Week commencing 19th February 2024 - Acorns 59

Welcome to our blog post.

We hope you all had a wonderful half term break - it was lovely to hear the children chat about their Acorns holiday and of the adventures they had shared with family.

We have welcomed 2 new teacher to The Acorns this week.

Mrs Natalie Drake at Acorns 59 and Ms Anna Chadd at Acorns 25.

Natalie enjoys crafting and has arrived armed with a huge folder of crafty ideas. We are very excited to blend these into our planning for next term.

Anna used to work with Mrs Franks almost 20 years ago at another nursery and is looking forward to starting her level 3 training with us soon.

We also enjoyed a visit from Mr Kenyon this week.

He hopes to volunteer with us for a few days to see if Early Years is a path he would like follow. The children fondly named him 'Mr Onion'

Mr Kenyon has had 2 children who attended The Acorns in the past.

This week we have been learning all about Hungary.

We have a friend at Acorns 25 who is Hungarian and we enjoyed learning all about her country.

We looked at the Hungarian flag and noted the colours.

The children set about painting their own flags, working hard to follow the instructions given.

We thought the flag looked familiar so we compared it to some of the other flags we have learnt about during our project.

The Hungarian flag and Italian flag have the same colours.

“The lines go sideways on this one and upways on that one.”

We managed to find Hungary on our globe.

“Its not too far away but you will need to get on a plane.”

“I haven’t been to there before but I went to Brighton at the weekend.”

We noticed that Hungary has no coast line so therefore no beaches but the children were very excited to hear about the thermal lakes where people can swim.

“Is it hot like a bath?”

“If I put my foot in the water it would be too hot and toasty.”

We enjoyed Hungarian food each day.

The children particularly enjoyed the Hungarian pancakes on Friday called Palacsinta.

Miss Searle told the children about a famous artist called Pal Szinyei Merse.

He was a painter.

One of his most famous pieces is called ‘The Balloon’

The children tried to recreated their own balloon pictures using rulers, cut out paper and glue.

We celebrated a Hungarian festival to chase away the winter and to welcome the lightness of spring.

The children made beautiful headbands to wear. They were fabulous !

Did you know that the Rubik cube was invented by a Hungarian man called Erno Rubik.

We have lots of Rubiks cubes at The Acorns and spent lots of time trying to solve the puzzle.

We tried and tried, but weren’t successful.

Can you solve the cube ?

We did a very special experiment with water and cut paper on Friday.

The paper was cut in the shape of a flower and when the paper was placed on top of water it opened its petals.

The children were fascinated – as were the teachers !!

What a wonderful experiment to support our spring learning.

We made something delicious on Friday – Kokuszgolyo. 

We rolled our biscuity dough into balls and coated with coconut. YUMMY !!

We were very excited to take it home.

Thank you so much to Bianka for all of her support this week in planning and providing resources.

We are so very grateful and appreciate all the work you put in to make our Hungarian week a special one.

Here are a few extra pics ...

Next week we are travelling to Kenya.

We look forward to going on safari - We will be making binoculars so if you have any spare toilet/kitchen roll tubes please send them our way.

Thank You.

Mrs Franks and The Acorns 59 Team.