Sharing Good Practice

Balance on Pedals

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The Live Life Aberdeenshire team shared some positive feedback on the Balance on Pedals resources.

It is lovely to hear so many children are accessing the benefits of learning to balance and pedal in ELC.

Information on how to access here:

Live Life Outdoors presents our “Balance to Pedal” bike loans programme as part of our overall “Bringing the Bike to You” suite of cycling options. This new pre-school programme was initially tested between January and March 2026 and we are delighted to now take it across Aberdeenshire, with our Term 3 evaluation attached for your information.

The bike loan consists of 5 x Balance Bikes, 2-3 Early Pedal Cycles and helmets. Via Early Years we host a Balance to Pedal Workshop to compliment the use of the resources in a pre school setting and the date & venue for the pre-summer workshop will be confirmed shortly.

The £50 (or £100 10 weeks) charge is for mobilisation only, reflecting the size of Aberdeenshire, and there is no charge applied to the children to access the resources as an activity.

Please submit your requests for 2026-27 (school year up to June 2027) and our team will be in touch to discuss. Loan packages are limited and places have booked up quickly during Term 3.

Requests can be made via Live Life Outdoors Cycle Programme- “Balance to Pedal” Bike Loans – Fill out form

Sharing Good Practice

Strichen Playgroup – Learning for Sustainability

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As a team the staff at Strichen Playgroup have been working through the Care Inspectors Quality Improvement Frameworks, and one area that we decided needed more attention was sustainability. 

We decided it would be best to break it down into smaller bits and started with recycling before the end of last term, encouraging parents to send in soft plastics so we could walk to the local Co-op with the children and put the soft plastics in their recycling box. When we got back to Playgroup we looked up what would happen with the soft plastics after it was recycled. Learning that they are used to make carrier bags, bin liners and some different kinds of furniture like the benches at our local woods.

We were invited by the committee at our local woods to help plant some fruit trees.  Which the children were delighted about and we go and see the trees each time we are at the woods to check they are growing.

We then moved on to learn about energy, we looked up information on how energy was provided and found out that windmills are used. We had a walk to look at a near by windmill and saw the big blades moving round, there was lots of discussions about what made the blades move and if they were moving slowly or fast. It was generally thought that the wind made it turn, to test this theory we made kites for the garden when we returned. They were blowing around so we tried making our own windmills. We learned that windmills provide an energy called electricity and we use in our homes to watch tv and turn on lights.

Going forwards we are looking forwards to planting vegetables in our garden.

Sharing Good Practice

Collaborative working in the Turriff Cluster 🥰

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Partnership Working in Turriff Cluster

One part of our improvement plan this year at Turriff Nursery was to improve our partnerships with other ELC settings in the Turriff Cluster, this included other partner providers in the area.

EYLP’s and managers met to discuss what we wanted from this, the answer was the same from all, to get to know each other to form better working relationships and share good working practices.

Recently, Monquhitter Nursery hosted our first cluster meeting; Children’s Rights was on the Agenda. It was great to see how different settings implemented UNCRC and everyone took back ideas to share in their own settings.

Monquhitter Nursery also invited EYP’s from the cluster to look at their nursery, chat and share documentation; this happened over two evenings so everyone had a chance to attend.

We hope to continue in this way and dates have been organised for Turriff Playgroup to facilitate the next meetup.

Quotes from Attendees:

Jo: the cluster meetings are great, I went to my first one last week, it was really good to see how other practices do things.

Ashley: we all enjoyed the visit today and I found the meeting really helpful. Loved seeing the floor-books.

Louise: It has been great to welcome everyone over and have an opportunity to come together and share practice and build relationships with each other. We got lots of positive feedback.

Podcasts

Session 1: The ELC Blog Is Live! Join Us for Our First Podcast Episode

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In this short launch episode, we introduce our brand‑new Aberdeenshire ELC Blog page and chat about what you can expect to find there, from inspiring practice to helpful updates and future episodes – but we won’t spoil it all here; tune in to hear what’s coming, how you can get involved, and why we’re so excited to share this new space with you.

Professional Learning, Sharing Good Practice

New Deer ELC – Bookbug Sessions

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Since completing our Bookbug Training we have had various sessions in nursery, inviting parents and families. We have tried different times in the morning and afternoon. We always have a few parents attend with siblings. Before Christmas we had a Bookbug in the community, held at the Church Centre. A few families from the community came along and enjoyed the session with the nursery.

This term we had a Bedtime Bookbug in the school hall. This was at 6pm and children came in their Pyjamas. We had 27 children attend this session. Children from the nursery, from the school and the community. We made the room cosy and comfy and dark with a few lamps. We got very positive feedback from all the families that attended.

We also had a Grandparents Bookbug session, we ran this alongside Pancake Day. We baked pancakes and invited the Grandparents in for a pancake then they stayed for a Bookbug session. This was well attended and everyone involved had something positive to say about the morning.

Sharing Good Practice

Denman Pre-School – Our Right to be safe!

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We have been supporting our children with learning about keeping safe and their rights. 

As part of our quality improvement at Denman pre-school the staff and I focussed on introducing SIMOA the elephant to the children and their parents. 

In pre-school we use SIMOA as an everyday resource to embed safety and to ensure children feel safe. For example, we ask the children if SIMOA would think they are being safe in everyday activities. 

We shared all this information with our parents and once we felt the children started to have an understanding of why SIMOA is in their setting we sent him home weekly with the children alongside a diary so the children and parents could record how they keep safe out with the pre-school environment. 

As SIMOA the elephant supported the children to understand safety we recently introduced Paddington as our rights respecting bear who now goes home along with his own diary to support children to learn about their rights. 

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