HWB – Menzieshill Nursery School

August 31, 2018August 31, 2018

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!

August 23, 2018

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.

August 17, 2018August 17, 2018

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.