2011-2012 – Page 3 – Hecklegirth Nursery

Our New Garden Wall

After lots of hard work by Rory’s Mum and Dad, our garden wall has now completed its transformation from a faded painting to a magical and exciting creation which stemmed from the children’s thoughts and ideas. We are delighted to have an original piece of art in our garden to provoke lots of questions and discussions: the children seem to notice things that we, as adults, might not have seen and it’s fantastic to be able to share it together.

We are extremely grateful to Rory’s parents for all their input, both in working with the children on their design ideas and in the hours that they have spent transforming their ideas into reality. We will post some of the children’s comments on our blog soon but there’s little doubt that they all love it. We would love to hear what you think of our new wall.

Click on the photos to see them more clearly.

new wall whole — What do think of our new wall?

Fun Activity Day

We would like to remind everyone that Tuesday (22.5.12) is our Fun Activity Day which family and friends are invited to attend. In the event of bad weather we hope to hold it on Wednesday.

Please bring children to Nursery at the usual time and we will take them to the school field as quickly as is possible. You will then be able to follow your child’s group round the activities and watch them having fun. We ask that you please ensure that your child is wearing suitable footwear for the field. Fingers crossed for the weather to be on our side and we hope that everyone has a fun time.

Having Fun with Primary One

Last week we visited the big playground to have fun with Primary 1. We found lots of games marked on the ground, saw the timber trail and loved running about the huge space. Everyone seemed to have such great fun that we hope to go another visit soon. Thank you Primary 1 for looking after us so well.

Working Together

It’s been great to see Nursery children bringing in so many Tesco vouchers to add to the school collection and everyone has enjoyed going along to the foyer to pop their vouchers in the box. The vouchers will be sent off at the end of the scheme to be exchanged for a range of equipment. In the past, Nursery has been lucky enough to get resources such as musical instruments and a table for the garden so these vouchers are certainly valuable to us all. Thank you to all our families who have contributed so far.

Is that a monster in our garden?

Our garden wall is changing almost daily at the moment as Rory’s Mum and Dad continue to transform the children’s ideas into an exciting design that produces lots of questions and discussions.

Jana and Paul have enjoyed the “quality control team” who have often taken time out of their play to sit, watch and comment as they work. Judging by the discussions, we think that everyone is delighted with what is emerging before their eyes and, as well as looking fantastic, this artwork is providing the interesting discussion we had hoped for. We feel very lucky to have such talented parents and are looking forward to enjoying the finished work.

Healthy and Happy

As part of our “Healthy and Happy Week” we had a visit from the school nurse who talked to us about various aspects of a healthy lifestyle.

We learned about the importance of washing our hands and had great fun using Rachel’s “magic machine” which showed us where the germs were hiding on our hands. We also worked well together on different activities designed to think about which foods are good for us and which should only be an occasional treat.

All in all, this was a super learning event for all the children so thanks to Rachel for taking the time to spend with Nursery, Primary 1 and Primary 2 – we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and learned lots.

7 000 Visitors

Since our blog started in October 2010 we have seen it grow and become a valuable tool to provide an insight into the life of Hecklegirth Nursery.

In April of last year we added a Clustrmaps counter to our page to measure the number of visitors to our site. We are amazed and delighted to notice that we have now had over 7 000 visitors since April 2011. As you can see from the red dots, if you click on our map, we have had visits from 41 different countries in that time. We are particularly delighted to have had 35 visits from Poland and hope that we are helping some of our children’s families to keep in touch with what happens in our Nursery, despite living a distance away.

We really appreciate the comments that you have made on our posts as this adds to the blog and helps to make it a fun, shared site for us all. Let’s hope that everyone continues to enjoy our blog as much as we do.

Families Learning Together

We are delighted to say that our Family Learning event last week was very well attended. “Healthy Snacks and Happy Faces” seemed to be a great success for everyone who took part and it was lovely to see families able to enjoy some fun learning together, particularly when children were from different classes.

Families from Nursery, Primary 1 and Primary 2/1 all attended our session, enjoying delicious healthy snacks of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries on oatcakes and soft cheese. There was friendly advice available and a selection of helpful leaflets as well as the opportunity to make a happy face using food pictures.

We hope everyone enjoyed this aspect of our “Healthy and Happy Week” and are very grateful to Eileen Johnstone, our Family Learning Co-ordinator, for, yet again, organising an event which made everyone feel welcome.

Click on the photos to make them bigger.

Spring Flowers

The children recently enjoyed using a range of resources to produce a beautiful selection of flowers when learning about Spring. As you can see, each one is individual and unique which makes for a lovely variety in their display.

Can your child find his or her work in these photos?

Thoughts on a Healthy Lifestyle

At the start of our “Healthy and Happy Week” we talked about what we can do to stay healthy. We thought we would share some of the children’s thoughts. More of their ideas can be enjoyed in the “Thinking Books” in the book area.

What makes us healthy?

Neve: sleep helps you grow.

Courtney: brush your teeth before you go to bed.

Evan: vegetables. I like bananas too.

Zak:if you don’t eat healthy food you get fillings.

Finlay: if all your teeth fall out, you only get rubber teeth and you have to put them in a glass of water at night.

Hannah A.: carrots

Rohan: if you play on a trampoline it makes you healthy.

Layton: sweets make you fat and they can make you hyper. I learned that from my Mum. If you go hyper you go out of yourself and be naughty.

Theo: vegetables.

Paige: have breakfast.

Jack V.: eat fruit.

Miley: you can’t have sweets all the time.

Ryan: you need lots of sleep. You get rested through the night.