Our learning this week – 31 August 2018

This week, in nursery, we continue to welcome our new children and families, helping children to settle in, begin to make new friends and become familiar with their new environment.
Outdoor play has been very popular, due in part to the super weather, but mostly due to our amazing outdoor space.

We are delighted to have been awarded joint 2nd place – a silver certificate – in the Dundee City Council School and Nursery Garden Competition. This is held annually, to celebrate the amazing spaces children have to explore and play in around the city.   We are very proud, and must mention Fiona Tasker and Siân Roberts particularly, in all their efforts to create such an awesome outdoor space for our children, especially in only one year of being open.

There have been a lot of minibeasts in our garden lately, such as ladybirds, spiders, ‘forky-tailies’ and beetles. The children have been brilliant at spotting them! We have enjoyed using our magnifying bug boxes to investigate all the differences we can find between them.

 

We have gathered some flowers and herbs to add to our playdough this week, resulting in some interesting smells and reactions!  These include lavender, parsley, chives, helichrysum (curry plant) and some oregano from our spice rack.  The favourite smell was by far, the lavender and the smell least liked (“eeew, that’s DISGUSTING!”) was the helichrysum! Many children described the oregano as “smells like pizza”!

Junk modelling has been really busy this week, and we have a vast amount of models created, from very small to very tall. Children have been very focused as they build, some with fixed plans about exactly where each piece should go.  This has promoted some fantastic problem solving opportunities, such as, how to get the cereal box to stay joined onto the smaller tile box.

The sand tray has an extension at the moment, with a shallow tray alongside, with a thin covering of sand.  The children have been using this for mark making and drawing using rubber ended paint sticks. This helps their fine motor skills and hand/eye coordination, as well as pre-writing skills.  You can try this at home on a smaller scale, on a tray, and with flour, or salt.

 

We’ve visited the Giving Garden again this week, harvesting more vegetables for the Dundee Food Bank. The children really enjoy their time both here and at the Community Garden in Orleans Place.

If you visit the Dundee Flower and Food Festival this weekend, maybe take a photo and share with us on Twitter?

Again, this is just a flavour of some of our activities this week.  We welcome comments here, in nursery, or on our Twitter feed at @menzieshill_ns   If you request to follow us, please let us know in nursery so we can authorise your request.  Have a nice weekend everyone!

 

 

 

This week, we have been welcoming new children and families to our nursery, enjoying getting to know everyone.  A big focus has been on learning and consolidating rules and routines, to make things easier.  In the art area, children are learning about looking in the black folder with their keyworker’s picture on it, to find their name for attaching to their creation. This is sometimes quite a challenge however we are supporting them to persevere.

Perseverance seems to be a theme, as we continue to encourage children’s independence, particularly in self-help skills. Taking off and putting back on their own shoes and wellies can be a real struggle and this is something you can be supporting at home too.  If you ensure all clothes and shoes are named, this really helps during us find ‘lost’ items!

In the snack area, we are teaching the new children our snack routine [ wash hands, take plate/bowl, select food, find place and table and eat snack, pour drink, wash dishes, place in dishwasher – it IS a lot to learn!] and our returning children are helping them with that.  They are helping to prepare the food too, by cutting and chopping fruit and veg. We cooked up some of the potatoes we had grown at the community garden and enjoyed these with some garden peas from our own nursery garden.

   

In the creative area, children have had opportunities to explore design with paper strips, such as gluing, folding, cutting and twisting. Some have represented ideas, like these spiders’ webs while others have explored different ways to use the strips.

 

Our new station for larger Loose Parts is now in use in the main 3 – 5 playroom and the children have been investigating the contents. Loose Parts play is a variety of materials  which can be moved, designed, re-designed, carried, taken apart and put back in endless ways.  We are always looking out for more beautiful, alluring, found objects to use in this way, so if you have anything like this, perhaps, shells, balls, corks, glass beads, wooden rings, spoons, buttons, bangles, pebbles, cones, etc we would gladly accept these. If unsure, please ask any staff.

The Maggie’s Penguin Parade in Dundee this summer has captured everyone’s interest. We’ve been talking about all the penguins we have visited with our families and friends, and remembering the penguin we designed last term, which is currently in Menzieshill library.  We have created our own Penguin Bingo game, featuring some of our favourite penguins. This is a real hit with the children, prompting lots of discussion about the penguin trail, the sticker book and the map.

We’ve had a very busy week and this is just a snippet of some of our activities. We welcome comments here, in nursery, or on our Twitter feed at @menzieshill_ns  If you request to follow us, please tell us in nursery so we can authorise your request.

 

 

 

 

Welcome to session 2018 – 2019

Welcome to our Menzieshill Nursery School blog. We will be updating this blog regularly with information about the week, what we’ve been learning about and what to look out for during the school term.

As the first week of our new session nears it’s end, it’s so lovely to see our returning children; our ‘pre-schoolers’, settling in so well, renewing friendships and making new ones.   We are spending time with them, reminding them of routines in the nursery, such as what ‘good listening’ is (sitting still, looking at the person who is talking, listening to ALL of the words, and staying quiet).

It is very useful to us in the nursery, if you bring a jacket suitable for wet weather, as the children have the choice to play outside in all weathers, even rain! Wellies too are handy, and as with all items of clothing, please please, put your child’s name on ALL items.

Our new children and families are joining us steadily and we are enjoying meeting them and getting to know them all.

This week, we have visited the Community Garden, located at Orleans Place to harvest the peas we grew last term.  There are lots of peas and our Eco Team made a good job of spotting the big pods and pulling them off the plants.

  • We have also visited the Giving Garden, at Menzieshill Parish Church, where we harvested some potatoes, and found lots of snails!

 

Click on our Sway below to see some photos.

Our First Week 2018 – 2019

 

You can request to follow us on Twitter for more updates – please let Judi Regan, Carol or Wendy or  know you’ve done this, so we can authorise your request.

 

 

 

Revealing “Empress Glitter” – the MNS penguin!

Many of you have enjoyed some sneak peeks of our Maggie’s Penguin, our contribution to the Maggies Penguin Parade, taking place this summer across Dundee.

We have voted for the name we think our penguin should be and “Empress Giltter” was the winning vote. We think this is a perfect name a very glittery Emperor penguin should have.

Below are some photos of our penguin in the different stages of design, and the finished effect.   There is a drawing by everyone on the jumper of Empress Glitter and we are hoping, as families take part in the penguin parade, they can spot their child’s ‘selfie’.

 

 

Caterpillars emerging at MNS!

We are very excited to be observing our caterpillars emerging from their cocoons now.  They have been a bit sneaky and coming out when we have not been looking, however we have captured a little timelapse video of the metamorphosis and you can hopefully view it here!

We are hoping to release them into our garden shortly, so they can enjoy the fresh air, just like we do.

#NDLW18 – National Digital Learning Week 2018

We were proud and excited to participate in National Digital Learning Week, 14th to 18th May 2018.  We are very motivated by digital technologies, as you know, so this was a fabulous opportunity to showcase our skills and also to try out some new things.

We tried out a new (to us) iPad app called Chatterpix. You take a photo, draw a line where you would like the ‘mouth’ to be and record sound or voice. It’s very easy to use and both children and staff loved it! Watch some of our videos!

We even had fun giving a voice to our drawings!

 

Unplugging our computational thinking!

We have been learning to program our Code-a-pillar and using positional language to describe how and where we want him to move to.  Mrs Regan made some pictures of the sections of the Code-a-pillar and we each chose which instruction we wanted to be. Once we had “connected” to each other, just like the Code-a-pillar, we took turns to call out our direction to the “head” who was the leader.  We had lots of turns at being the leader. Sometimes, our directions lead us into the fence, just like when the Code-a-pillar inside hits a table of chair!

TCH 0.15: I can develop a sequence of instructions and run them, using programming devices or equivalent. 

Internet Safety – Fri 18 May

Muddled by Minecraft or rattled by Roblox? NSPCC and O2 are running an hour-long interactive workshop in our nursery with tips, tools and advice on how to keep your child safe online. Talking about online safety with your child doesn’t need to be difficult –build your confidence to have those important conversations, get to know your child’s online world and learn where to go for help and advice.

The workshop will take place at Menzieshill Nursery School on Friday 18 May 2018 at 2pm.   Don’t miss out on this great opportunity! Make sure you RSVP by responding to Carol, Judi or Wendy at nursery or returning the slip emailed/provided.

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