In nursery we spend part of each day exploring our outdoor environment with our peers. We are developing many skills physically as well as socially and emotionally. We are learning to move our bodies in a range of ways, forwards, backwards and sideways to name a few. When we tackle a new challenge we are learning to risk assess and keep ourselves safe. We are learning to show respect for others’ personal space when playing among them, and collaborating with friends when sharing resources and devising tasks, such as creating an obstacle course or working together in the mud kitchen. We are continually learning through play🤗

Our ABC and beyond book for the term is “The Gruffalo” by Julia Donaldson. We are now on week 5 and the children are developing a good understanding of the story. They can identify characters and describe the features of the Gruffalo e.g. his orange eyes and black tongue. We have created our own Gruffalo using brown paint and natural materials which we collected again on our woodland walk. He is now proudly displayed on our ABC and beyond wall. Please feel free to have a look and read all about the sparkle words and topics which the children have learned in relation to the story.

This term we will be looking at all the different woodland animals. Our first two animals that we looked at were the squirrel and the fox. Whilst on our visit to the menzieshill library we discovered some interesting stories that contained foxes and squirrels. After reading our tales and being inspired by all we have learnt the children used a combination of paint and natural materials, which we had collected on our nature walk,  to create wonderful squirrels and foxes. The finished products can be viewed on our topic wall. Well done everyone.

We now have a tinker table in nursery. We are investigating the inside of a computer using real tools. Tinker tables enable children to explore real world objects and develop creative role- play ideas and situations. This week our children have been car mechanics, inventors and wizards.😀

In the 2’s room we use a range of resources to mark make, such as chalk and crayons and more unusual objects such as sticks, mud and fir cones. We can make marks with many everyday items. Mark making is our way of making sense of our world. This may just look like lines or dots, but to us we are creating pirates, mountains and super heroes. 🤗

It has been a busy few weeks in the 2-3 room with new starts and our returners all getting back into the routine of nursery life. During our first 3 weeks we having been reading our book of the term, “The Gruffalo”. Activities involved with this book have included singing the Gruffalo song (a lot!!) and creating our “deep dark wood”. We are also going to explore other woodland creatures over the next few weeks. We have had our first stay and play session which was well attended by parents and grandparents, thank you all. We are exploring different musical instruments this term. We all enjoyed our first, the banjo. Everyone loved playing the banjo and watching videos of the banjo being played very fast. Part of our new nursery routine has been the introduction of proper crockery for snack. The children have adapted very well to this and will all now independently collect there own cup and plate as well as tidying up and washing their dishes once finished. As you can see this is only a snippet of the activities going on with the remainder of term looking to be just as fun packed.

It has been a fantastic first week back at nursery. Our returning children have arrived back taller and full of happy smiles. The children were so excited to see their friends and share new stories. We are happy that some of our new children have also started, and we are proud that our older children have already taken them under their wing. Exploring the different resources and activites there was plenty of excitement and lots of learning to be had. We hope we have a fantastic year full of fun, learning and friendships.

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We have been reading the story “The Fourth Bonniest Baby in Dundee”. The story contains illustrations of landmarks in Dundee which prompted questions of who has seen these landmarks and also who can tell us any other landmarks in Dundee? We discussed and looked at pictures of Dundee and the children showed a great interest in the McMannus museum and the Slessor gardens. As it is our first trip out of nursery we have selected the pre-school children to participate in the trips to town. Our first trip was a great success. The children loved going on the bus and were able to point out all the landmarks from the book. When we arrived in town we visited the museum and the children were amazed and showed interest in all the displays. Highlghts were : Tay whale, the model of Dundee, old fashioned toys and shoes, the animals and the long wooden boat. After the museum we explored the gardens and found a perfect shaded area to have our snack. After snack we played music in the sensory garden then ventured back to the bus stop to catch our bus. The children really enjoyed their trip and are looking forward to many more.

We are so excited in the nursery as we are now into week six of our tadpole to frog journey and today we spotted froglets!!! The word froglet means that they have 4 legs, need more air but still have the tail of a tadpole. As they are getting bigger, and their tank is getting smellier, we decided that we would create two homes. We collected more stones, so they would have areas to hop onto to get some air, and have added some foliage for them to eat. They appear to have settled in quite well to their new home. We will now wait patiently to spot our first frog, we don’t think it will be long!!

We are using the iPad with the children to capture the growth of our tadpoles. When we use the iPad to magnify them we can view them closely and clearly. Metamorphosis is an amazing process. We are now onto week 6 and our tadpoles are just beginning to form their back legs. Also at this stage we discovered they can also become cannibals and eat each other. 😩. The next stage is for the back legs to form and for the tail to disappear. They would then be called froglets. Please have a look at our tadpoles when you come into nursery. They are amazing. 🐸