Confident Individuals – Page 62 – Hecklegirth Nursery

Happy New Term

Our new term starts on Thursday 5^th January when we look forward to seeing all our children and their families again. We will also be meeting lots of new children and feel sure that you will make them feel welcome in our Nursery. No doubt they are excited to be starting Nursery and looking forward to making new friends.

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. As you can see, Mrs. Kirkpatrick will also now be joining us in the afternoon sessions due to an increase in numbers.

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

Red Group: Mrs. Gray (a.m.) Ms. Paterson (p.m.)

Blue Group: Mrs. Carruthers (a.m.) Mrs. Kirkpatrick (p.m.)

Yellow Group: Mrs. Kirkpatrick (a.m.) Mrs. Carruthers (p.m.)

Green Group: Miss Kerr

We look forward to seeing everyone on Thursday.

Happy Christmas

The end of term seems to have gone in a flurry of activity, ending with our party. The children planned what they would like to do and eat at the party and we did our best to provide it although we did draw the line at fish and chips. Dancing, circle games, lots of party food and, of course, a visit from Santa are great ingredients for a Christmas party and everyone seemed to have a good time. The children’s behaviour was excellent and it was lovely to see the morning and afternoon children playing and dancing happily together. We hope you all have a very happy Christmas and look forward to seeing everyone in the new term. The photos below give you a taste of our party. Don’t they all look wonderful?

Click on an image to make it bigger.

Family Christmas Crafts

Yet again, Eileen Johnstone, our Family Learning Co-ordinator, has proved popular with her Christmas craft activities. Lots of children and their families had great fun last week making cards and decorations for their homes.

We look forward to Eileen’s return in the new term when she will resume the weekly activity sacks on Thursdays.

Concert Congratulations

Congratulations must go to our children for a fantastic performance at our Christmas concert. They looked and sounded wonderful and all who took part should be proud of their achievement.

We would like to thank all parents who provided the outfits for the children and we would like particularly to thank Conner’s Granny for making us some of the cute little net skirts. We were also delighted that Sara’s Mum was able to help our Polish children learn a Polish Christmas carol to add to the concert: it was wonderful to see some of our Nursery children perform this with older Polish children who attend our school.

We greatly appreciate all the very kind comments made by so many parents about the children’s performance. Like you, we feel very proud of them all. The photos below show some of the children prior to their performance.

The Magic Door

Everyone can make magic pictures inside their heads. In Nursery we catch the magic from our magic stick and put it in our heads to make our pictures and there was lots of magic in the air when we read the poem, “The Magic Tree”. We hope you enjoy some of the children’s thoughts on what they think is behind the magic door in the magic tree.

Murray: spiders’ webs and dustbin lids.

Mya: a cat called Tilly. It would be magic and would lick its paws.

Sam L.: an alien from outer space.

Reece: a duckie eating tomatoes.

Miley: a magic fish swimming underwater.

Caleb: a wasp that had been to the fireworks.

Suzie: a dolphin sleeping.

Corey: a princess who waves a magic wand to get a lovely dress.

Layton: lots of grass with flying dust on and a mouse carving people.

Iona: a wizard playing with a ball.

Rohan: frogs – lots of them hopping everywhere.

Lee: the moon – it might even live there.

Jaylin: Cinderella sitting on a chair.

Conner: some red and yellow space rockets flying about.

Neve: a shark eating up everything in the sea.

Ryan: toys like Buzz Lightyear with pop-up wings.

Family Learning Fun

Family Learning is a very important aspect of life at Hecklegirth Nursery and we are delighted that Eileen Johnstone, Family Learning Co-ordinator, continues to provide fun activities which support learning. Each week Eileen organises story, rhyme and number sacks for children to share with their families at home. We also have some dual language books to share with those who have English as an additional language so everyone interested in activity sacks can take part. If you missed out on this opportunity, Eileen will be happy to add you to her list – simply look for her at the cloakroom entrance at the start or end of Thursday Nursery sessions.

Aware of our emphasis on the importance of rhyme, Eileen organised craft sessions this week where the children joined members of their families for fun activities based on nursery rhymes. Mums, dads and grannies all seemed to enjoy themselves and the children were certainly proud of the nursery rhyme bags they made.

Eileen hopes to run a Christmas craft session next month so look out for dates and times on our Family Learning notice board. Remember that younger brothers and sisters are welcome to come along too. This week’s feedback has been very positive so we look forward to lots of families taking part.

We feel so lucky to have Eileen as part of our Nursery team and would like to thank her for her invaluable input. Thanks also to everyone who took part this week – it’s wonderful to see so many families joining in activities in our Nursery.

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.

Mmm – it’s quite tasty once you catch it.

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.

It’s a long climb to P6 to borrow their construction equipment.

Hold it still Miss Kerr while we tighten the screws.

The tube problem was solved but it had been very tricky.

There’s nothing better than a cannon you’ve made yourself.

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 24^th October.