Tag: Responsible Citizens

A Touch o’ Tartan

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.

Money Magic

Two recent visits by Pam Fraser, the Financial Education Officer, have encouraged the children to think about money and what we need it for. They learned about all the different coins and enjoyed a story called “Mrs. Pirate”.

Some interesting conversations developed about what the children would buy if they had money to spend. Those of simple tastes dreamt of lots of sweets while others thought carefully and planned a quad bike, a paddling pool or a Lego castle. After Pam had gone, the helpful children even came up with suggestions for Mrs. Carruthers to spend her birthday money on. The idea of “more stickers for Nursery” and “a new scooter for our garden” did not seem so appealing for her birthday but she liked the suggestions of a “cosy scarf to keep you warm in winter”, “big earrings like you like” and “a very beautiful dress”.

As you can see from the photos below, the children thoroughly enjoyed the coin rubbing activity and were amazed when they produced pictures of the different coins as if by magic. Thank you Pam for helping us learn in a fun way.

Polish Christmas

We have been learning about Christmas in Poland this week. Hannah’s Mum (a.m.) and Sara’s Mum (p.m.) have talked to us about the traditions in their country at Christmas time. We learned about putting some hay under the tablecloth, about the twelve dishes at their meal, the empty place at their table and that Santa visits Poland too. We were even able to taste the nativity wafers that they have on Christmas Eve.   

Tasting a nativity wafer.

It was interesting to find out that much about Christmas in Poland is similar to Scotland but that there are also several important differences. Thank you so much to both Hannah and Sara’s Mum for helping us to learn about their culture.   

Lots of us tried the nativity wafer.

Busy Elves

If Santa gets stuck for helpers at this hectic time of year, we feel sure that our children would make very good little elves as they have been working so hard over the last week or two. With two enterprise activities running at the same time, Nursery has been a busy and exciting place.

Thank you to all those families who have ordered calendars to help fundraise for our Christmas party. Some children have shown great patience to make the large numbers ordered and we hope that you will be proud of their end product. Most calendars are now ready to pick up: you will get a note soon reminding you of the cost, if you have not yet paid, and they can be collected whenever you wish.

With the Christmas Fayre on Wednesday 7th December, we have also had lots of children keen to make pot pourri bags for the HFA event: we had quite a little production line going at times. We hope that some Nursery families will be able to attend the fayre to support the hard work carried out by all the children and parents of our school. As you will have seen from the letter home, there will be a wide range of activities to enjoy and we have heard a rumour that Santa might be available for photo opportunities.

Marie Curie Bulbs

This week the children took part in Marie Curie Cancer Care’s “Mini Pots of Care” fundraising activity. Throughout this activity children learn about science and nature, while developing a sense of responsibility and raising money for Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Each child was given his/her own pot and daffodil bulb to plant in Nursery and, hopefully, the children will be sponsored to care for it until it blossoms in spring. You can watch their progress with your child as the pots are now in the Nursery garden. We will celebrate their daffodils on Mini Pots of Care Day in February, by painting pot wrappers. We hope that the children have fun taking part and would be delighted if you chose to sponsor them in this activity.

“Wear Something Spotty”

Please remember that it’s “Wear Something Spotty” day tomorrow, Friday 18th November. Our suggested donation is 50p to go towards “Children in Need”. Cakes and sweets will also be on sale for 20p so the children can bring a little extra money if they would like to visit the cake stall during our Nursery session.

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.

Confident Individuals

After less than two weeks in Nursery, most children are growing in confidence in their new environment. We are establishing the rules and the children are developing into confident and happy Nursery pupils, as you can see from the pictures below. Later in the week we will send home a note of the Nursery rules and how we are teaching the children the days of the week, to help keep you informed of our current focus.

We feel sure that you are all very proud of the way your children have settled so well in to Nursery in such a short space of time because we certainly are.

Ruby Rabbit

This week Ruby Rabbit has been meeting all our new children. It was such a surprise when she popped out of her basket to say hello. Some people guessed it would be a football, someone thought a pig and some people thought it might be a fairy in the white basket but everyone was very surprised to meet a shy little rabbit. So far, Ruby Rabbit’s ears have only started to hurt and go red once, when we forgot to use little voices, so she is very happy with all the Nursery children. Well done, everyone!

Fun Activity Day

Our Fun Activity Day started with a huge surprise when we were presented with a very generous cheque, as well as a beautiful bench and weather vane for the Nursery garden. We would like to extend huge thanks to everyone who organised, contributed to or took part in the secret sponsored walk to raise this amazing amount of money for our Nursery. We feel quite overwhelmed by this generosity and are considering carefully how to spend your donation wisely.

Despite a mixture of sunshine and showers, the children continued happily round the fun activities and seemed pleased to show off their skills to family and friends. They worked well together in teams and showed good support for each other. Primary 6 did a great job of encouraging and praising the children and Callum, Active Schools Co-ordinator, helped us enormously by managing everyone’s movement round the field.  

None of this would have been possible without the enthusiastic participation of the Nursery children who, as always, made us very proud of their excellent behaviour on an exciting day. Well done boys and girls!

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