Tag: numeracy and mathematics

Rain, Rain, Stay In Nursery

Which child doesn’t enjoy the opportunity to jump in a puddle? Well, we certainly had a big enough puddle for lots of jumping this week in Nursery when our garden area became waterlogged. As well as a mini pond in our mud kitchen, we had water stretched from one end of the pathway to another. It certainly brought home to children that winter weather is not all about Jack Frost and snow.
We had ducks and boats out which produced some valuable discussions about floating and sinking as well as lots of pouring and measuring to develop numeracy skills. The children worked so well together and enjoyed investigating their ideas in a real context. Great fun was had, for example, experimenting to see if a boat would sink if they filled it with water.
It may have been a little inconvenient for adults to use a different entrance to Nursery but the children took full advantage of conditions that were very exciting for them.

Super Snowmen

We have been so delighted to see all the wonderful snowmen that you boys and girls have done as a home activity. Not only have you managed to design your snowmen and put them in order of size, as we suggested, but some of you have even added your own writing which is fantastic. Well done everyone who has taken part in this activity. We love your work.
To get a closer look at some of the fantastic snowmen, click on a photo then click again for a better view.

How Do We Know It’s Winter?

Our learning at the start of this term is focussed on the signs of winter and how it affects our lives. As a starting point we have been talking about how we know it’s winter. This has also encouraged the children to think about the recent flooding that has featured on the news and which some have experienced in Annan. We would like to share some of the children’s ideas about winter.

Carmen: it’s winter ’cause it’s colder and the grass turns in to snow. The trees have lost their leaves because the snow’s too strong to make them stay on.
Roxy: it’s winter because we’re learning about it. It’s cold and sometimes it’s snowing and we get Jack Frost.
 Deryn: the pond gets frozen and you can skate on it.
Tom: it’s cold and we need hats and gloves.
Reagyn: Jack Frost makes ice. He normally comes to life and if water’s there he makes it alive.
Lexi: you get nice and warm in a jacket ’cause it’s winter.
Rebecca: you need gloves and a scarf when it’s winter.
Fearne: you need coats ’cause it’s cold.
Jade: I like winter ’cause it’s snow. The snow falls all down.
Jessica W: you get wind and rain too in winter.
Logan: there was a big flood at the harbour and a ball went swimming in it.
Conan: you need to rescue people when it’s all flooding.
William: a flood is very high water that goes up in the clouds after a while.

Christmas Chocolate

With the school Christmas Fayre on Thursday of this week, we have been making chocolate Christmas shapes to sell on our stall. Predicting what would happen when we put chocolate in the microwave then the fridge produced some thoughtful conversations. We also used numeracy skills to count the squares of chocolate and the number of moulds we had to fill, as well as reading the dial to set the microwave so there was a lot of learning going on as we prepared our chocolate shapes.
We hope that lots of Nursery children and their families will be able to come to the Christmas Fayre on Thursday (6.00 – 8.00). We can recommend the chocolate shapes to anyone who has a little money to spend – they were certainly made with lots of tender loving care.

Letters and Numbers

Bethany’s Mum commented on our hunt round school looking for letters and numbers:

“Bethany is getting very excited about letters and numbers! Thank you for all your hard work.”

It’s great to hear that Bethany’s enjoying her learning. We are looking forward to you filling our cauldrons this week with letters and numbers that you find at home. Don’t forget to bring them in to Nursery. I wonder which you will find most of – will it be letters or numbers?

Numbers, Letters and Pictures

This week we have been talking about the difference between numbers, letters and pictures. To help us in our learning we went on a hunt around school to see if we could find examples and some children took photos as evidence. As well as the numbers, letter and pictures which had been laid in a trail, there were lots of other examples on our journey. We found numbers on P3’s brilliant rocket that was outside their classroom and letters on the mat at the school entrance. There were numbers on lunch boxes and display boards provided lots of letters and numbers, sometimes together, for example, “P7”. Hopefully, the children are now more aware of numbers and letters in their environment and will start to spot them when out and about with their families.

Counting For Callum The Cat

Callum the Cat came to visit Nursery recently as he needed help to count his fish. It was just as well that the boys and girls were good at counting because he had lots of fish to sort into his number buckets. Everyone had to check that we had got it right and we did thumbs up or down to say if we thought the correct number of fish was in each bucket. Keep on practising your counting everyone in case Callum needs more important work done.

Real Life Decision Making

The children have had some big decisions to make recently as we had the wonderful problem of deciding what to buy with a very generous donation from a kind grandparent.
They were given three choices of how to spend the money and, after a discussion about each, all the children voted for their favourite. As you can see from the photos, each child added their vote to the graph and watched carefully to see which option came out the winner. Although it was a close vote, the winning choice was for a bed, table and chairs for the role play area. There was great excitement when the parcels arrived and some of the children did a super job of helping us put our new furniture together. As you can see, they are all delighted with their choice and experienced lots of valuable learning along the way.
Children and staff are extremely grateful for this donation from a very kind and generous grandparent. The children are already having great fun with the additions to our role play area and will continue to do so for many years to come.
Click on the photos to make them bigger.

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