As we come to the end of our parent consultations, we would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to meet with key workers over the past week. We find it very helpful to discuss your child’s development and hope that this has been valuable to you as parents. However, please remember that any concerns can also be discussed at the beginning or end of a Nursery session as we continue to try our best to ensure that we work together in the best interests of the children.
Category: 2011-2012
Crowns Fit for Kings… and Queens
As we continue to enjoy our learning based on castles and royalty, we would like to say a huge thank you to all those families who have helped their children produce wonderful crowns at home. As you can see from the selection below, the variety of styles and materials used is wide but the end result is the same – happy, motivated children who are proud to show everyone their fantastic crowns.
As well as their creativity, the children have developed their talking and listening skills as they told the other children about the process. While adding their faces to the crowns in Nursery, they have talked about what they would like to do if they were a king or queen. We hope that our families have enjoyed this joint school/home activity as much as we have.
If you click on each photo you can read what the children said.
Hallowe’en Fun with P1 and P2/1
We all had great fun at our Hallowe’en parties this week. The morning children enjoyed their party with Miss Cameron and P2/1 while Mrs. Lindsay and P1 joined the afternoon children. We dooked for apples, caught marshmallows with our teeth, played lots of fun games and enjoyed party food together. Thanks to everyone for sending the children in their fantastic outfits which helped them to feel part of the fun.
The Cannon is Built
After some hard work and a lot of tricky thinking, the cannon is ready for our castle. The photos below tell the story of what we did to get from the children’s idea to the final stage of their plan. It’s been a lot of fun and has provided lots of learning. Thank you very much to Primary 6 for lending us their construction equipment and for their advice on how to use it.
Click on the photos to make them bigger.
Our Castle
As the children seemed to be continually asking for the castle and knights to be brought out, we thought that we should make our own castle. The children all did a great job of printing the bricks to make the castle walls. They even made the door and the bird cage that some afternoon children wanted. Now the children would like some extra decoration on the walls so thank you to those who are bringing in all the foil, sweetie papers, pompoms etc to make this into a special castle. As you can see they have been busy sticking it on and the castle is beginning to change each Nursery session.
Some of the boys decided at the end of term that they would also like a cannon outside their castle “to keep the baddies out” so Finlay drew the design and explained how cannons work. This week some of the design team have been up to Primary 6 to borrow their construction materials to help us build our cannon. This is still work in progress but Miss Kerr and a small team of morning children are working hard on this project. Jack had a great idea and brought his tools from home to help so hopefully our castle should soon have its own cannon.
Thanks must go to those parents who are supporting us and the children by sending in materials. We all appreciate your efforts.
Start of term
As our holidays begin to draw to a close, we want to remind you that when the children return on Monday they will have a different key worker. 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 second term. This change rarely causes the children a problem but we thought that it might be useful to know before Monday.
Red Group: Miss Kerr
Blue Group: Mrs. Kirkpatrick (a.m.) Mrs. Carruthers (p.m.)
Yellow Group: Mrs. Gray (a.m.) Ms. Paterson (p.m.)
Green Group: Mrs. Carruthers
We look forward to seeing everyone on Monday 24th October.
Happy Hunting
At the end of term we were learning to identify letters and numbers. We talked about what we use them for and where we see them. We decided to be detectives and look round the school for letters, numbers and pictures. It was great fun finding them everywhere and sometimes the children were able to find signs that we hadn’t even thought of. We learned that a “P” and a “1” together means “Primary 1” where lots of us will go next year. Lee found the school motto, “Aim High”, up very high on the wall and Layton worked out that the numbers on a poster must be a phone number because they had a picture of a phone beside them. Learning was literally round every corner.
Arcimboldo Art
Arcimboldo is not an easy name to trip off your tongue when you’re three or four years old but our children tried very hard to say the name of the famous artist as we learned a little about his work.
We made the long journey upstairs in school so that we could see his works of art on the interactive whiteboard. “Summer” and “Autumn” were of particular interest as we have been learning about Autumn. The children were certainly amused by his use of food in these portraits and many commented on what they saw.
Caleb: I like the “Summer” one best ‘cause it’s very juicy.
Eleanor: They’re all summery and fruity and vegetabley.
Jaylin: I like them. It’s funny.
McKenzie: I like the ears on the “Autumn” one.
Zak: I like the grapes very much.
Back in Nursery, we decided to make our own portraits using food which was great fun. We hope you like these examples from our display.
Click on the pictures to make them bigger.
Let’s Go Fly a Kite
We enjoyed a story called “Someone Bigger” where everyone got pulled up in the air by a kite. We closed our eyes and listened to music to help us make magic pictures in our heads of what we might see if we were pulled up in the air by a kite.
Corey I would see a bird that was racing me like a butterfly and then could float back down.
Jack V. I saw a boat sinking to the bottom with a giant splash. The big boat bowed and rolled over the oil derrick. The derrick gets oil from under the ocean.
Caleb I saw a big helicopter going to the helicopter house.
Rohan I held on really tight and went up, up into the sky.
Murray I saw my barley field that got baled.
Struan I saw my Mummy gardening at my Granny’s. I saw the moon – it was shaped like a star.
Evan I saw Autumn. I saw leaves and trees and giants.
Sam L. I went to America and saw sea monsters – so many of them and they were angry and I fighted them.
Jack T. I saw dinosaurs with people on.
Autumn Apples
As some children brought apples to add to our Autumn display, we decided to make apple crumble. A simple apple crumble can provide so much learning: the importance of hygiene and safety in the kitchen, fine motor control, counting and chopping skills and the effect of heat on the apples. Most of all, it’s great fun and the children have certainly been excited to take something home that they could eat.
