We had a great day in the forest day.  The weather was fantastic!

We deliberately did not take any toys or resources to the forest.  This was to encourage us to use natural materials rather than using plastic in our play.

We played lots of hiding games to help us learn some of our new forest safety rules.  We also had LOTS of time to explore the forest ourselves.  We climbed trees, built dens, built bug houses, hunted for bugs and squelched in the mud.

Photos to follow.  Apologies to all of those parents/children who were desperate to see the photos tonight, I am having a technical difficulty.  I hope to have them up tomorrow.  🙂

The returning children have been showing an interest in minibeasts for months.  The new nursery boys and girls were very interested in the minibeasts in the forest.  Unfortunately, we had not been finding many bugs in our garden – we decided to do something about this.

In small groups we shared stories about bugs and looked at photographs of bug hotels.  We also spoke about the types of homes and food that bugs might like.  You can see our fantastic ideas on our ‘Bug Hotel’ wall in nursery.

We made lists and mind maps of the things we needed based on the new information about bugs that we had learned.  We have now started building our minibeast hotel using all of our ideas.  Please ask your child to show you it next time you pass through the nursery garden.  We hope to add lots of numeracy and literacy resources to it soon too!

The green and blue boys and girls found some natural materials in the forest to add to our minibeast hotel.

We are still looking for:

• Broken ceramic pots
• Rolls of turf
• Broken bricks
• Pieces of pipe

Photographs to follow…

The forest sessions will begin tomorrow (19th September) and run every Tuesday until the October holidays.

The green and blue children will be going to the forest on Tuesday 19th September and Tuesday 3rd October.

The red and yellow children will be visiting the forest on Tuesday 26th September and Tuesday 10th October.

On these dates children should come to school dressed in warm clothes, long trousers and  sturdy trainers or walking boots.

They should also carry a small backpack containing:

• A bottle filled with water for drinking.  As we are a health promoting school no juice please.
• Hats and gloves

Nursery will provide snack.

All children should also take a warm waterproof jacket.  Waterproof trousers are preferred but no essential.

Tuesday 19th September

Forest sessions for green and blue children

Wednesday 20th September

School/nursery open evening.  5-6.30pm.  All welcome.  Please enter via the main school entrance.

Tuesday 26th September

Forest sessions for red and yellow children.

Wednesday 27th September

GIRFEC presentation from nursery staff.  5.30-6.30pm.  Please enter via the main school entrance and go to the dining room.

We have been developing our physical skills as we explore new large apparatus in the large playground.  We are also learning to steer, control and move new scooters, bikes and cars.  Many of us chose to challenge ourselves further by taking risks such as riding the scooters down a large ramp or climbing very high on the large netted climbing frame.  (More photographs to follow).

We explored different shapes and patterns by using dinosaur footprints in paint.

We also drew our own dinosaurs using non-fiction books, stencils and toy dinosaurs to guide us.  We are all learning to use the correct tripod grip when drawing and are trying hard to add extra detail into our drawings.  This encouraged lots of boys to pick up a pen.  This is a key area of our development plan for this academic session.

We (am children) experimented with splatter paint to make volcanoes.  We spoke reflectively as we watched the colours blend and change.

We made our own dinosaur eggs.  With the help of Mrs Gordon, we put toy dinosaurs in balloons full of water.  We then froze them and had great fun trying to free the dinosaurs once they were frozen.  This encouraged lots of descriptive language and a deeper understanding of early science concepts.

We have been choosing to play with dinosaurs in the nursery.  Many playgroups. parents and previous nurseries also told us how interested the children are in finding out about dinosaurs.  

At nursery, we use talking tubs to help the children plan new topics.  Some of the children have been involved in a talking tub recently.  The talking tub is full of different dinosaur related resources.  It contained a fossil, a bone, a leaf, pictures of volcanoes, skeletons, footprints, stones and more.  The children each chose an object and spoke about it.  This allowed the staff to unpick the children’s knowledge and understanding and helped us to identify areas of interest as well as misconceptions.  There was a strong interest in finding out more about fossils, volcanoes and meat eaters.  The children also showed an interest in the size of dinosaurs.  There was also some confusion about volcanoes and fossils.  We will use this as a basis for our new topic – please see the planning sheet in nursery for more information.

Here are the talking tub planners.  They all drew pictures to show their key areas of interest or knowledge.  🙂

Apologies for the lack of Blog updates recently.  We were waiting for all Blog permission forms to be completed.  They now are and we look forward to sharing evidence of our learning on this blog throughout the session. 🙂