Confidence in the kitchen is growing in our children as they increasingly prepare foods and enjoy baking which provides great opportunities to develop their skills in Numeracy and Mathematics as well as Sciences and Technologies. This little group recently made chocolate cornflake cakes, showing great independence and responsibility.
As a group of our children had been invited on a return visit to Lydiafield for Valentine’s Day, we decided to make a little keepsake for the residents to remember our visit. Sparkles, tissue, glitter and pompoms were very popular as they decorated little hearts to give to the elderly residents. Another group worked hard to produce more than 50 shortbread love hearts, again to be given individually as a little Valentine’s gift. Well done boys and girls for being kind and responsible citizens.
Nursery is now closed to the children for a week but we still have lots of activities and photos to share so keep an eye on our blog as we will continue to post over the next week. Have a lovely holiday boys and girls.
Alex’s family has been looking at the photos of the children in their Chinese dragon parade:
“Alex loved banging the drum and being the leader!”
Alex was a super leader of our band and showed great confidence to lead the parade in school. Well done Alex!
Congratulations to last week’s award winner for being so kind towards others. We are all very proud of you.
Just like those in the Rainbow Room, the children in the Raindrop Room were excited to find out about Chinese New Year and created their own Chinese dragons as part of their learning about the celebration. Here you can see them busy, indoors and out, working together in their dragon making.
Developing muscle strength and control of their fingers is an important aspect of development for our children so our recent activities, where they used chopsticks and tongs to pick up noodles, were a great way to practise these skills. We were impressed with the children’s perseverance and concentration to try out this tricky activity. Why not try something similar at home? It’s great fun and is helping to develop the children’s muscles and fine motor control.
Dragons have a great appeal to the children when learning about Chinese New Year so we asked the question in the Rainbow Room, “What would you do if you got a dragon for your birthday?” Here are some of the children’s thoughts.
Sophie G.: I would be happy.
Teddie: I’d feed him treats.
Alex: I’d take him to Dino Park.
Zack: I’d feed him dragon food – salad.
Skye C.: I’d play with him.
Berrie: I’d be happy. I’ve never had one before.
Emmie: take him to Tesco’s.
Isaac M.: I’d be happy and play with toys. He could eat chocolate fingers.
Rosie: maybe we could fly for dog food.
Euan: I’d play with my dino car. It’s really big.
Jackson: I’d take him a walk to my Grandad’s.
Paisley T.: I’d be sad. It would make me cry.
Arthur: feed him dragon food.
Following on from their art work depicting winter weather, those in the Raindrop Room created their own clouds and rain as part of an experiment to help them understand where rain comes from. Using coloured water helped them to see the rain filling the clouds of shaving foam and making its way through to the beaker as if rain were falling.
As you can see, the children were very enthusiastic to participate in this experiment and showed some good understanding.
Ella: rain falls from the sky, from dark clouds. The dark clouds come and they pour rain over us. Light coloured clouds don’t have rain in them.
Violeta: rain comes from the sky. It feels like water.
Kyla: rain comes from the clouds.
Marnie: rain falls down the roof. Rain comes from clouds.
Lola: wear a jacket in the rain ’cause you’ll get wet.
Fern: rain comes from the clouds. It’s wet. Coats keep you dry and an umbrella.
Sophie E.: rain goes on your window. The other day it was pouring down so loud. It comes from the clouds. Some break apart and go little or big and some don’t have rain. In a thunderstorm it goes all crazy and crashes and bangs. When it’s too heavy and the cloud can’t hold the water, it starts to rain.
Kara: rain makes everything wet. It comes from the sky from the clouds. The rain falls to make plants grow. The water in the clouds comes from the sea.
Tilly: rain falls in storms. Some are a little drop and some are big squirts. It makes mud on the ground.
We are delighted to say that, thanks to great fundraising efforts at Christmas when so many of our families contributed to the hamper raffle, we have been able to purchase a Wonderboom portable Bluetooth speaker for each room in Nursery. This will allow us to have music anywhere we like both indoors and out. The children have already been enjoying the benefits of this outdoors recently when staff have kindly lent us their equipment but now that each room has one you may hear all kinds of music floating from our gardens – nursery rhymes, bagpipes, Chinese dragon dance music … we have the world of music to choose from.
Thank you very much to all those who kindly contributed to this fundraising event. We feel sure that this purchase will benefit all our children.
