let's Explore Summer: Roots Shoot and Welly Boots, this half term. We've been sharing ideas about fruit and vegetables, how they grow, where they grow and what we use them for. We had letter from Mr McGregor (he warned us about Peter the Pesky Rabbit) and read the story about his grandson Oliver who likes visiting his vegetable patch!

Ordering the days of the week, making patterns and exploring more and less after collecting data to put in a bar chart for our numeracy this week. Want to carry on practicing the Days of the Week at home? We've been learning with the help of Early Years Emily!

Our sound of the week this week is: 

Izzy, Wizzy, Let's get busy! We've been making spells with Tricky Witch in our Monster Phonics sessions explore the 'i' sound and collecting insects in our continuous provision.

   We’ve spent lots of time practising and strengthening our pre-writing and fine motor skills this week, please could you spend some time drawing, scribbling, mark making at home and practice using some scissors so that children become more confident in the independent provision areas.

As we explore the next Branch (5) of Jesus' life, to the Ends of the Earth, we walked with Jesus on the Road to Emmaus and listened to the story of his Ascension back to His Father, although we can not see Him, we still feel Him around us in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is always around us!

Exploring the artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo and his pieces made of fruit and vegetables as part of our new theme. We chose, coloured and cut our own vegetables to make our own vegetables heads.

We loved being able to get outside for a full Forest School session now that the sun is finally starting to put his hat on and come out to play. We listened to the story of Farmer Duck and explored the area looking for signs of Spring. Please can you make sure your child has welly boots in school every day as we always try to seize the moment and go outside as much as we can but the grounds are still quite wet and muddy.

Week beginning 18th March 2024

To start our Holy Week celebrations, we enjoyed joining Reception to perform our a collective worship for our parents at the start of the week. We retold the story of Palm Sunday and asked our congregation to "Take time to remember Jesus, and His Journey at this time of year". Thank you so much for taking the time to join us!

We continued our Journey through Holy Week, by exploring the Eucharist in Nursery. We heard the story of The Last Supper and how Jesus shared the bread and wine amongst his disciples.

‘Do this in Remembrance of Me’ - Luke 22: 19-20

Click for The Last Supper

We became the hands of Jesus to portray His journey through Holy Week from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection. 

Click for Holy Week in Jesus' Hands.

A week of recapping the skills we've learned this term from counting, making and ordering Numberblocks to using our MonsterPhonics in the continuous provision. We’ve spent lots of time pre-writing, forming, spotting and reading letters and sounds this week and especially loved helping Miss OhNo sort Puppy Pip's toy basket!

Ending the week with some Easter fun. We were busy in the Nursery Bake Off Kitchen making delicious chocolate Easter treats.

We loved parading our bonnets to all our parents! Thank you are for coming to see us! A big Thank You to Mr Rossiter for judging our bonnet competition and choosing this year's Easter Bonnet winner.

Our Easter Bonnet 2024 Winner!

'For illustrating the real message of Easter with her bonnet.'

We ended the week with a surprise visit from the Easter Bunny herself and were so lucky to have a little treat from the bunny basket too!

Thank you for all your support and kind words this term. Sending Happy and Holy Easter wishes to you all from our Little Bunnies in Nursery!

Click for Easter Wishes from the Little Bunnies of Nursery

See you on Monday 8th April 2024!

Week beginning 11th March 2024

Continuing to explore the story of Jack and the Beanstalk this week, we've illustrated answers to the question, 'What will be at the top of your Beanstalk?'

We've been popping the pods to find the beans that have fallen from the Beanstalk to strengthen our fine motor skills.

Exploring Time for British Science Week. We've been busy printing with apples in the provision and tasting then voting for our favourite. We are observing the cores patiently to see how they change throughout the week and can't wait to see how they change after half term.

Click to see our investigation: British Science Week 2024

Continuing our British Science Week work by looking at the big question, ‘What does a farmer look like?’ with NFU Education. We joined the live session with Farmer Fiona and quickly realised girls can be farmers too!

28 Hot Cross Buns in a Bakers Shop. Big and round with a cross on the top… Merging Maths and RE this week as we begin to explore using money in and the traditions around the world during Easter time and the important message in Hot Cross Buns! 

Click to see us spend our pennies: 28 Hot Cross Buns in a Bakers Shop...

Ending the week with an important message, 

We joined the fundraising #ForOsian to help a young boy in our Parish community reach the total needed to receive much needed treatment in California. If you would like to donate, big or small, please follow the link to Osian’s GoFund Me page: https://gofund.me/5a32f5bc

Week beginning 4th March 2024

Fe Fi Fo Fum, Look out Nursery, HERE I COME!!

With all the excitement of the Eisteddfod last week, our class dragon, Dilwyn, wanted to leave us a gift to say Da Iawn, but he got himself into a bit of a mess and now there's a giant beanstalk in the middle of our classroom! Can you guess which story we've been exploring?

We retold the story of Jack and the Beanstalk dressed as our favourite Traditional Tales characters to celebrate World Book Day. Da Iawn to one of our three little pigs who was our PTFA Golden Ticket winner!

We followed instructions to plant our own magic beans that Dilwyn had left us and discussed what we thought would be at the top of our beanstalks when they grow!

Snip, Snip! We are growing in confidence using scissors whilst exercising & strengthening our fine motor skills. We recycled the flowers used earlier in the term for our still life painting to get them ready for composting to help our new plants and beans to grow. 

As we continue our journey through Lent, We have been getting creative with charcoal. We know the church uses ashes as a symbol of being sorry. We reflected on gathering for Ash Wednesday and that receiving ashes is a sign of beginning again or trying hard. 

Check out our finished pieces: Charcoal Cross Art

Oh mercy, mercy me! We've been exploring the issues of our future  using Claire Donald's book, Mother Earth is weeping. We’ve been collecting litter ready to recycle and thinking of things we can do to help make Mother Earth happy again for a better and brighter future.

Week beginning 26th February 2024 

Come one! Come all! To the Kingdom and St Michael's Banquet!

We started our morning with some detailed medieval dance lessons from Wise Wizard Griffiths and Sir Allenalot of Derbyn, then we partnered up and put our moves to the test on the dance-floor!

Watch here: Medieval Dancing with Wise Wizard Griffiths and Sir Allenalot of Derbyn

The Knights of the Square Table Jousting contest was very popular with the Dragons, Noblemen and Royal Highnesses, who got to pick their own lance and horse and we tried our hand at some archery too!

Watch here: Knights of the Square Table Jousting Contest

Huzzah! Let the feast commence! cheese and wine anyone? We were as full as a Dragon after grazing plates of grapes, cheese, Welsh cakes, jam sandwiches and malt loaf at the Kingdom of St Michael’s Banquet!

Watch here: Huzzah! Let the feast commence!

We took part in another Clever Cubs session on Wednesday, this time we took on different roles in the ‘Tale of Two Dragons’ and full immersed ourselves in the mythical story!

Watch here: The Tale of Two Dragons

Dressed in red and traditional Welsh clothing, we've been learning about and listening to the story of St David and thinking about how we can following his message and 'do the little things!' to help people just like St David did.

Thank you again, if you were able (we know how busy you are) to come along to our Coffee Morning and listen to us perform, You raised £273.80 for our school! Llongyfarchiadau Mawr!

Firstly, Diolch for all your support and for helping the children send in some fabulously Welsh DT tasks, every piece received was absolutely fantastic, so as you can imagine picking a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th was very difficult. Da Iawn to the children who have worked very hard to learn a song and poem yn Gymraeg, in Welsh and perform in front of the whole school. 

Eisteddfod competitions winners and House winner will be announced next week. 

Week beginning 19th February 2024

A Holy week back after half term as we revisited the stories we heard throughout Branch 3, Galilee to Jerusalem.

We understand that God's Golden Rule is 'Treat others as you like to be treated' Mt 7:12. We listened to Lindsay Muller, 'Treat others as you want to be treated' and sang along whilst playing musical instruments.

After finding out our Dragon, Dilwyn, has hidden under the stone walls of our Castle. We've be looking at 'Who lives in a castle?' and drawing our own castles using jit5.

We've taken on the role of Knights of the Square Tables and have been hard at work writing to all the Prince and Princesses of Nursery inviting them to the Kingdom of St Michaels Ball on Tuesday 27th February.

(please see Nursery Information Page)

Week beginning 5th February 2024

We received a very important email on Monday morning from PC Jon Snow at South Wales Police. Our St Michael's neighbours were very worried when they heard roars and saw smoke and a large creature in our classroom over the weekend! Question is, can we help catch it?

We listened to 'How to catch a Dragon.' by Adam Wallace and Andy Elkerton to inspire our own ideas on how we would catch the Dragon in our classroom. We came up with lots of ideas like using a giant net, beautiful fireworks and making our own Dragon dance. 

Starting Children's Mental Health Week 2024 by learning more about our Dog Mentor, Dougie (@DougieSTM)

and becoming fully immersed in our feelings and emotions throughout our Clever Clubs workshop!

We've been exploring order and size using the animals of the Zodiac and mandarin oranges in Maths, strengthening our fine motor skills using pegs and chopsticks and making red and gold lanterns in our creative provision as part of our Lunar New Year learning and festivities.

We ended our week with a Lunar New Year Banquet, tasting foods traditionally eaten in China such as spring rolls, rice and noodles.

..and performing our Dragon Dance and music! 

Week beginning 29th January 2024

      BEWARE!       

There's a creature on the loose!

It's hatched! but oh no! What was inside is nowhere to be seen! We've been using the clues to identify the creature!

We made 'BEWARE' posters to warn the children and teachers that there was a mystery creature on the loose, we made sure to include key features in our mark-making so that everyone knew what to look out for if they saw something suspicious around the school!

We thanked Jesus for sharing his life with us during our Collective Worship this week as we listened to the story of Jesus visiting Simeon and Anna at The Temple. 

We've been fully immersed in story for National Story Telling Week with Jack and the Beanstalk using Now > Press > Play. We loved playing the part of Jack, the Giant and the Golden Egg! It was very scary crawling into the oven and hiding from Mr and Mrs Giant!

All things number to end the week as we took part in NSPCC's Number Day 2024. We dressed as our favourite Numberblocks, made Numberblock hats and explored the different shapes of Numberblock 5 using our favourite maths resource ... BROWNIES! 

Week beginning 22nd January 2024

Time Travelling into the Medieval Era for our new theme, 'Dungeons and Dragons' as we explore the questions, 'Who lives in a castle?' 'Do dragons exist?' 'Who was hear before us?'

After finding a giant glowing egg in a nest in our classroom, we've been busy investigating what could be inside and think about what come from eggs! We made predictions and illustrated our answer to the question, 'What is in the egg?', Now, we wait patiently for it to hatch!

After a term of building up our Phase 1, 7 aspects of sound with Monster Phonics, We've started looking at Pre-Phase 2 sounds, starting with 'S'. 

We've been practicing our formation in glitter trays and making silly soup with Tricky Witch!

Exploring repeating patterns in both our work and continuous provision this week. We've been using lots of different resources to make patterns with colour, size, shape and number. We also used 2/3 colour patters to decorate our Love Spoons for St Dwynwen's Day!

Nursery listened to the story of Dwynwen and talked about ways we could show or make somebody feel loved and made roses to take home and share joy and love on St Dwynwen's Day!

'Nothing wins hearts like cheerfulness' 

- Santes Dwynwen 

Week beginning 15th January 2024

Kick starting our week by meeting Dougie, our Dog Mentor.

A big THANK YOU to Miss Curnow from Cardinal Newman for sharing his with us and coming to talk to us on how Dougie is good to look after us and we can help look after him!

Feed the birds! Tuppence a bag! We've been exploring the outdoors and quietly looking out for our different feathered friends in the area as we get ready to join RSPB's Big Bird Watch! We made fat balls, filled bird feeders and made a home (with a bedroom) for the birds to rest in our construction area.

Godly Play in Nursery as we re-tell the story of the Wisemen following the Star and arriving at the Stable bringing gifts for Baby Jesus.

We are enjoying hearing the stories of Jesus' life. During our collective worship, We listened to the story of the 'Feeding of the 5000 and took time to reflect on how we can follow in Jesus footsteps by making time to share and help others. 

Let's Roll! Number 6! Seal Six has us counting the fish in the sea for his tea as we exploring the number 6 with Numberblock 6 this week!

Week beginning 8th January 2024

Welcome Back! How lovely it is to be reunited after two weeks of celebrations and rest! It's been fabulous seeing you all, hearing all about your Christmas and settling back into life in Nursery!

We listened to Matthew 2: 1-12, as the Wisemen visit Jesus. We have began to create our own Wonderwall using our first question,

I wonder... 'Who do you like to visit? Who do you like to visit you?'

We've been working hard independently recapping numbers 1-4 using Numberblocks and multi-link in our continuous provision before exploring  our magic number this week.

We met Fiona Five and Numberblock 5 this week as work on showing 5, making 5 and collecting 5! A number-tastic FIVE days exploring the FIVEness of Five!

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2023

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Week beginning 18th December 2023 

It's Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiistmas! We've been very busy, like Santa Elves, crafting  and having festive fun this week in Nursery! From gifts, cards and decorations for our family and friends to Christmas trees and perfect dance moves! You name it we've made it!

We listened to the story of Snapper and talked about how we celebrate Christmas with our families and our traditions. Finally we watched the full John Lewis advent which inspired the design of our own Perfect Christmas trees!

We received a very special message from the Big Man himself! (Which means our letters must have reached him at the North Pole! 

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We had our FIRST Christmas dinner, had Breakfast with Santa, Rocked around the classroom at our Christmas party and had a PERFECT cinema day watching Trolls Band Together to end the week!

As we sign off for 2023, We would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year. Thank you for your gifts, cards, kind words and support this term, they are very much appreciated and we are very grateful!

Have a lovely break and enjoy making memories together, We will look forward to hearing all about the holiday when we return to school on Monday 8th January 2024!

Week beginning 11th December 2023

... and so we close the curtains on our Christmas performances of

'King - a Christmas Rhapsody!'

We are so proud of all the children, from learning lines, learning songs, acting and performing, they really are SUPERSTARS! We are extremely grateful for all the support from parents, families, friends and the community from suppling costumes, buying raffle tickets, stacking chairs or just turning up, we can't thank you enough! 

A big THANK YOU also for all your kind and generous donations toward our Foodbank collection. Our collection has been split between the parishes, and Sue from St Dyfrig's has collected their portion for Pontypridd Foodbank. A full car thanks to your generosity!

Please see the below information for the last 4 days of school next week before we break up for Christmas celebrations:

Week beginning 4th December 2023

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Nursery. We've been very busy making, adding a message and sending our letters to Santa this week after we were inspired by Swiftie the Elf, who was caught rummaging for Miss D's letter in the Magic Postbox!

After attending Mass (for the first time!) to celebrate the start of Advent, We listened to 'The Christmas Promise' and reflected on God's promise to send us 'a New King, a Rescuing King, a Forever King' and  made our own promises for Advent.

We've spent lots of time practising writing our names this week and working on strengthening our fine motor skills. Swiftie cheered us on and joined us to make our Christmas cards.

We took to the stage for our last rehearsal before our whole school performance Monday! Swiftie joined in too with his own costume! 

Thank you for all the effort and sending in costumes for our performance (There are a couple Miss D wouldn't mind wearing herself!) We really appreciate the support and we can't wait to show you what we've been working hard on over the last couple of weeks! 

Performances are: Wed 13th, Thurs 14th and Fri 15th at 10am

(Please bring your tickets, you will need them for entry)

It's all about Numberblock 4 and Freddie Four this week in Nursery! We've been looking at different ways to make and show 4.

Week beginning 27th November 2023

We've been very busy making good choices and helping Thelma Three this week in Nursery. After hearing her story and making our Numberblock 3, we decided to make Thelma some jam tarts of her own, can you guess how many? 3!

We carried on exploring number 3 and used different maniplatives to show 3 in different ways. 

We loved the surprise arrival of our Kindness Elf, Swiftie and can't wait to see what he gets up to in the classroom over the festive period!

Week beginning 20th November 2023

In the name of Science! We've been very busy this week exploring materials as part of our chemistry science week! We took ourselves around the school grounds looking for different materials and then sorted some materials back in the classroom. 

We started to talk about the properties of the materials and began to describe how they felt and what they looked like. We brought our favourite toys to school to help us!

We came to the end of our RE topic, 'Welcome' and talked about how thankful we are to have been made to feel so special being welcomed into the St Michaels Family when we started school back in September.

We met Thelma Three and Numberblock 3 this week as we get ready to explore our next number and it's value!

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Week beginning 13th November 2023

World Nursery Rhyme Week

Week beginning 6th November 2023

Week beginning 23rd October 2023

Week beginning 16th October 2023

Week beginning 9th October 2023

Week beginning 2nd October 2023

Week beginning 25th September 2023

Week beginning 4th-22nd September 2023

September 2023

We've had a lovely couple of weeks getting to know each other and settling into Nursery life at St Michaels. We've talked about the 'Golden Rules' and 'St Michaels Way' and made sure we know the importance of using our listening ears as we explored the classrooms, outdoors, and met our very sensible Year 6 buddies who we know will look after us and be great models! 

We've jumped straight into  our first topic, 'Marvellous Me!' by making marks to represent pictures of ourselves and our names.