Butterflies Nursery 2016/17

DESIGN GUIDANCE FOR EARLY LEARNING AND CHILDCARE SERVICES

As part of the expansion of early learning and childcare to 1,140 hours by 2020, the Scottish Government, in collaboration with Scottish Futures Trust and the Care Inspectorate are developing design guidance for early learning and childcare service providers.

Care Inspectorate would like the views from parents and carers of children who use the service. If you would like to share your views, please complete this survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/NFSZWCV

CLOSING DATE: 28 FEBRUARY

Thank you.

This week we had a talk from Mr Begg who works for the RNLI. He used Silly Sam to help us understand about keeping ourselves safe when we are near water.

Also this week we had a surprise letter from Cinder the dragon. The children were very excited and after they had looked out all of the windows in the school to spot him we set about writing letters and drawing pictures to send to Cinder. We are looking forward to receiving more letters from Cinder.

If you would like to join us for one of our Stay and Play sessions please sign up, more information and sign up sheets are displayed for each nursery.

This week we introduced the children to our talking tub filled with fantasy creatures. There was a lot of interest in dragons, fairies and unicorns. The children decided that they wanted to create their own castle in the role play area and set about designing and painting it. You can see the children are enjoying exploring the roles of knights and princesses.

At the Woodies on Wednesday some of the children chose to make a Chinese dragon kite. We will continue to investigate and explore some Chinese traditions as part of our learning about Chinese New Year.

 

Happy New Year to everyone! Welcome back to a busy term at Broomhill nursery. This week we enjoyed our regular wheeled toy session with the Butterfly boys and girls. Most of our children are able to share the space with their friends and are using our nursery rules to keep themselves safe. Just a reminder that if your child has a helmet to bring it to nursery on a Tuesday.

It was fantastic to see our brothers and sisters supporting each other in their learning.

We started our Woodies Wednesday sessions this week. We continued to investigate the weather by making paper plate spinners which the children used to investigate the force of the wind. Our children enjoy the freedom of all our outdoor learning opportunities! They were very good at explaining the rules for ‘The Woodies’ to our new children.

Thank you to our helpers who volunteer to accompany us to the Woodies. Without your support we could not offer the children this valuable learning experience. Remember to sign up on the sheet on our notice board if you can help as we will need two extra adults from each nursery every week.

We hoped you enjoyed our nursery nativity presentation today! The children were all stars, singing and acting out the roles of the main characters in the story. We are so proud of them all!

 

 

On Monday we will be introducing our own nursery version of ‘Golden Tickets’. These will be given to children who demonstrate positive behaviour including helping others, listening well, looking after nursery resources and anything else staff feel needs to be flagged up and rewarded. The children will post their tickets into our own gold post boxes and every day a winner will be rewarded with a sticker. We plan to reward the children with the most tickets by having a snack picnic under the Christmas tree in the infant hall at the end of term!

It was very windy at the Woodies on Wednesday morning so we took the opportunity to explore the effect of the wind on our plastic bag kites and ribbons. The children had to work out how to get the bags in the air and to keep them flying! Once the wind caught the bags, they puffed up beautifully and you can “fly” then to your hearts content!

 

 

Over the last couple of weeks we have received lots of new resources and the children have been keen to explore and try them out! Our new water tray is bigger and has levels at different heights which the children can use to explore the flow of water. We are developing our maths and literacy skills whilst enjoying playing with the new water toys.

This week the children have been exploring the role of a doctor in the role play area. They have been setting up appointments, waiting in the waiting room and treating patients.

It is great to see the children developing their literacy skills in talking, listening and writing through their play. We have also listened to and explored a variety of different texts about doctors, both fiction and non-fiction.

 

 

What a busy morning we had on Thursday! To support Children in Need the children dressed in their pyjamas and spots and we had some Spotacular fun. We managed to raise a total of £126.70 between all of our nursery classes. Thank you to everyone for your donations.

Also on Thursday we welcomed an STV news team to nursery to explain how the news is made. Forbes’ parents, Ross and Sharon are news reporters and they explained how they record their stories on camera and then how we are able to watch the news on television. They told us how cameras and microphones work and then Rebecca recorded the children as Sharon interviewed them about why they were dressed up in their pyjamas. The children had a wonderful time watching themselves on the monitor as they were interviewed. I think some of our children could be future TV stars!! Very many thanks to Ross, Sharon and Rebecca for coming to nursery to help our children understand something about your work in the community.

On Monday the Butterflies were very excited to see some sparklers in the wildlife garden. We spoke about how to keep ourselves safe when near the sparklers and the children were very excited to see Mrs Walker set them alight!

 

With the weather turning colder and wetter, we would like to remind parents to ensure their child  comes to nursery each day with suitable outdoor clothing. We try to get outside as much as possible so please make sure your child is suitably dressed for the weather conditions each day.

The children have been enjoying exploring our new nursery layout. On Thursday morning they were surprised to see that nursery had changed a bit overnight! We look forward to seeing how the children use this new layout in their everyday play.

             

 

 

 

And finally just a little reminder about our school sickness policy. If your child has experienced sickness or diarrhoea they cannot return to nursery until they have been clear of symptoms for 48 hours. This is in order to protect the other children and staff and to prevent the spread of infection. If you  are unsure or have any questions please ask a member of staff.