Cranborne Primary School

Welcome to the Cranborne Nursery Class Webpage. This is where we will be sharing useful information and reminders, alongside, updates on the children's upcoming and previous learning experiences with us.

    Summer Term - 2026   

We are in our last half-term together before you all move onto you new Reception classes!

It's a busy term but a fun one!

Meet the Nursery Team

Mrs Mottram - Class Teacher

Miss March - EYP 

We are here to help you all. If you need anything or have any questions - no matter how trivial they may seem to you - we are always available to talk.

   Key Dates for Summer Term 2026   

• Monday June 1st - Children back in school
• Thursday 4th June - New Reception parents meeting 9.15am
• Monday 8th June - INSET Day - no children in school
• Thursday 11th June - Nursery Sports Day 9.15am
• Saturday 13th - Sunday 14th June - FOC Camping weekend
• Thursday 25th June  - School closes at 1.15pm
• Thursday 25th June - Exhibition Evening 4pm - 6pm
• Thursday 9th July  - Transition Day
• Thursday 23rd July - 1.15pm Finish for Summer 

• Link to the school calendar
• Link to the school term dates 

Our Learning

Below is an overview of our learning for the first half of the Summer Term. This is a guide only, as it can change depending on children's interests and unplanned events that may happen.

Every few days we will be posting pictures and updates on your children's learning experiences and time in nursery, so please remember to check back regularly.

What have we been up to?

Summer Term 2026

8th May 2026

This week we have been learning all about growing seeds again. We started the week reading "Sam Plants a Sunflower". Which tells the story of how a sunflower seed grows into a beautiful sunflower. Mrs Mottram brought in seeds, pots and soil for us to plant our own sunflowers. We're hoping they grow really tall.

This week we are sending our beanstalks home because they have grown a lot! Mrs Mottram said we can send some pictures into nursery if they grow taller at home!

This week in phonics we learnt the sound i and recapped last week's sounds d and t.

We have been using the wooden blocks in construction to make different buildings and structures this week.

We made sunflowers from handprints, and helped Miss March make playdough.

In maths we have been learning how we can show numbers in different ways, for example, 5 can be 2 pencils and 3 counting cubes.

To finish the week Miss March and Mrs Tirritas took us to the pond area for a nature scavenger hunt.

1st May 2026

This week has been all about the Very Hungry Caterpillar and learning about the lifecycle of a butterfly.

Mrs Mottram has got our class 5 Painted Lady caterpillars, and we are looking at them each day to watch how they are growing and changing.

On Thursday we had a Hungry Caterpillar snack time, Mrs Mottram read the story to us again (we like it a lot!) and while she was reading we tried some of the foods that the caterpillar in the story ate, including; plums, strawberries, oranges, chocolate cake, pickles, swiss cheese and watermelon. Not many of us liked the pickle!

We talked about the patterns on a butterfly's wings in maths, and learnt the word symmetrical, which means that both sides are exactly the same. then we made our own butterflies by folding paper, adding paint and squishing it! 

We have done lots of creative activities this week, we made paper plate caterpillars, cotton wool caterpillars and apple print caterpillars.

On Friday we enjoyed our Paddington Bear Day! Our teddies had a great time at nursery. We made labels for them, just like Paddington's and we read paddington stories and went on a Paddington treasure hunt outside.

In phonics we have looked at the sounds d and t, both of them are bouncy sounds.

24th April 2026

We have been learning all about how a bean plant grows! We started the week by reading Jack and the Beanstalk, then we planted our own magic bean seeds to grow our own beanstalks. We have talked about what we would like to find at the top of our beanstalk and the list was full of fun things like; a giant chocolate cake, a bouncy castle, an aeroplane to take us anywhere we want to go, and unlimited ice-cream plus many, many others!

In maths we continued with our measuring, but this time we were measuring beanstalks using counting cubes. and then putting them in order of tallest to shortest.

We even went to assembly this week to say goodbye to Mrs Lehmann from the office.

In phonics we have started to learn our set 1 sounds from the Read Write Inc scheme, this week we re-capped m and a and looked at s 

17th April 2026

Welcome back to the Summer Term, and our last term with you all before you move onto your new classes...

We have had a busy but fun first week back, looking at how we have all grown and changed from babies to now. It was really good to look at our baby pictures and talk about the differences we can see. Can you spot the teacher's and their pictures of when they were the same age as the nursery children?

We have also been looking at measurements, talking about and comparing heights. In fact, Mrs Mottram put us into a height line that stretched right across our classroom!

In phonics we have started to learn our set 1 sounds from the Read Write Inc scheme, this week we looked at m and a

Previous Learning

27th March 2026

We have made it to the end of the Spring Term! Which means we only have one more term in nursery left...

We have been thinking about Easter for the rest of this week, starting with Rev Emma from King Charles The Marytr Church coming into school to talk to us about what Easter is all about. We've been doing lots of Easter crafts, and Mrs Mottram bought us all hot cross buns to try, they were yummy!

We have been doing lots of building with the different construction materials in class too, and were challenged to build a tower taller than everyone!

Our sound of the week was n which is a stretchy sound, can you see what we brought into school to show that began with the sound?

We hope you all have a lovely break, and will see you back in nursery on Tuesday 14th April!

24th March 2026

Another great start to the week!

We are looking at signs of Spring and Easter this week.

We went on a nature hunt to find some natural materials to decorate some egg cut outs, they look reall good! We also looked at where animals live.

Mrs Mottram brought a giant box into class on Monday, so we have turned it into a den, and have been taking turns to decorate it.

We really enjoyed potato printing on a long piece of paper, using pastel paint colours, because they are spring colours, like some of the new flowers that are starting to grow outside.

We also enjoyed going to the Easter Fayre and winning lots of treats!

20th March 2026

We have had such a great week in Nursery. To finish it off we have looked at keeping healthy and how to wash our hands to keep them nice and clean. We looked at what foods are healthy and which are not so healthy for us.

On Friday we went over to the pond area to see what we could find. We had fun using the equipment over there and seeing what we could spy inthe pond. We had a lovely story over there too.

To finish the week we had Red Nose Day, we all looked great in our red clothes.

17th March 2026

We had another exciting visit today! Mrs Mottram's 'little' boy, Alex, came to tell us all about the job he does with the ambulance service. He showed us photos of the ambulances he works on and talked about all the things inside the back of the ambulance Did you know, it's like a mini hospital?

Then he showed us what he wears to keep himself safe at work, and all the things he has to carry in his pockets to help him do his job. He took Mrs Mottram's blood pressure and let her try on his safety helmet!

Afterwards, the children didn't stop talking about his visit, so we got the Dr box out of the cupboard and treated lots of patients!

This week we have also made some shape ambulances using a photo of a real ambulance to help us.

Miss March made a bubble snake as our science experiment this week, and we enjoyed using tweezers to find wiggly worms!!

What a busy start to our week!

11th March 2026

We have been very busy so far this week!

We have been practising our balancing and jumping skills in PE, where we had to find different ways to move across the bench and then jump and land safely.

We have been mark making on a large scale, using different surfaces, including the large board outside with paint, large paper on the floor to make roads and tracks for the cars, and chalks on the floor outside.

Mrs Mottram has been teaching us all about sorting objects in different ways.

We have been strengthening our hand and finger muscles using tweezers to rescue sea creatures from foam, helping to put the fire out with squirty bottles and making patterns in rice.

We also had a very exciting visit from Noah's dad, Martin, who is a firefighter with the London Fire Brigade. He showed us his uniform, and told us why he needs to wear it. He also talked to us about smoke alrms and how important they were, and why we must never play with fire of anykind. He also got Miss March and Miss Jennings to have a race to see hwo could get into a firefighters uniform the fastest!! They both think they won!

Finally we looked at all our sound of the week objects that were brought in from home, another impressive collection!

6th March 2026

We had a great end to our week, with World Book Day on Thursday. We all dressed as favourite characters and spent lots of time sharing books and stories.

We ahd lots of fun making rainbow toast, where we painted some bread with milk and food colouring and  Miss March and Miss Jennings toasted it for us. It was delicious!

4th March 2026

We had an exciting visit from the police today! PC Sophie and PCSO Carl came to talk to us about thier jobs and everything they do in our community. We had spent some time the day before thinking of some questions we wanted to ask them, including what their favourite dinners were! We were even allowed to try on police hats and sit in the back of the police car and had the lights and sirens on!

What a fun day!

3rd March 2026

We started our week with some problem solving, the children were challenged to get an orange out of a cup of water without spilling any...(The answer is to use your finger to spin the water so that the vortex created lifts the orange up!) The children were fascinated and thought there was a tornado in the glass!

We are focussing on working together to help each other this week, and one activity the children love to do together is a jigsaw puzzle. Not only does this help with turn taking and team work, but also fine motor skills and spatial awareness.

The weather has been great the first 2 days this week, so we have been taking our learning outside, where we are developing physical skills, mark-making, more team work and imaginative play.

The children are enjoying oral storytelling in the reading garden, and love to use the finger puppets as props to help them.

We are also encouraging the children to use their name cards to start forming the letters in their name.

27th February 2026

We continued the week learning about the jobs that doctors and nurses do to help us stay healthy. We talked about what foods we can eat that are good for us and made our own fruit kebabs.

We tried a really fun pre-writing activity using spaghetti and tongs to try and pick up the spaghetti by squeezing the tongs really hard to grip it.

The rain stopped for quite a while this week, so we were outside more, having fun making obstacle courses and finding ways to transport water from the water tray to somewhere else using guttering and pipes.

We also made some Chinese dragons using old tubes, paint and tissue paper.

We found lots of things beginning with s, our sound of the week. Don't forget next week we are finding things that start with d .

24th February 2026

We started the new half-term thinking festivals and celebrations. We talked about Lunar New Year and watched some traditional Dragon and Lion Dances. In PE we used our scarves to copy the movements of these dances, trying to stay in time with each other.

Miss March and Miss Jennings planned another fun science session for us, we did the Mentos Challenge. We had to guess which bottle would produce the biggest explosion, and we made a tally chart to show this. The experiment was so much fun! Miss March and Miss Jennings had to jump out of the way so they didn't get splattered!!

We also enjoyed writing Chinese numbers (and other patterns) in rice and glitter with paintbrushes and our fingers. This will help us with forming our letters properly later on.

Spring Term 1 2026

13th February 2026

Thank you for all your a objects for our sound of the week. We are getting good at hearing the initial sound in lots of words.

The children have spent time building structures with our magnetic tiles, trying to find ways to join the different shapes.

We love a jigsaw in nursery! It is one of our favourite things to do, and we are really good at working together to complete them.

On Wednesday we explored a sensory tray full of textures linked to the Gruffalo story, it was really fun!

We ended the half-term going on our own Gruffalo Hunt!

10th February 2026

We have started our week all about The Gruffalo. We started in PE, by acting out the story and moving around as if we were the different animals from the story.

It was a dry day on Monday, so we were outside as much as possible! Some of us enjoyed using the big painting wall, while some others made an obstacle course to balance along.

We have been enjoting using the role play in class, which is set up as the Three Bear's Cottage.

In the maths area Mrs Mottram has been challenging us to order our numbers.

Miss March and Miss Jennings did another science session with us where we got to make some fireworks in a bowl. It was really great to watch as they moved in the water.

We also loved making our own Gruffalos from playdough.

6th February 2026

We had fun this week! Especially making our teddy bear snacks. We helped to cut the fruit, spread our own butter or jam and then made some fruity bear faces on the bread. We ate them altogether at a Teddy Bear's picnic while Miss March read Going on a Bear Hunt to us.

We also made our music shakers, thank you for all the donated bottles! We can't wait to use them in a music session next week!

We brought in our objects or pictures starting with our sound of the week, which was m, a stretchy sound that says mmmmm, and we took it in turns to say what the object was using the sound and we said it. Next week our sound is a, which is a bouncy sound. Mrs Mottram said she is looking forward to seeing what we bring in on Wednesday.

Barnaby arrived safely back at school, and told us all about his adventures with one of you...he is now off again and we have to wait until Tuesday to find out what fun he got up to this time!

To end our week we went on our own Bear Hunt in class, through some sensory trays with different textures in...it was so much fun!

3rd February 2026

We started our week reading 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' and acting it out in PE. We had so much fun doing all the actions to go with the parts of the story.

Miss March and Miss Jennings did some more science with us, we helped to make lava lamps using oil, coloured water and salt. They looked really pretty with a torch underneath them.

Today Mrs Mottram showed us how to make a story map for Going on a Bear Hunt, and we have started to make our own. She said she is really proud of the ones we have done so far.

30th January 2026

We ended our week with some fun arts and crafts, and some cooking! We love to share a big roll of paper with our friends and make a collaborative piece of art! This week used used a combination of collage materials and paints.

For our cooking this week we made Teddy Bear Wrap Pizzas. We chose our toppings and then our teachers cooked them for us, so that we could eat them when we went home to our grown-ups.

Our class bear Barnaby has also gone to one of the children's homes for his first weekend adventure! We are all looking forward to hearing what he gets up to!

What a fantastic we we have had!

Next week we are looking at one of Mrs Mottram's favourite books - 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt.'

28th January 2026

So far this week we have been looking at Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The children have enjoyed building houses for the bears, sorting bears and spending time drawing while on their tummies to help strengthen their neck and core muscles. They also took part in a science experiment to make a walking rainbow, using food colouring and paper towels.

We have also spent time re-telling the story and drawing our own pictures to show what happened in the story.

23rd January 2026

This week we have been having so much fun with our Dinosaurs Topic!

We made a volcano! Which we found really exciting, especially when it made the lava touch the ceiling!! We used marbles to make patterns for our dinosaur pictures, and we also made dino footprint cookies.

Mrs Mottram showed us how big a triceratops footprint was, and we used it to measure with different objects, like our shoes, wooden spoons and maths cubes.

Happy New year everyone!

The children have had a great first week back in school. They have enjoyed seeing all their friends again (and teachers!) and have started our new topic on Dinosaurs.

We have had lots of construction going on, making homes for dinosaurs, creating dinosaur pictures using sponge printing, alongside imaginary play in the small world area which is being turned into 'Dino Land' next week with the children's help and ideas.

In maths we have been looking at size comparisons, and how we can use the correct vocabulary when doing so. For example; big, bigger, biggest.

The Learning Environment in Cranborne Early Years Foundation Stage

In the Early Years at Cranborne we strive to create an environment that promotes a sense of curiosity, awe and wonder in the children.

An environment that also enables plenty of opportunities for them to self-select and demonstrate the characteristics of effective learning, and where the children can practise, consolidate and rehearse taught skills. 

We aim to provide the children with areas that are accessible to them and are organised in a way to promote independence and purposeful play.

The seven areas of learning are as follows:

Communication and Language* 

Physical Development*

Personal, Social and Emotional Development*

Literacy

Maths 

Knowledge and Understanding of the World

Expressive Arts and Design

*Prime Areas of Learning

Below you can see some pictures and a video tour of the Nursery classroom.

Thank you to all the parents that made it to our New Parents Meeting on 4th June.

Below is a copy of the slides that we talked through. 

Supporting Maths at home.

Below are some links to sites that give examples of how to support maths at home. There is also a document to show some ideas for how you can support the different areas of the EYFS maths curriculum at home, and when out and about with your child.

https://www.nationalnumeracy.org.uk/helping-children-maths/activities/ages-5-and-under

https://nrich.maths.org/early-years-foundation-stage-activities-0

https://www.famly.co/blog/10-creative-early-years-maths-activities

Do you need weekend inspiration?

Hertfordshire are partners in a great tool for parents. A list of 50 fun things to do with your child before they turn 5. There are lots of great ideas to do as a family or with friends. Maybe you can try some over the half-term? If you do, don't forget to take photos and upload them to Evidence Me. That way we can ask your childrne to tell us all about the fun they have had.

You can download it as an app, or use the web based version, either way it is a great resource for ideas of fun activities to do together.

Please see the link here:  https://hertfordshire.50thingstodo.org/app/os#!/welcome  for the web based version, or the document below for the app information.

Have fun!

Snow Day Ideas...

There are lots of different things you can do on a snow day. Below is a list of just a few.

1 Build a snowman - Don't forget they will need eys, nose, mouth, arms...what will you use?

2 Make patterns in the snow - this will help with mark making and writing skills.

3 Make a snow castle (just like a sand castle but colder!) and decorate it.

4 Make footprints with family and compare the sizes of your shoes and boots. Who has the smallest? The biggest? The middle sized? (can you find any footprints from birds or animals?)

5 Investigate melting! Find some containers to put snow in and put them in different places, inside, outside, wrapped up outside. Which melts the fastest? slowest? What happens when snow melts? 

6 Find some snowflakes - can you find 2 the same? 

7 Make some snowflakes - here is a simple tutorial How to make a simple snowflake

8 Describe the snow - What does it feel like?

9 Make some hot chocolate with a grown-up - What do you have to do? Can you describe the steps to someone so they could do the same?

10 HAVE FUN!

Whatever you do in the snow today, we would love to see pictures! Please upload any to Evidence Me and we can look at them together when we are back in class.