Week beginning 2nd March 2026

The Investigation Hub at Sidney Grove

Characteristics of Effective Learning

Following their exploration with chocolate painting, Susan’s group revisited the story Don’t Put Your Finger in the Jelly, Nelly!. This week, the children tried to recreate some of the pictures from the story using different foods and materials.

They used jam to create a “claw berry crab” and experimented with painting using spaghetti to make a yeti. When the children first saw the uncooked spaghetti, they began to wonder how they could make it soft enough to use. Together, they decided to add water and talked about what they thought might happen, making their own predictions before testing their ideas

Its going to turn into soft spaghetti because we’re adding water

Its going to be real spaghetti

Its squishy, it’s soft and very sticky!

Parents as Partners

This week we have been focusing on the traditional tale The Three Billy Goats Gruff. In the construction area, the children worked together to build bridges using a variety of materials. They explored different ways to make their bridges stretch across the “river”, solving problems and sharing their ideas with one another. The children said, “It has to go across!”, “I’m doing a bridge outside because there’s not a lot of room in the block area!” and “They can walk here!”

Through the story, the children also engaged in lots of mathematical thinking. Some children ordered the goats by size, while others thought carefully about whether the troll would be able to fit under the bridge.

In our creative area, the children used playdough to create their own trolls, adding features such as eyes, horns, noses, mouths, arms and legs. Some children were disappointed that they couldn’t take the playdough home, so we revisited the activity using clay, allowing them to make trolls they could keep.

Here is a link to a CBeebies musical version of the story, the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The children have enjoyed joining in with the words and the actions to this! https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001syqc

On Thursday we celebrated World Book Day together at Nursery. It was fantastic to see so many amazing costumes but what is really amazing is how much the children LOVE listening to stories! We shared lots of wonderful books throughout the day and the children also took part in a story characters scavenger hunt outside, finding some familiar characters hidden in our outside learning space.

Outside Learning

The children took part in a spring challenge, searching for signs of early spring in the garden. We looked for buds, flowers, cherry blossom, birds and insects. We investigated what was happening underneath some of the log slices where there were lots of worms! We saw some new daffodils and lots of birds who have been visiting our bird feeders.

In plan do review the children have been interested in using the body boards to wheel down the ramp. The children show varying levels of confidence in this activity but it was interesting to see more children wanting to try as the week went on. We also had some children wanting to try basketball, so we improvised a way to create a hoop and this was very popular!

Thanks to the children and to families for another great week together! Hope you all have a lovely weekend!