Broomhill School Ladybirds

We had a shared session with the children in P1 at the Woodies on Wednesday. It was nice for the children to make new friends. We are looking forward to sharing bases with the P1s in the infant hall on Tuesday.

On Thursday we went to visit Mrs Youle’s allotment at the bottom of Gray Street. We took Ziggy to help remind us about the rules for keeping safe when we are out of nursery. It was good to revisit the allotment and to help Mrs Youles plant some potatoes and onions. We had to carefully cover the potatoes with soil using the rake. We used a lolly stick to help us get the correct depth for planting the onions and to place them the correct distance apart. We enjoyed transporting the water from the tap and watering the plants. The children who are continuing with us will be able to go back to harvest some of the vegetables after the summer holidays. We gave Mrs Youles some salad seeds to plant as a thank you and we are designing labels to help Mrs Youles to identify the plants in her garden.

This week the children have been telling their nursery friends one piece of ‘important news’. They all managed to speak clearly and only tell one item of news. The audience had to listen carefully and ask questions. Here is our news:-

     Sandy- “I’m going to start my sister’s swimming lessons next week.”

Matthew- “I’m in tennis lessons and I’m going to get my own tennis racquet.” 

  Nicol- “I’m already in the big swimming class! And I go to little ninjas as well.”

Orla- “I go to ballet now.” 

  Sonny- “I’m starting my brother’s swimming.”

Eilidh- “Selin came to my house for lunch and we had sandwiches.”

  Jake- “I saw baby ducklings and I fed them. I saw a deer.”

Iyla- “I went to the park.” 

  Isabella- “Actually last Monday I went to Rainbows for the first time.”

Hannah- “I can swim without my float.”

  Oona- “We’re already at our new swimming lessons at David Lloyds.”

Lucas- “Sandy and Matthew are coming to my house on football day.”

Elliott- “I go to football camp.”

Jessica- “Well when I was on holidays I went to the shops on lots of days.”

  Samuel- “When I go to the park I go on the zipwire.”

Selin- “My brother started swimming and I’m going to start as well but I’m not started yet.”

What a lot of interesting news. Our children have lots of fantastic experiences!

We love learning outside and this week the weather has been wonderful. We have managed to get outside every day and had lots of fun with the Butterflies in the nursery garden, the Wildlife garden and the Woodies. It is so nice for the children to be able to play and learn alongside their peers who may be in their P1 classes after summer! The children had lots of fun playing with a ‘froggy’ game which Kathleen found at a car boot sale. They had to match pairs of animals and then try to catch the frog as it flew up in the air. So much fun and lots of learning about matching and thinking skills!

We also had some other new resources to play with, children who are usually reluctant to mark make were enjoying spending time drawing with our fun chalk holders!

We have been encouraging the children to help with potting on plants which we hope will grow in the nursery garden. We also planted lots of sunflower seeds in little pots. The children are so enthusiastic and knowledgable and many of them are able to tell the staff about other things they have been planting at home.

At the Woodies the children made musical shakers. These were decorated and filled with natural objects. We played our shakers as we sang some songs, singing outside is so much fun!

For snack we baked green cupcakes and decorated them with ‘froggy icing’. The children then had to make their own frog face. You can see our cakes below!

We finished the week by sharing a book entitled ‘How Are You Peeling?’ A book with beautiful photographs of fruits and vegetables which made the children laugh. We talked about feelings and how we can tell by our facial expressions how someone is feeling. Look at our faces below and see if you can guess how we are feeling!! 😀😬😠🙁

On Wednesday we boarded our bus and set off for the McRobert building at the university. We were welcomed by Mrs Black who introduced us to a group of her music students. The children had to guess the names of some musical instruments and then the students played a variety of catchy tunes for us. The children then split into two groups to choose instruments to play to represent the main characters in the story of ‘The Gruffalo’. Once they had decided which instruments to play, each group performed their piece to an audience. After we had snack Mrs Black taught us a new song and we danced and marched along to the music. Here are some of the children’s comments:-

Oona, ‘I enjoyed the bus time.’

Hannah, ‘I enjoyed the sound of the musical instruments.’

Samuel, ‘I enjoyed the big drum.’

Iyla, ‘ I was the fox and I liked the big drum.’

Eilidh,’I liked playing my drum with Selin.’

Lucas,’ I got a shot of the ukulele, Kathleen even got a turn of the ukulele.’

Elliott, ‘I liked the sound of the piano.’

Isabella, ‘Actually I liked the big drum.’

Selin, ‘I liked the noise of the big drum.’

Jessica, ‘I liked the ukulele, it was black.’

Orla, ‘I liked playing the tambourine.’

Nicol, ‘I liked the colours of the ukuleles.’

Sandy, ‘I was a snake with a tambourine.’

It is safe to say that the children had a wonderful learning experience and we will be writing to thank Mrs Black and her students. We must also thank our parents who volunteered to help us on our trip.

Have a great holiday weekend, we welcome you all back on Wednesday for our Woodies session.

Welcome back to nursery for our summer term. We were lucky with the weather this week as it was cold and sunny but there was no rain. We had fun on Tuesday with our wheeled toys and then on Wednesday we went with the Butterflies to the Woodies. The children had a lot of fun experimenting with ropes, pulleys and buckets.

It was so warm we had a picnic snack.

On Thursday we joined up again with the Butterflies and spent our nursery session in the Wildlife garden. The children were experimenting with bubbles using different sized wands. Kathleen worked with a group of volunteers to weed a large flower bed which we have decided to make into a vegetable patch. We will continue to grow flowers in our other bed which is looking good as the daffodils and tulips we planted in autumn are in full bloom.

On Friday we welcomed Nicol’s mum and dad with Lily who is Nicol’s baby sister. We watched whilst she had her bath and then we had a turn of washing her. Lily was very happy and contented the whole time. We asked lots of questions about looking after babies. Thank you so much to Nicol’s parents for bringing in Lily to help us with our understanding of babies and their needs.

We set ourselves a goal this week for our Archie in Africa challenge to walk round the perimeter of the playground twice every day. We are proud to say that we have managed to complete our challenge.

Our steps will count towards the whole school total to walk round the country of Uganda.

Thank you for your donations for Archie in Africa!

On Wednesday we welcomed our visitors to the nursery open day. The children enjoyed showing their visitors round the nursery and taking part in some learning activities. The children shared their learning journeys and our floor book.

Very many thanks for your wonderfully positive comments.  We asked the children what they thought about the open day and here are some of their comments,

“I liked all of the mums and dads coming.” Jessica

“I liked when my mum was here for snack.” Oona

“I liked reading a book with Isabella’s mum and dad.” Elliott

“I liked Grace having snack with me.” Orla

“I liked my mum liking the pictures in my book (learning journey).” Selin

“Showing mummy my learning journey.” Jake

“I liked doing my learning journey with mum.” Kenzie

Wishing you all a very happy Easter holiday. We welcome everyone back to nursery on the 18th of April.

We started this week by making some spicy bun playdoh. We added cinnamon, spice and raisins to make the dough as near as possible to real hot cross buns and the children suggested using string for the cross. We sang the song about hot cross buns and then had real buns for snack.

On Tuesday we had to very quickly decorate our hard boiled eggs so we could roll them at the Woodies on Wednesday. When we went over to the Woodies we walked twice around the big field which will count towards the total distance for our ‘Archie in Africa’ challenge. Then we had a lot of fun hunting for eggs but the best part was rolling our eggs down the big hill and trying to crack the shells. We were very careful to pick up all our rubbish before we left. Back at nursery we discovered that the Easter bunny had left us a little treat and we also made a little cheesy biscuit chick for our snack.

Wishing everyone a very Happy Easter. See you all on Monday!

Yesterday we celebrated Isabella’s birthday with a delicious ‘Minions’ cake. Thank you for our delicious snack!🎂

At the Woodies this week the children asked for a mud kitchen so we took lots of water, pots, plates and a variety of utensils with us. Very messy but this allowed the children to share lots of interesting creative ideas. We also had storytelling in the den, the children enjoyed listening to the story of ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ read by Miss Buckley. It was so popular that it was a bit of a squash and a squeeze in the den. Our other literacy activity involved the children working as a team to sequence a story. Once they were happy with the order of the pages they read the story from the washing line.

We celebrated St Patrick’s Day by making shamrock necklaces, flags and taking part in a musical parade led by Caitlin. We had Irish soda bread for snack. Thank you to Hannah’s mum for her recipe.

On Friday we took part in various activities linked to Sport Relief. The children looked good ready for action! Once we were warmed up we went round our ‘Sheeplechase’ obstacle course six times. This involved lots of balancing, jumping, rolling and wriggling. To finish, Miss Kerr taught us the Sport Relief Nursery Dance. Thank you for all your donations.

This week the children have continued to be interested in pirates. They have been investigating the properties of magnetic objects using bar and horseshoe magnets. Our pirate chest is full of treasure to test. Next week we will continue to explore and use magnets in our learning.

The children have also enjoyed getting their shoes and socks off to do some foot painting! When they were finished painting they had to wash and dry their feet. It is amazing how many tickly feet we have in nursery! 😃 You will be surprised to see what we are creating with our footprints.

This week we have introduced the children to two new games. The first game, ‘Jack and Jill’,  is helping the children with their numeracy skills and learning that winning  is sometimes down to luck. The lotto game encourages the children to match words and pictures and begin to sound out words using phonics the children already know. Both games have been popular and help with learning to take turns and share resources.

We had a visit this week from children in Room 5 who read and shared their book, ‘We’re Going on a Dinosaur Hunt’. We were very impressed with their reading and how much hard work had gone in to creating and illustrating their book. Thank you very much boys and girls. Sharing links with primary one children is a valuable experience and an important part of transition for our nursery children.

We continue to have our library sessions on a Friday. Children are encouraged to take on the role of librarians helping their ‘customers’ with choosing their books and recording which books are borrowed. Our next question of the week will be asking for your views about this learning experience for the children.