What a busy few weeks it has been. The children are showing interests in so many things. Firstly we looked at farms and animals, concentrating on the names of baby animals. We played a matching mum to baby game and used a lovely selection of books in the story corner to reinforce the language.  We had some great results at the play dough, cutting animal shapes and in the sand they have enjoyed playing with animals and tractors and making tyre tracks. The children have shown a huge interest in flowers and planting. We have had some super daffodil paintings from still life. All groups have been planting indoors and outdoors. We are now growing carrots, peas, beans, potatoes, onions, cress and sunflowers. We are now clearing our large tubs and topping up with compost. We are going to plant them up on our Rights and Respect Day at the end of May.

We tried an experiment with water and food colouring using carnations and celery. There were some interesting results. The red groups flowers turned red and the celery leaves turned brown. This caused some great conversations about colour mixing – red and green making brown. This interest has continued at the painting and gloop where the children are now mixing their own colours. We have had flowerpots and garden tools in the sand and watering cans and plant pots with holes in the water tray. They are also talking about blossom and bluebells. We now  have a very popular garden centre as our role play area. The children are using real coins, arranging and wrapping flowers, counting out money and plant pots etc, using technology – tills, strimmer, hedge trimmer, and lawn mower all battery operated! They are writing shopping lists and receipts, and learning about the roles people play. Will try and upload some photos. They have a super activity at the maths area matching two flowers the same and also putting them into order of size smallest to largest or largest to smallest.  There has also been a huge interest in frogs and tadpoles. We have enjoyed the tadpole eco-sack at group time and loved looking at real tadpoles that Rory brought in. They came from a friend’s pond and have now been returned. The children were mesmerised by them so thank you Rory. They have a good grasp now of the lifecycle of a frog and this is being reinforced at our jigsaw table with our life cycle and pond puzzles.

The children’s interest we are about to follow is Mini-beasts especially now we are out in the garden most days. There has already been a lot of worm hunting and some interest in dressing up in the ladybird and bee costumes. We will soon be looking at the butterfly lifecycle, as we will be ordering our caterpillars. We will watch them grow and then release them into our garden.

 As you can see there is so much happening along with transition visits to school. Nursery is so much fun and all children are becoming successful learners, effective contributors, responsible citizens and confident individuals.

Thank you to all those who have already supported Comic Relief by buying a red nose. How fab that this year they were dinosaurs following on from our fantastic topic 😉 The children are getting very excited at being dressed as a superhero on Friday!!! Some have already been practising. We are looking forward to seeing some interesting outfits (outnumbered by Spiderman!)

Sorry it’s been so long!!! It’s been a very busy couple of months and after our winter topic was put on hold because of the lack of winter weather! the childrens interest in dinosaurs took off like never before. It was amazing. The children were certainly enthusiastic about learning. We used a variety of storybooks (especially Harry & The Dinosaurs) and information books that the children spent a long time looking at and they were accessible all around the Nursery.

We had an excavation of dinosaur bones in sand stone and with lots of hard work, concentration and perseverance they managed to then assemble it into Triceratops.

We had an archaeological dig at the sand tray with hard hats, trowels, brushes, clipboard and a dinosaur dig information sheet to fill in for early literacy. We also had bones, sieves, dinosaurs and eggs. They certainly developed their language – meat eater, plant eater, herbivore, carnivore, palaeontologist, excavation, spiky, bony plates, extinct, etc. We managed to buy a fantastic excavation product from TTS.

At the water tray we had a dinosaur swamp for a sensory activity. This was hugely popular. If you can get hold of Gelli Baff in green that’s even better 😉

At the craft the children made gorgeous woolly mammoths from plastic milk cartons (Elmer style) with white pipe cleaners threaded through for tusks.

We had a collection of dinosaurs for grouping in the small imaginative area and at the maths table they were sorting by size and matching and also measured the length of bones and put them into order of size. They also played Dotty Dinosaurs (an Orchard Toy product) which concentrates on colour and shape recognition.

The children have also enjoyed a science experiment  to free dinosaurs that were stuck in a block of ice and worked out how they could get the ice to melt. We had  lots of interesting suggestions of how we could do this!

At the dough table they were having fun making play dough leaves for the dinosaur to eat, dinosaur eggs to go in the nest, and dinosaur bones and horns.

The children  produced some beautiful drawings and paintings of dinosaurs and they were on display throughout the Nursery. They also made dinosaur skeletons with art straws.

The children enjoyed making their own fossils by imprinting into dough and also made giant dinosaur footprints. A few families went to see the T-Rex and a Stegosaurus skeletons in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and it was  free to get in. They all had a fabulous time and Lily emailed photos to us so that we could print them off for the displays.

We used a trundle wheel to measure the size of a diplodocus outside by counting the clicks. Mrs Galloway chalked it out and the staff and children then went out to stand inside from one end to the other to see how many it would take to fill it. We also had a strip of masking tape on the corridor floor which was the width of a pteranodons wing. Boy I am glad they are extinct.

The children moved to music by stomping, moving fast, slow,etc. and they even had a volcano! for snack. The topic was endless and we sure had plenty of effective contributors and successful learners.

The children are very excited about Christmas Time. They are learning lots of new vocabulary about the Nativity and also learning about a festival celebrated in Sweden – Sankta Lucia. It falls on the 13^th December and we will be celebrating with Honor in our afternoon session on this date. We will be having a procession and special food, and we will be developing respect for others and their beliefs, festivals and customs.

The children have been enjoying the sparkly play dough with numbered Christmas play dough mats. They have to add 3 buttons to the snowmen, 2 antlers to each reindeer, 1 bobble to Santa’s hat etc. They are enjoying manipulating the dough to make these, and they are also using their senses to smell the dough now ginger and cinnamon spices have been added.

At the sand and water area the children are matching baubles by size, colour and pattern and then hanging them onto a small wooden tree. There have been several art and craft activities on offer. The children have made Christmas Crackers – estimating and cutting paper to size. They enjoyed the cellophane paper as the bright colours were transparent and they discovered what happened when they looked through it. We have Christmas puzzles and games, which are very popular. On the Maths table the children are matching patterned presents to matching tags and also talking about the 3D gift shapes. The children will soon be putting into the correct order, smallest to largest, groups of Christmas objects. They are also weighing baubles on scales to see if they can get them to balance.

On the computer and whiteboard they are enjoying Christmas games, whilst learning to take turns and share. “Cbeebies” decorate the Christmas tree with the Tweenies, has been particularly popular.

The singing practise for the concert is well underway with some fantastic singing being heard right through the Nursery – some louder than others and some shouting rather than singing all adds to the fantastic fun we are all having. They will shortly experience the energy and excitement of performing for an audience.

At circle time this week we will be consulting with the children and find out what they already know about Christmas and what they would like to find out over the next couple of weeks. The comments will be on display in the entrance so please take time to look at them.

The children have been very busy since our October week holiday.They enjoyed making their own instruments out of plastic cups,pasta,rice and even made drums out of chocolate tins,with Miss Waldron,our ECO rep.We can recycle ANYTHING!

Halloween was “spooktacular” ,we made witches potions and our creative children choose what went into them.They enjoyed hammering golf tees into pumpkins which was very messy, but great fun!Mrs Galloway made a pumpkin lantern with the children and we had two parties where the children and ladies dressed up as a variety of Halloween characters.They enjoyed dooking for apples,hooking pumpkins and even stirred the witches cauldron – they were braver than some of the ladies!

We introduced the children to our “Dark Den” which has been well used as a witches cave and more recently as a rocket and planet as we explore Outer Space.We used some of our donated Tesco vouchers to acquire this and it has been a welcome addition to our Role Play area.

Some children have expressed an interest in shape so we have been exploring 3D shapes by building cylinder rockets and matching real life objects such as cans of food so hopefully the children will be talking to you about this!Miss Waldron even made a pyramid bonfire at snack using Angel Delight and mandarin oranges.Delicious!

The children have learnt about fireworks, making colourful glittery pictures with Mrs Walker and also about  fire safety. Theyhave enjoyed role play at our fire station and squirting water in the water tray putting fires out.The childrens interest in shape has lead from rockets onto flying saucers and space. We are amazed at how much the children have learnt already about space and planets. Mrs Galloway ,our intrepid astronaut,conducted an experiment using cola and mints,making her very own cola rockets! We launched them in the playground and they reached quite a height!The children loved it! Defiinitely an outdoor activity if you want to try it! The children have also enjoyed acting out the “Whatever Next” story using a box and everyday objects!Rockets can be made of anything!

This week we have been busy preparing items for Enterprise at the forthcoming Xmas Fayre,there will be gifts for sale for all of the family,even your pets.Mrs Lindsay’s biscuits are delicious! The proceeds will go towards the Sensory Garden project.

Watch out for our next blog

Thanks

Mrs Walker and all the ladies

Tomorrow (Friday 12th) we will be supporting Jeans for Genes day. Please remember to come to Nursery dressed in denim and help support children and families affected with genetic disorders. Thank you

Well here goes – our first blog thanks to Mr McLaren for teaching us how to do it :). We have had a fantastic few weeks following the childrens interests in Pirates and enjoyed the visit from Mrs Elins Primary 5 class. It was lovely to see how the children who used to be in our Nursery have blossomed and they sure have become confident individuals.

We are now enjoying new interests from the children about Autumn, and they have been busy bringing lots of autumnal items in for us to look at with our magnifying glasses. They are interested in the changes that autumn brings.

We have 2 students in the Nursery at the moment and with their help a group of children were able to walk to the woods in their local environment, with baskets, and collect some interesting items (conkers, cones, acorns, leaves etc). They were exploring with their senses and appreciating the wonders of nature.  We are now using some of these items in the maths area to count and sort and match and weigh to help the children to understand about heavy and light.

Mrs Galloway made cards for the literacy area and the children are encouraged to find the prickliest, smoothest, longest, shortest etc autumn items. This is a very popular activity and is now being used outdoors too. The children are really good at understanding the language and finding the correct items.

At circle time we consulted with all children and found out what they knew already about Autumn and what they would like to find out. They know some very interesting things.

On the whiteboard the children have been accessing the Cbeebies website and have enjoyed taking turns at the Giggleswick Park game. This involves squirrels and acorns and there has been a lot of giggling going on especially when the acorn lands on the mans head!!

Also outdoors the children have a lotto style card with autumn colours and the children are searching for leaves of the same colour to stick in the relevant squares. The children are learning about shades of colours light and dark.

Our water tray is currently filled with dried rice for sensory play – the rice has been coloured into autumn colours 🙂 and the children are really enjoying the experience. The children have requested rice for snack and therefore it is on the menu for this week, but today right now (as I can smell it ‘mmmm’) they are having lentil soup to keep them cosy on this really cold day 😉

At the dough table we have textured dough (lentils) and leaf cutters and imprints and the children have had plenty of opportunities to be creative at the art and craft area with an autumn theme.

The children are also enjoying autumn and woodland animal stories and puzzles. They are all busy, relaxed and having lots of fun whilst learning of course!

We hope you enjoyed reading our very first blog ;)………….more coming soon……and maybe even some photos the next time!!

Tomorrow is Pirate Day in our Nursery.  Mrs Elins who teaches primary 5 has been round to see us because her class are wokring on Pirates as well, and given the nursery staff Pirate names. The children from Primary 5 will hopefully be visiting us too.

Here is what we know about pirates already.