2011-2012 – Page 4 – Hecklegirth Nursery

Keep Fit the Fun Way

Our “Healthy and Happy Week” started on Monday morning with the children trying out cheerleading with Tina, our Active Schools Co-ordinator. As you can see from the children’s faces, they needed to concentrate hard and it was tricky knowing which pom-pom to wave at the right time but the main thing was that everyone experienced a different and fun way to enjoy exercise. Music while you work certainly seems to appeal to us all.

The afternoon children learned some basic rugby skills with Colin, the rugby coach. As well as putting the children through some introductory training, he talked to them about how important good diet is, alongside exercise, to keep fit. Unfortunately, the children seem to have been running so quickly that our camera didn’t manage to capture them clearly but they certainly enjoyed Colin’s activities.

Thanks go to Tina and Colin for a super start to our “Healthy and Happy Week”.

Click on the photos for a closer look.

Healthy Snacks and Happy Faces

We would like to remind you that tomorrow (26.4.12) is our “Healthy Snacks and Happy Faces” event organised by Eileen Johnstone, Family Learning Co-ordinator. Those who have expressed an interest will be able to join their child to try some delicious snacks, pick up some recipe/information leaflets and help him/her to make a happy face picture.

Some P1 and P2 children and their parents will be joining us so we are looking forward to a fun time as part of our Early Years “Healthy and Happy Week”.

Learning is Fun

When we returned from our Easter holidays the children were very excited to find that our whiteboard had been adjusted so that it could be lowered to the correct height for them. This means that they can now learn how to use the “magic pen” and everyone is very keen to try it out.

This week we have started doing our daily calendar on the board and the children are learning to use the pen to drag words and pictures to the appropriate place on the calendar.

As you can see from the photos, we have also been using the whiteboard for some of our “All Together Time” activities. This week we were learning about Spring and it added greatly to the children’s interest and involvement in the activity when they were able to see large pictures to add to our discussion and they were able to drag pictures to different areas of the board to classify whether images were of Springtime or Winter. Children and adults alike are delighted with our new resource and we look forward to all the fun learning opportunities it will provide for us in the future.

The Garden Wall is Changing

It was great to be back in Nursery today and everyone seemed happy to see their friends. We had a big surprise when we went in to the garden and saw that Rory’s Mum and Dad had been very busy in the holidays with our wall design.

There were some interesting discussions about what we could see. Was it a beach and the sea? Was that the Scotland flag, a lighthouse or a windmill? Did we have a green moon and was that a jigsaw being drawn on the sand? As you can see, it certainly produced great excitement. We will watch and wait to see what happens next!

New Term

Our new term starts on Monday 16^th April when we look forward to seeing all our children and their families again as well as the new children who will be joining us in the afternoon sessions.

We would like to remind you that the key workers will now move to a new group. The children will remain in the same groups but the staff will change to help us get to know all the children and their families well.

To help you prepare your child for this change, these are the key workers for our fourth term. This change rarely causes the children a problem but we thought that it might be useful to know before Monday.

Red Group: Mrs. Kirkpatrick

Blue Group: Miss Kerr

Yellow Group: Mrs. Carruthers (a.m.) Ms. Paterson (p.m.)

Green Group: Mrs. Gray (a.m.) Mrs. Carruthers (p.m.)

We look forward to seeing everyone on Monday.

Happy Easter

What a fantastic display of decorated eggs we had in Nursery last week thanks to all your efforts at home. We were delighted that nearly every child had spent time with their families decorating eggs and we all enjoyed talking about the different ideas on display. Mrs. Kelly was so impressed that she brought Primary 4/3 to Nursery to see our display. We gave them a few ideas for decorating their own eggs and they were certainly full of compliments for our efforts.

Click on the photos below to see some of the children’s super eggs. We hope that you are all enjoying your holidays and wish everyone a Happy Easter.

Ducklings

As promised, Murray’s Mum had more exciting visitors for us after the previous week’s surprise appearance of their lamb. This time it was six gorgeous ducklings that came to say hello one afternoon. They were only a week old but already growing quickly. We had some interesting suggestions of what colour they might be before we saw them but we soon found out that there was a black one and five which looked “browny green” as the children described them. We had a look at the duckling’s webbed feet and learned that they don’t have any teeth but no-one risked their fingers in their beaks, just in case.

Thank you to Murray and his Mum for letting us have a look at their little ducklings. As you can see from the photos, we all thought that they were super visitors.

Football Fun

This week has seen the last visit of Ross, our football coach, who has brought lots of fun to Nursery and has helped the children to develop their football skills.

As it was a beautiful day, we were able to play on the school field for the first time which was exciting in itself. However, when Ross produced football nets and coloured bibs to put the children in teams, everyone was very keen to get the ball in the net. Great fun was had by all, using the skills they had learned, and some showed that they really knew how to celebrate when they scored a goal. Watch out for the stars of the future!

Ross says, “Keep the ball close to your feet”.

When I Grow Up

Recently we enjoyed a book called “When I Grow Up” and we talked about what jobs we might like to do when we are grown up. To help practise all important talking skills some children recorded their ideas using the microphone. We hope that you enjoy the small selection below. To see more of the children’s ideas, look in our “Thinking Books” in the book area of Nursery.

Turn up the volume and click on the + sign to hear their ideas.

VOICE043 VOICE041 VOICE040 VOICE038

VOICE028 VOICE025 OICE024

Spring is Here

What a lovely surprise the afternoon children had last week when Murray brought his lamb in to visit us. Everyone was very excited to meet a lamb close up and enjoyed learning how to feed it from a bottle. Thank you very much to Murray and his family. We are looking forward to meeting the next surprise visitors!

Click on the photos to make them bigger.