February 2012 – Hecklegirth Nursery

Mini Pots of Care Day

Along with many schools and nurseries throughout the country, the children celebrated “Mini Pots of Care Day” on Wednesday by decorating pot wrappers for the daffodils they had nurtured over the winter and then taking their pots home to someone they care about.

We were also delighted to be able to present a large cheque to Sheena from Marie Curie Cancer Care, thanks to the generous donations from families and friends. Even after we had written our large presentation cheque, more donations came in and the children have currently raised an amazing £549.35. Thanks to Sheena and Henry the bear for explaining how our money will be used and a huge thank you to all those who contributed to our wonderful total.

As you can see from the photos, we all looked after our daffodils very well. We hope they survived their journey home in the windy weather.

The Design Team Working Together

Last week Rory’s Mum came back to Nursery to see what ideas we had gathered for our garden wall design. We all had a lovely time working together making our design boards of ideas. There were magazines available to select more pictures to stick on our boards and the room was full of talk about all the different things we could see in the pictures. Jana found some ideas that she particularly liked and she took photos of them to help her with her design sketches. We made sure that she took a photo of Ruby Rabbit and Stan the Star as everyone is very keen to have our favourite Nursery friends on our garden wall. We are all looking forward to the next stage of our project when we will see Jana’s design suggestions.

Here you can see us hard at work with Rory’s Mum, cutting and sticking our pictures to the boards.

Dates for your Diary

Our “Dates for your Diary” section now includes our visits out to various places in our community if you need a little reminder. Thank you to those who have already offered to accompany us. We are looking forward to some interesting and fun visits.

A Giraffe, a Dragon and a Pink, Glittery Ball

Over the past week or two the children have been bringing in their ideas for the garden wall design. What a fantastic range of suggestions and ways of sharing their ideas we have had! Some children brought an object that they like, such as a giraffe, a dragon and a pink, glittery ball, others have painted a picture or made a model. Some have cut pictures from magazines and others have made large displays of all the things that they like.

We feel sure that Jana will be delighted with all the imaginative and interesting ideas the children have produced. Tomorrow she will be back in Nursery so we will be able to make a scrapbook of our ideas. Please remember to bring any pictures with you tomorrow if you want them included in our plans.

Top Performance

Former pupil, Lewis, returned to visit us on Friday to talk to the morning children about playing the accordion. Again he entertained us wonderfully with his talents and this time he brought his silver medal from the Burns’ competition to show everyone. As you can see, Lewis encouraged a few children to try out the accordion for size. Maybe one day some of them will learn to play an instrument and be able to come back to Nursery to show us their skills?

Huge thanks to Lewis for showing us your skills and congratulations on winning a silver medal for your singing performance. We all thoroughly enjoyed listening to you.

What’s in the Box?

Sometimes in Nursery we play a game called “Who’s in the Box?” but this week we played a guessing game of “What’s in the Box?” because when the afternoon children came to sit on the carpet, a mystery box was sitting waiting for them.

There were lots of ideas about what could be inside – a slide, a train, lots and lots of stickers, an elephant and even a Loch Ness monster. It was very exciting opening the box especially when we found another box inside the big one. Someone even thought it might be a trick. However, once the shiny red metal started to show and a wheel appeared from all the wrapping paper, we realised that it was a new bike for the garden.

Once Miss Kerr had put it together for us, everyone was really pleased with our mystery parcel. It’s certainly been good to have something new to try out in the garden, thanks to extra money raised from last term’s enterprise project. Little did we anticipate what the demand would be for the children’s calendars when we planned to raise money for our Christmas party but it’s certainly brought a smile to everyone’s faces now that we have been able to buy a new bike too.

Music To Our Ears

We had a lovely end to our week with a visit from Lewis who is a former pupil of Hecklegirth. It’s a few years since he was a pupil in our Nursery but it’s always great to welcome him back.

After our recent work on Scotland, Lewis came to talk to us about the playing the accordion and to give us a tune or two. It certainly seems a tricky instrument to master but Lewis has been practising for a few years and he entertained us well. As the Nursery children have been learning about Robert Burns, Lewis was also kind enough to give us a beautiful rendition of the Burns’ song he will sing in a competition at the week-end.

To close our musical afternoon, the children sang their Scottish songs for Lewis who proclaimed, “There’s no doubt that Hecklegirth’s got talent”.

Lewis is certainly a talented young man and we wish him well for his Burns’ competition. We look forward to hearing how it went when he visits next week to perform to the morning children. Thank you Lewis for being a super visitor – we enjoyed your performance very much.

Garden Designers

As well as learning about Chinese New Year, this week we have begun an exciting project to design a mural for our garden wall as the current one is looking a little faded. As a local artist, Rory’s Mum has very kindly agreed to help the children plan a design reflecting their ideas. After an initial discussion with the children this week, she and Rory’s Dad will work with staff and the children to make a scrapbook of their ideas. She will then create a design for the garden wall based on the children’s ideas.

garden plan tools — Jana uses lots of different tools to paint.

It was so exciting for the children to meet a real artist and talk about where her ideas come from and what tools she uses to paint.

We loved all the pictures that she collects to help her – a row of pandas, a flowery dress, a child playing in the sea, a laughing dog, one huge eye and a road full of bikes. We hope that the children will be able to bring in pictures of things they like, to contribute to our scrapbook. It might be drawings, cuttings from newspapers or magazines, photos, pieces of ribbon or material, even a photos of a pattern on their Mum’s skirt – simply anything that they like.

This is a very exciting project for us and we are delighted that Jana is willing to help us with it. We greatly appreciate the time and effort that she will be putting in to help us with this plan and look forward to lots of ideas from our children and their families. This design will be in the Nursery garden for a long time so it is important that everyone has a say in how it looks.