The boys and girls have been celebrating Burns Day in nursery.

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The boys and girls have had lots of fun dressing up as wild animals in the nursery in the role play area, playing the game two by two and playing with the jungle animals.

The blue group were busy in art last week using animal print tissue paper to make collage and learning how to tear paper. They used paper plates to make animal faces and explored the different patterns, strips, spots etc.

The Orange group continued the theme of animals and patterns. We made lots of different wild animals at art to use for a wall display. We drew the outline and used either paint or animal pattern tissue paper to finish our choice of animal.

Next with help from Mrs Head we covered big pieces of paper with green and brown paint to make grass, leaves and trees.

We put everything together to make a wall display.

We also made triangle stripy tigers. We drew a triangle shape on orange paper, used an orange colour wash over the paper and add eyes, nose, mouth and strips using either pencils, crayons or pastels.

The Orange Group has also been exploring patterns during group time. We looked and adult animal patterns and tried to match them with their babies. The boys and girls were very good at describing each animal.

We  had to sort out Ms Connor washing too as she washed all her socks and needed us to help match the patterns together to make a pair.

The nursery boys and girls had lots of fun today at their christmas parties. The boys and girls looked very smart in their party clothes.

 We played games; Musical Stautes, Musical Bumps, Hokey Kokey, Music Man, Pass the Parcel.

Next we had a very special christmas snack. We had a little basket with our names on it with some delicious party food in it. It was yum!!

After we finished our food we listen to two christmas stories.

Next we placed more party games;

When santa got stuck up the chimney, Santa in his sleigh, There was a man in …, Here we go  round the christmas tree.

We finished off our party with a visit from a very special person………… SANTA!!!!!!!

We have been finding out about the Post Office. During our Literacy studies we read the story The Jolly Christmas Postman. It’s Christmas Eve and the Jolly Postman is delivering greetings to various fairy-tale characters – there’s a card for Baby Bear, a game appropriately called ‘Beware’ for Red Riding Hood from Mr Wolf, a get-well jigsaw for hospitalised Humpty Dumpty and three more surprise envelopes. The children could take each colourful gift out of its envelope and discuss what  the well-known fairy-tale characters were sending to one another for Christmas!

We played Post office games; I sent a letter to my love.., and pass the parcel.

After reading the story and discussing the different fairy-tale and nursery rhyme characters, the  boys and girls made a card to post in our post box. They had to fold the paper, draw a picture, write their name and add kisses.

We made post office mind maps;

We dressed up and role played in the Post office imaginative area. We used play coins, tills and phone. We made cards and parcels and wrote letters to Santa. We posted them in our post box. We delivered the post too. Kendal made a sign to show only 4 children could play in the Post Office at any time.

 Some of the boys and girls also used the post bags to put the children’s registration ticket into and post the on the door after snack.

We tried the “At the Post Office game on the computer. We are developing our listening skills and ICT skills. We had to listen to the instruction and click on the item using the mouse.

We made a Christmas card in nursery to post to our families. On Monday and Tuesday we walked to our local Post Office to buy a stamp and post our cards in the poat box.

We have been learning all about Christmas, listening to the nativity story and helping re-tell it.

We talked about why we give presents at Christmas. The children helped make a wall display all about the birth of Jesus.

The nursery boys and girls have been very busy these last few weeks, learning the songs for their nativity. They had to do lots of rehearsals to learn what to do. The children were fantastic during both preformances.

The boys and girls were also busy making lots of art and craft to decorate the nursery and to take home.

They made a tree decoration from clay. They had to choose which shape they would their decoration to be, roll and flatten the clay, then press their chosen shape into the clay. The clay decoration had to be left to dry for a few days, then painted and sprinkled with glitter.

Everyone made Christmas cards to give to their families.

They also made crackers and calenders

We sang songs, read differnt stories, played games and talked about santa and advent calendars and presents. We made a santas grotto in the home corner, some of the children dressed up as santa and others to turns visting the grotto to tell santa what they would like for christmas.

We also wrote/drew our letters to santa.

We also made cards to post home and bought stamps on our visit to the local post office.

On Thursday 28 November at 11am some of the nursery boys and girls watched  Authors Live: The Making of Katie Morag with Mairi Hedderwick. The event took place during Book week Scotland; a national celebration of reading and writing. This series of Authors Live is linked to the 2014 Commonwealth Games and will be broadcast from the BBC’s Commonwealth Class website.

We have had a very busy spooky day on Thursday for Halloween!  We had lots of Halloween activities on offer.

DRESSING UP:

For snack we had lots to choose from:

witches fingers, spooky monsters, scary ghost, halloween biscuits etc.

The children could also dook for apples

Try and eat a donut hanging from string

Mix the worms and snakes in the swamp

Look at all the different bats, spiders etc.

We listened to a Meg and Mog story, acted out the story, mixed Megs spell and created our own witches spell.

At the art table we made spiders and pumpkins.

Last week the Orange Group decided they would like to change the home corner into the 3 little pigs houses. Before we started we made a mind map to decided what resources we would keep that were in the home corner already and which resouces we needed to find/change. The boys and girls came up with lots of ideas. We decided to keep the home corner and use it as mummy and daddy pig’s house. The we built a house using waffle bricks for one of the pigs.

The nursery boys and girls had lots of fun role playing in the area. We had costume to dress up in – the 3 little pigs and the big bad wolf.  We put out other bricks to build with along with sticks (garden canes) and straw (shredded paper) for the other pig’s houses.

The boys and girls have been very busy over the past few weeks using woodwork tools, learning how to use hammers and nails. We started with the tap-a-shape, making pictures with coloured wooden shapes, small pins and hammers.

Next we moved on to using the BIG hammers and nails . We had to hammer the nails into a slice of a tree trunk. This was hard work for small hands as the hammers were heavy and the nails were proper sized.

We then moved on to making our own models with pieces of wood, plastic lids, foam shapes and buttons.  We had to choose our shapes and nail them on. Once our model was completed we could paint it if we wanted too.

By taking part in these activities we are developing our fine motor skills .We are using hand-eye coordination and exploring new materials and tools. We are also learning about safety, cooperation and taking turns.