Please note the details of the nursery garden party. This will take place on the afternoon of Tuesday 28th June 2016. All pre-school children will only attend the party on this day. They will not attend a morning nursery session on this day. All ante-pre school children must attend the morning session on this day. Bring your tissues and your camera! 🙂
The nursery children who will be moving on into primary one after the holidays have been enjoying lots of visits to the primary one classrooms and to the playground recently.
The children are becoming more and more familiar with the school environment. They are becoming aware of where to find things like pegs, toilets and learning zones in the green unit. The children will also visit important places around the school (eg the school office, the janitor’s office, the computer suite, the studio and the gym hall).
During the next few weeks the children will be involved in creating a ‘talking thinking school book’. We will be using a talking tub containing objects from primary one to help to stimulate discussion and to encourage the children to ask questions about going to school. The ‘talking thinking school book’ will also contain children’s drawings, art work and photos of important places and people in the school. We also hope to organize some visits from the current primary one children. The primary one children will show the nursery children things like reading books, gym bags, packed lunches and examples of work. The primary one children will also be able to answer some of the questions from the nursery children.
The nursery children all seem to be very excited about moving on into primary one! Please ask any member of the nursery team if you have any questions about transition.
The children have been finding out about the different types of minibeasts living in the forest. They have enjoyed using magnifying glasses, bug jars, spotting sheets and photographs to help them to identify a variety of different types of minibeasts. The children are developing confidence when talking about the features of different minibeasts. They have been looking closely at legs, body parts, wings, spots and antennae. They have also been investigating different types of minibeast habitats. The children are able to talk about the types of places where minibeasts like to live. They even created their own bug hotels in the forest to attract new minibeasts.
We hope to create our own bug hotel in the nursery garden. The bug hotel will be built using old wooden pallets. We would really appreciate donations of old pieces of wood, bamboo canes, plastic drainpipes, flower pots, straw, bricks, pine cones, old roofing tiles and any other natural materials for the construction of our bug hotel! Thank you!
Here is our new snack menu for this term. We have used the ideas provided by the children and the parents. Thank you for your suggestions. We are having a lot of snacks that can be eaten outside this term. This is to give the pre-school children an opportunity to try having snack in the playground like the big Primary 1’s, to allow us to have quick, easy snacks in the forest and (hopefully) to enable us to have lots of snacks in the sunshine. 
We have received our report from the recent Care Inspectorate visit that we had in nursery. We are absolutely delighted to have been given a fantastic report.
You can find the report by clicking here.
You will see that the report is organised into four categories and we receive a grade for each category. Our grades are as follows:
The report clearly recognises the hard work that the wonderful nursery team do on a daily basis with particular strengths in the nurturing, caring environment they provide. They are a fantastic team to work with who genuinely adore being with your children. A big thank you to Mrs Williams, Mrs Ogilvie, Mrs Gordon, Mrs Bartlett, Mrs Cook, Mrs Bedgood and Mrs Message.
Thank you,
Mrs Duncan
We have been showing an interest in letters in recent weeks. We have been involved in playing a variety of games which help us to develop our letter recognition. Many of us have also been experimenting with letters at the drawing table. If your child is interested, you can encourage him/her to learn the letters in his/her name and point out these letters on road signs, restaurants, in books etc. Please remember to use the letter sounds (ah) rather than the letter names (ai, bee, cee etc).
We continue to develop our skills in taking turns and talking to our friends. This week we have been very interested in playing a shopping themed game which helped us develop our skills in turn-taking and talking and listening to our friends. You can develop this skill at home by encouraging your child to play a variety of simple games with their friends, family and siblings.
Many of the morning children have shown an interest in flying objects. Mrs Ogilvie led this group in a discussion to find out which area of flight they would like to find out more about. They used a talking tub to stimulate discussion and thinking. It contained a variety of interest sounds, textures, pictures and objects related to flight. It became very apparent that they were very interested in balloons, airplanes, space and maps.
This week the afternoon children have shown an interest in making and flying paper airplanes. They worked hard to create a range of airplanes at the drawing table and then experimented with making them fly in the nursery corridor. This is an area we hope to develop with them further. Please add any comments on the planning wall if you have any additional suggestions related to this topic.
The nursery staff have been planning a variety of different activities for our garden party on the afternoon of Tuesday 28th June. We think that the children would really enjoy having someone to come along to do face painting and/or balloon modelling. If you know of anybody who might be available to do face painting/balloon modelling, please let us know by leaving a comment on this post or come and speak to any member of the nursery team! Thank you!
