Transition to Primary One

Transition is well underway this term. We have been busy visiting the Primary One classroom and the playground. We now know where the school toilets and are aware that there are separate boys and girls toilets. As part of transition we have been practising getting changed in to our gym kit.  We have had fun meeting our buddies who will help look after us when we go in to Primary One.

Balanceability

This term Miss McEwan has been taking two small groups of pre-school children for them to join in with the ‘Balanceability’ programme. The children in both the morning and afternoon sessions have been focusing on balancing skills on a balance bike. Everyone is making good progress and will hopefully be able to ride a two-wheeled bike by the end of the term. We have already had one success story; Well done to Murray who can now ride his bike independently!

Planting and Growing

We have been busy helping Ms Williamson tidy the garden and help to plant pretty flowers and vegetables which we will hopefully be able to taste in the new term. We will continue to care for the plants and watch them grow.

Outdoor Construction Area

The children have thoroughly enjoyed playing in our new construction area. They have been using their imagination to plan, build and share their ideas with each other, using our new resources.

Farming

Our main focus this term is farming. We have been learning about dairy cows and different products which are made from milk. We will extend this by tasting different dairy products at snack on our ‘tasting week’ and hopefully we will try and make our own butter. During ‘singing time’ and ‘together time’ we have been focusing on the different Makaton signs of farm animals and milk. We are looking forward to our Nursery trip to Almond Valley where we will see lots of different farm animals.

During literacy week, we have listened to lots of different stories. Thank you very much to Ethan’s mum, Mrs Pirrie, for giving up her time to read to us last week.

The children also enjoyed looking at the books available in the school book fair.

Today, we really enjoyed a visit from the Primary 6 children and Mr Furzer. The boys and girls in Primary 6 read us some stories.

To  show our support to Children In Need, we all wore something yellow or our pyjamas to Nursery on Friday. We enjoyed decorating our own Pudsey Bears at the art and craft area and we also enjoyed colouring and cutting Pudsey at the drawing table.

Some of the boys and girls also helped Miss Wright to decorate a box to collect donations.

As we approached Bonfire Night, we discussed how to keep ourselves safe. We had fun watching sparklers in our outdoor classroom.

Then Ms Russell and Ms Williamson showed us what happened when you add Mentos to cola!!

We walked along the old railway line in Menstrie to see if we could spot any signs of Autumn. We collected lots of different coloured leaves, ‘helicopters’, chestnuts and acorns.

At our Halloween parties, we played lots of games. We played musical statues, musical bumps, find the sweetie and more. We also had to find some creepy crawlies in the gloop! We enjoyed visiting the boys and girls in the school before a delicious snack with our friends.

During term one, we explored “The Gruffalo” by Julia Donaldson. The children developed their interests through art and craft, contributing to a Gruffalo display and going on a Gruffalo hunt through the woods.  The children had the opportunity to explore different patterns using colours and shapes when recreating the snake from the story at the art and craft area.

The children enjoyed playing outdoors with the Gruffalo costume, using the willow den as the woods.

Our story corner was transformed into the Gruffalo woods where the children were able to re-tell the story using costumes and puppets.

One of our parents very kindly bought us the Gruffalo characters.

One of our parents was kind enough to bring in her own ‘big brown mouse’ for the children to see. She told them how to care for the ‘mouse.’ We were also lucky enough to have a visit from a corn snake.

After our visits from the animals, we discussed the importance of washing our hands. We carried out our first scientific experiment to observe the changes unwashed hands can have on bread . One piece was put in a sealed bag using gloves, one piece was put in a sealed bag using clean, washed hands and the last piece was put in a bag after all of the children and staff had touched it.

After two weeks, the bread everyone had touched was very mouldy!!

In term one, we had lots of fun with Susie Adam, our dance teacher, who is with us on Wednesday mornings and Thursday afternoons. Susie teaches us some wonderful dance and exercise routines with an educational twist. She helps us to develop our gross motor skills, spacial awareness, turn taking, listening skills and much more.

At the end of term one, we found out what farmers do during harvest time. The children helped to collect apples, plums and vegetables from our Nursery garden. We all used our senses to explore these foods: we used our eyes to find out what they looked like, our fingers to find out what they felt like, our noses to find out what they smelled like and our tongues to find out what they tasted like!

Welcome to the Menstrie Nursery Class blog! Here you will find some information on what we have been learning. Please feel free to leave us a comment.