New and returning families please find the link for the induction presentation below.  This was explained at the recent induction evening.  We look forward to seeing you all after the holidays! 🙂

Induction presentation – please click here.

Our sun dance didn’t work!

Regrettably, due to the terrible weather and the continued poor weather that is forecast for the entire day today the nursery trip will be cancelled. Nursery will be open as normal with a morning and an afternoon session. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

We all had a wonderful time at the garden party last week – we hope you all did too.  A huge thanks to all of the staff, parents and children for making it such a success.  Here are a collection of photos from the day.

The afternoon class had a very long primary 1 visit today.  It was lots of fun and the children are getting more and more excited about going to Primary 1. They played outside with the bigger boys and girls in the playground and then lined up in the Primary 1 line.  They then had their snacks in the P1 classrooms and spent a considerable amount of time exploring different contexts.  They also practised their singing for the nursery garden party and finished with a story about starting school.

We had a very long visit to Primary 1 today as the primary 1s were on a trip.  We spent some time exploring the different play contexts and even did special drawing jobs. We had our snack at the tables in primary 1 and then lined up with our friends to go outside.  We are becoming very independent at playing outside in the playground and we happily ran, climbed and played with some older boys and girls.  The bell rang and we lined up with the P1s and 2s. We were even the star class at lining up.  🙂  We returned to primary 1 for a longer play and had a story about starting school.  Primary 1….here we come!

The afternoon children have been interested in asking about numbers and letters recently.   They decided to take part in treasure hunts and searched for numbers, letters and words around the nursery.  They were delighted when they found the items on their list and it was a super activity for reinforcing initial sounds, numbers and their recognition of print.  They hunted for names of their friends on snack cards and trays, names of staff members on staff badges, numbers from games and even signs around the nursery.  

You could try this at home too.  Try writing numbers, letters or words on a piece of paper and get your child to try hunting for them around your house.  It would be a great activity for a long car journey or a supermarket visit!

Please remember to always use the letter sounds rather than the letter names when talking about letters with your child e.g. for the letter ‘a’ pronounce it as ‘ah’ rather than ‘ai’.  This will make spelling, reading and writing easier in the future.

The pre-school children have been working hard to learn lots of words to different songs in preparation for the garden party next week.  This week they voted for songs that they would like to sing.  We displayed this in a graph to help the children clearly visualize which song was the most popular.   This also reinforced counting skills and helped the children become more confident in identifying smaller and larger numbers.  This is a perfect example of how we constantly encourage the development of literacy and numeracy skills in real life scenarios.

They made some super (top-secret) choices! We can’t wait to perform to you next week.

We continue to enjoy being snack helpers.  We have many responsibilities when helping with snack.  We clean the table, empty the dishwasher, chop and prepare the food and set the tables.  We take it in turns to serve our friends and are becoming more confident in using big voices when offering our friends snack.

Snack provides lots of opportunities for numeracy and literacy development too.  The children are encouraged to use their skills in counting and measuring when serving their friends.  They learn new words and vocabulary as they chat to each other and to the staff member assisting with snack.

The afternoon boys and girls had lots of fun spending the entire nursery session outside today.  They developed their gross motor skills when pedaling and running, and took turns with the resources.  Many of them continue to enjoy playing games and the staff continue to develop this with them.

A highlight of the afternoon was having a picnic snack outside in the sunshine.

We enjoyed cooling down with a special treat after a busy afternoon of exercise!