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!
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.
As we have been learning about the buildings in our community and thinking about what happens in them, we decided to take a look at some of the work of the artist, L. S. Lowry. It was great to see his paintings on our new Promethean board and we had some interesting discussions comparing the buildings he portrayed with the ones we see in Annan. We thought that the painting of the schoolyard, in particular, was very different to our school playground.
As well as singing along to the song “We Painted Matchstick Men and Matchstick Cats and Dogs”, lots of children were keen to participate in making a street scene similar to Lowry’s work. Some lovely charcoal drawings were also produced to add to our display.
Earlier this term we made an application for funding when an opportunity arose for Early Years classes throughout the region. The result of this, as you no doubt have noticed, is our wonderful new Promethean board and desktop computer which will greatly enhance learning and teaching across the curriculum.
Already the children have been enjoying looking at photos after visits out in our community and it provided lots of discussion of what we saw. We have also recently been able to bring the work of L. S. Lowry to life for the children rather than everyone trying to see pictures in a book. Lots more fun learning will be provided by this valuable resource in the future and we look forward to developing its full potential in our Nursery.
Another aspect to our funding application was for the translation into Polish of some of our documents and letters to help us communicate with parents of our Polish children. This is ongoing work and we hope to have these available soon to improve our communication with you. Again, this is an exciting development which we have wanted for a long time and we are delighted that our application was successful, allowing us to provide this helpful service.
Last week Rory’s Mum came back to Nursery to see what ideas we had gathered for our garden wall design. We all had a lovely time working together making our design boards of ideas. There were magazines available to select more pictures to stick on our boards and the room was full of talk about all the different things we could see in the pictures. Jana found some ideas that she particularly liked and she took photos of them to help her with her design sketches. We made sure that she took a photo of Ruby Rabbit and Stan the Star as everyone is very keen to have our favourite Nursery friends on our garden wall. We are all looking forward to the next stage of our project when we will see Jana’s design suggestions.
Here you can see us hard at work with Rory’s Mum, cutting and sticking our pictures to the boards.
Over the past week or two the children have been bringing in their ideas for the garden wall design. What a fantastic range of suggestions and ways of sharing their ideas we have had! Some children brought an object that they like, such as a giraffe, a dragon and a pink, glittery ball, others have painted a picture or made a model. Some have cut pictures from magazines and others have made large displays of all the things that they like.
We feel sure that Jana will be delighted with all the imaginative and interesting ideas the children have produced. Tomorrow she will be back in Nursery so we will be able to make a scrapbook of our ideas. Please remember to bring any pictures with you tomorrow if you want them included in our plans.
Former pupil, Lewis, returned to visit us on Friday to talk to the morning children about playing the accordion. Again he entertained us wonderfully with his talents and this time he brought his silver medal from the Burns’ competition to show everyone. As you can see, Lewis encouraged a few children to try out the accordion for size. Maybe one day some of them will learn to play an instrument and be able to come back to Nursery to show us their skills?
Huge thanks to Lewis for showing us your skills and congratulations on winning a silver medal for your singing performance. We all thoroughly enjoyed listening to you.
We had a lovely end to our week with a visit from Lewis who is a former pupil of Hecklegirth. It’s a few years since he was a pupil in our Nursery but it’s always great to welcome him back.
After our recent work on Scotland, Lewis came to talk to us about the playing the accordion and to give us a tune or two. It certainly seems a tricky instrument to master but Lewis has been practising for a few years and he entertained us well. As the Nursery children have been learning about Robert Burns, Lewis was also kind enough to give us a beautiful rendition of the Burns’ song he will sing in a competition at the week-end.
To close our musical afternoon, the children sang their Scottish songs for Lewis who proclaimed, “There’s no doubt that Hecklegirth’s got talent”.
Lewis is certainly a talented young man and we wish him well for his Burns’ competition. We look forward to hearing how it went when he visits next week to perform to the morning children. Thank you Lewis for being a super visitor – we enjoyed your performance very much.
As well as learning about Chinese New Year, this week we have begun an exciting project to design a mural for our garden wall as the current one is looking a little faded. As a local artist, Rory’s Mum has very kindly agreed to help the children plan a design reflecting their ideas. After an initial discussion with the children this week, she and Rory’s Dad will work with staff and the children to make a scrapbook of their ideas. She will then create a design for the garden wall based on the children’s ideas.
Jana uses lots of different tools to paint.
It was so exciting for the children to meet a real artist and talk about where her ideas come from and what tools she uses to paint.
We loved all the pictures that she collects to help her – a row of pandas, a flowery dress, a child playing in the sea, a laughing dog, one huge eye and a road full of bikes. We hope that the children will be able to bring in pictures of things they like, to contribute to our scrapbook. It might be drawings, cuttings from newspapers or magazines, photos, pieces of ribbon or material, even a photos of a pattern on their Mum’s skirt – simply anything that they like.
This is a very exciting project for us and we are delighted that Jana is willing to help us with it. We greatly appreciate the time and effort that she will be putting in to help us with this plan and look forward to lots of ideas from our children and their families. This design will be in the Nursery garden for a long time so it is important that everyone has a say in how it looks.
What a wonderful week we have had with the various activities to celebrate our learning about Scotland. As well as learning about the fiddle and Rory’s Dad’s super storytelling, we enjoyed our Burn’s celebration on Tuesday with Primary 1 and Primary 2/1 followed by a great day on Friday when we were part of the whole school celebration.
We appreciate everyone making a super effort to provide the children with ‘a touch o’ tartan’ on both days. It certainly added to the occasion and they all looked wonderful. We hope that you enjoyed hearing the children sing on Friday and that you were able to take the opportunity to have a look at their work on display. It was great to see so many families join in our celebration with a coffee and a taste of the shortbread made by the children. Thank you for everyone’s support and lovely comments.
Here is a taster of our week in photos. You can see a fuller outline and photos of our learning about Scotland in our ‘Thinking Books’ which are in the book area in Nursery.
Shortbread, Irn Bru, oatcakes and cheese – tasty!
Nessie would love these houses designed at home.
Some of our designs for Nessie’s home.
Our own wee piper!
Some of the models made at home.
A touch o’ tartan for our celebrations.
How big is the Nessie we made with P1 and P2/1?
P1’s monster drawings and writing look good beside our tartan.
