Nursery Seahorses Newsletter Autumn 2 2019

Light and Dark
It's an exciting half term ahead with lots of celebrations and festivals.  Our Light and Dark topic will see us exploring different celebrations, talking about why and how we celebrate and what celebrations look like in different houses.  We will compare festivals and identify the things that are the same such as decorations, special clothes and special food.  The celebrations will include Halloween, Bonfire Night and Christmas.
Through the Light and Dark topic we will talk about feelings: feeling scared of the dark, excited for a party, disappointed when you don't get something you expected to get.  The children will start by naming different feelings and learning about the changes we see in our faces when we feel a certain way.  They will also be given the chance to talk about their feelings and will learn about the ways feelings affect our bodies: butterflies in your tummy, getting hot and bothered, ants in your pants!  We will develop awareness of why we feel a certain way before moving on to thinking about how our behaviour makes others feels.  Here are some of the feelings we will talk about this half term.
We will explore sources of light, where light comes from and will talk about the light sources we use in our homes.  We will explore the dark, finding out about nocturnal animals and what they do.  We will set up a cave so we can investigate light sources such as torches and luminous objects.  We will discuss using torches and other equipment safely, keeping them away from eyes. 
Through the topic the children will be introduced to new and familiar vocabulary.  Have a look at the word mat below with your child to see how many words they understand.  Talk about the ones they don't know.
Our topic will give us lots of opportunities to do creative activities.  We recently did an assessment of how well the children could use scissors and have only a few children who are confident at using them.  We will be working on this in school, using dual scissors to support those who need it, modelling and encouraging the correct holding of and use of scissors.  Any work you can do at home with your child would help.  Why not keep your child busy by giving them an old catalogue to look at and work together to cut out some pictures and stick them to make a collage of their favourite things or, dare I say, a list for Santa!
 
Bonfire night is very popular in nursery and the children will be making brightly-coloured firework pictures.  You can create a firework picture with your child using the link below: