This week we have continued to welcome our remaining new children and families. It has been lovely to watch some of our older children beginning to make friends with them, showing them around and including them in their play.

Another wee reminder to register for school – last day, Monday 4 February 2019.

Some of our children attend yoga sessions in their own time, and have been keen to share their yoga knowledge with their friends.  The children have been watching and taking part in some Cosmic Kids Yoga sessions online.  The children have been really good at following the directions and copying the moves. They really seem to enjoy this and we will continue to offer opportunities like this.

We are constantly encouraging the children to remember to wash their hands, particularly relevant just now with so many coughs, colds and bugs going around.  This week, we had the use of a Ultra Violet light box.  With staff support, the children have had the opportunity to apply the ‘special’ cream to their hands and place their hands under the light. The cream, although invisible on skin, shows up bright blue when viewed under the UV lamp.  The children have been fascinated by this!  After viewing, the children wash their hands, using soap and water at the sink, then return to the light box to view their hands again – Wow! Their hands are not bright blue any more, they are so clean! That’s what washing your hands does!

The

The weaving in the art area has continued this week, with children’s fine motor skills increasing with practice.  They are showing incredible perseverance with this, really trying hard to get the wool/ribbon/pipe cleaner etc through the fabric holes.

For dates and times of Family Learning Groups, please check our information screen in the foyer and as always, watch our @menzieshill_ns Twitter feed.

Maths and numeracy:

We have been learning a lot about measuring over the last few weeks, exploring different ways to measure different things.  We have learned new vocabulary to help to describe our findings.

Some groups have been marking everyone’s height using tape on the floor to record our learning.

Family Learning Groups:

Our family learning groups are a huge success and many children and families are joining us for lots of fun group learning opportunities.

 

 

It’s been lovely to return after the holidays and seeing all our lovely children and families back with such enthusiasm!  We have hit the ground running this first week of the new term, with trips to the woods, the Giving Garden and our family groups getting up and running again.

Our Autumn trips to Ninewells Woods have been great, with lots of discussion about which animals might live in the woods, what they might eat,  looking at the different sizes and shapes of leaves we can find on the ground, discovering seeds and nuts from various trees, such as pine cones, acorns, sycamore “helicopters” , and berries for the birds and toadstools for the rabbits.

Mrs Regan took a “go-pro” type camera with her group to record a child’s-eye view of the trip.  The video is on the screen in the entrance of the nursery.  The children loved having a go!  We’ll use it again on some other trips.

We have been experimenting with making ‘Lunar Sand’. The children took turns to measure out 6 cups of sand and 3 cups of cornflour into a large tray. We then used our hands to give the mixture a good mix. “It smells disgusting” We then added 1-2 cups of water to the mixture and Kara was “excited”. We mixed the water in with our hands and it felt like “glooberry sand” The children explored the lunar sand by moulding it in their hands and running it through their fingers.

Mrs Tasker took some children to the Giving Garden today, to harvest the pumpkins we have been growing since April. The children were amazed how big there were! Not all of them had ripened to orange and were still green and some were a mixture of both.

We plan to contribute to the Blythswood Shoebox appeal – something we try to do every Christmas.  You can find our more about this charity here.  We have been talking with the children about helping others and what kind of things we might donate in a shoebox.  Please ask your keyworker for more information about how you can help. 🙂

We will be having an Autumn Party on Wednesday 31 October. Children are invited to dress up if they wish, but we would ask, please, no scary masks!  There will be an opportunity for children to try the traditional Scottish activity of “dooking” of apples as well as trying to catch a hanging doughnut, and some pumpkin carving too!  Lots of fun!

 

 

We have been continuing with our Sparkle words of “welcome”, “litter” and “direction” this week.   There has been a lot of investigation of “direction”, particularly using the Code-a-pillar and Beebot in groups.   Most children are demonstrating that they are beginning to understand the meaning of this word.

Family Learning
Jenni McLauchlan continues to lead our work in parental engagement and family learning. Vicky Wiseman and other staff will be supporting her with this.

Bookbug/Rhymetime will run every Tuesday at 10.45am, Thursday at 11am and Friday at 2.30pm. These sessions are open to anyone with children aged 0-5 years so please tell any extended family, friends and neighbours that they are welcome here!

Play Together on Pedals
Building on the success of last session’s Family Fresh Air Club (weekly outdoor parent and child trips by minibus to different Dundee locations) and Play on Pedals (parents supporting children to use balance bikes to learn to cycle) Jenni is currently working in partnership with Leisure and Communities workers to take parents and children to Camperdown park for joint cycling activities.

 

Play Along Maths
We will invite parents/carers of all 3-5s children in to take part in Play Along Maths at some point this year. This involves fun, interactive math-related games. Lorraine Taylor’s group has started this week.

 

We will soon send out a survey to ask parents/carers about other learning opportunities which would interest you. In the meantime, please share any ideas with Jenni.

Support with Toilet training
We will be running a parents’ support group to help with toilet training issues. The initial sessions will be on Tuesday 18th September at 2pm and Wednesday 19th at 10.15am. Weekly support can then be arranged as desired. All welcome.

Macmillan Fundraiser
We will be hosting a Coffee Morning/Afternoon on Friday 28th September at 10.30am and 2.15pm. All parents/carers very welcome. Any donations of cakes/baking or cash will be gratefully received. All proceeds to Macmillan Cancer Care.

Encouraging Independence
We are always striving to support children to be as independent as possible, to help boost their confidence and self-esteem. To help make this as manageable as possible, please can you try to send children to nursery in shoes which they can get their feet into by themselves? We are available to help with laces etc, but Velcro makes life much easier! We are also supporting children to be more responsible for their own coats and other belongings. Please write names on coats/bags so that if they don’t make it back to the correct pegs, we can sort this out easily!

Eat Well Play Well
Jenni and Vicky will be running taster sessions in the foyer on Monday 17th and Monday 24th September. Please feel free to join in. No need to let us know in advance!

Parents as a resource
As part of the “skills for life, learning and work” curriculum, we would like to ask whether any parents/carers/family friends have a particular interest, skill or career that they would be willing to share with the children? For example playing a musical instrument, doing yoga, gardening, woodwork, drawing—the list is absolutely endless—we’d love you to come in and share it with the children! Perhaps you would be willing to come into nursery to talk about the job you do? If you can help, please speak to your child’s keyworker.

Stay and Play
In the past, we have organised “Stay and Play” days where all parents are invited into nursery to join their child in play. We would normally set the dates in advance and many parents found this tricky due to work commitments. This year we have decided to have a more flexible approach. Following the October break, there will be a “Stay and Play” diary in the foyer area. Parents or other family members are welcome to sign up for any day that suits them to come and join in. Just write you and your child’s name in the appropriate day and tell your child’s keyworker. We are hoping that this way will mean that we have more parents in more often and let you experience a typical day for your child.

Allergy Awareness:
Please don’t bring any nuts or nut products into nursery e.g. in packed lunches or bags/coat pockets. Many thanks.

Childsmile:
This is a national initiative to promote dental health in children. We do toothbrushing and Childsmile also visit nursery to provide fluoride varnishing. You will shortly receive consent forms which must be completed if you wish your child’s teeth treated. The next varnishing date is 7th November.

Learning Leaflet
Our Nursery Teacher, Dawn Edward has made up a Learning Leaflet to keep you informed about what your children have been learning and to give ideas of how you can extend this at home and in the community! This will be available in the next few days! As always. we would be interested to hear any feedback you have.

V&A Dundee

We were invited to take a small group of children to the schools event at the V&A Dundee today, so Carol Blair and Vicky Farell took 3 children to view our exciting new museum of design. They all came back full of enthusiasm as you can see from these photos.

Dates for your Diary:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week in Menzieshill Nursery, our Sparkle Words are “welcome“, “litter” and “direction“.  We use Sparkle words to introduce new words to children, to expand their vocabulary.  By highlighting these new words and using them in context, we can help children gain a clearer understanding of their meaning.

We have been learning the Makaton sign for “hello”, which also means “welcome“.  Here is the sign to help you use it at home.

Perhaps you could use this sign on your way into nursery and we will use it back!  This will help us learn what “welcome” means.

The Code-a-pillar is a fantastic toy for learning about direction and cause and effect.  By joining each directional segment onto the next, then pressing the Start button, the Code-a-pillar moves across the floor according to the directions given.  The children have had opportunities to explore this and talk about “forwards”, “backwards”, “turn left” and “turn right”. These are tricky to grasp, but we are persevering and using the word “direction” often, to keep it fresh.  You can use “direction” at home, maybe playing with toy cars, or on the way to the shops, to visit friends and in lots of situations.

We have harvested our potatoes we planted in spring, and cooked them in our snack area! The children described them as “yummy” and “tasty” and we reckon about half of the children were willing to try them!

We’ve been loving moving energetically on our stage this week, taking part in lots of different activities.  We enjoy doing exercises like stretching and bending, listening to the instructions but most of all we love to dance to music we hear at home, on the radio etc.  This was dancing to George Ezra’s “Shotgun”!

Our sensory explorations in the dough area have continued and we have experimented making dough with different ingredients, including Angel Delight! We found it gave a brilliant smell – “it’s like milkshake!” but the colour didn’t seem to be as pink as we would have liked.

The best fun this week in the dough area has been making slime. This has a completely different texture to playdough and has stimulated some brilliant descriptions from the children. “it’s sticky ‘cos it’s slime”, “it feels sticky”, “stretchy”, “squashy”, “I can hear it clicking”. If you’d like to have a go at any of these recipes at home, watch our for our learning leaflet coming out soon.

Other scientific investigations have been going on in the art and craft area.  We have been learning about mixing colours together and finding out what colour they make. We have used paint in recycled soap dispensing bottles with a pump, and this has been a big learning curve for many children.  This has enabled discussion about direction also, using words like “down” and “up” in relation to the pump dispenser.

Using this technique,  we created some large scale artwork which you can see displayed on the walls when you enter the playroom. We’d love to hear your comments on it.

A couple of points of interest from our Families Workers, Jenny and Vicky. You have hopefully received the email regarding our new Parent and Children Together group, focussing on toileting and independence skills.  If this is relevant to your child, please ask any staff member for further details.

Play Together on Pedals continues to be a popular and successful group and we now have adults on bikes too!  See the board in the foyer for photos and further information.

Sadly, we have been finding quite a lot of our resources have been handled roughly recently and we have been finding quite a few of them broken and beyond repair.  We have been talking with the children about respecting property and how we may not be able to replace things if they are broken. It would be helpful if you were able to reinforce this message at home too. Thanks.