The pre-school children have had their first visits to the hall to enjoy fun activities with Mrs. Foster, our P.E. teacher. They learned that listening skills are very important and had lots of practice at stopping and starting various movements as well as learning how to develop their throwing and catching skills. There is lots to learn and it’s so much fun.
In the past our Nursery and school staff have taken part in Word Aware training which is a structured whole school approach to develop the vocabulary of children.
It is estimated that the average child learns 2000 – 3000 words per year every year throughout their schooling which equates to six to eight words a day on average. Children with good vocabulary go on to become good readers and vocabulary has a major impact on all areas of learning.
As part of our work to support the development of the children’s vocabulary, we include a “Word of the Week” in our planning and focus on the appropriate use of that word in the Nursery environment. Sometimes the selected word may arise from a child led discussion and at other times it may be linked to our learning focus. We will share this word on the Nursery blog so that you can share in the fun with words at home.
Our “Word of the Week” next week in the Rainbow Room will be “tidy” while the Raindrop Room will focus on the word “kindness”.
As part of their learning to make predictions and observations in science experiments, these children explored making fizzy potions outdoors. They measured vinegar and washing-up liquid in to a container then decided what to add to make a range of different fountains – various food colourings, stars and glitter were all very popular. As with all good potion mixing, they children had to give their concoction a good stir and a few magic words before adding baking soda to produce an exciting fizzy fountain. As you can imagine, we tried this out several times and used different quantities of ingredients each time to observe what happened. The children showed good focus and made some great comments as they observed the process.
Sophia: it explodes. It’s green. I mixed it.
Jack: I was doing a scientist. I put sugar in it and it makes bubbles. It explodes like a volcano. Mine was yellow bubbles with lots of stars.
Aoife: I’m making a volcano like where the lava comes out.
Letti: I put stars in the mixture. It was really high. The stars came out into there.
Emilia: we add vinegar and washing machine shampoo. It grew really high. It exploded!
Freddie: we used a spoon to mix it. It blows up.
Emily: I’m making an experiment. I’m a scientist. I was making potions. It exploded.
Arthur: I’m making a volcano. It was big and blue. I am a scientist.
Leigha: I’m stirring it with the spoon. It can get out big.
Simple science experiments are very popular in our Nursery and the children have learned to make predictions before they carry them out then observe what happens to see if they were right. As part of a focus on floating and sinking, the children experimented by putting raisins in lemonade to see if they would sink or float and, as you can see, they were very engaged in observing the changes they saw. They saw the raisins float as the bubbles of carbon dioxide stuck to them causing them to rise to the surface and were amazed when the some of the bubbles popped, causing the raisins to sink. This happened several times before all the gas was used up and, finding it hard to believe what they had seen, the children wanted to try out this experiment over and over again.
We thought that we would share some of the their comments.
Jackson: there’s bubbles. I put in the lemonade. The raisins are dancing.
Tom: bubbles move up and down.
Arthur: the raisins are going up and down.
Alexa: the bubbles stick to the raisins and make them dance. Bubbles give us hiccups when we drink them.
Nancy: we’re making the raisins float and sink. Look they’re dancing. The bubbles make them go up and down.
Jack: They are floating. Bubbles go up and down and make the raisins jump.
Sophia: I was putting raisins in lemonade. They were dancing about.
Emilia: look at the bubbles. They are dancing, lots of dancing.
The snack area in Nursery provides many opportunities for learning across several areas of the curriculum. Here you can see the children finding out where various foods come from as they help to prepare snack. They love helping to find the different countries on the globe, seeing how far they are from Scotland and how big other countries are compared to ours.
To help the children understand symmetry, we provided a range of experiences to encourage them to make their own symmetrical pictures. As you can see, they began to understand this concept once they created their own work.
So many of the children love musical instruments both indoors and out. Here is a group practising their listening skills, developing a sense of rhythm and having great fun making music together in a little band.
Problem solving and teamwork are important skills that the children will need as they progress and develop throughout their lives, even into the world of work. These children showed both of these skills as they played with the construction tubes, working out how to make a slide for the balls. As you can see, they showed ingenuity and great co-operation which resulted in success, with the children having provided a great learning experience for themselves.
We had a visit from the council’s community safety team towards the end of term to learn all about littering and keeping the community tidy. One of the highlights of the event was the visit by the mechanical road sweeper. The children loved having the opportunity to operate some of the buttons and sit up in the driving seat. Thank you to the community safety team for taking so much time with the children to answer all their questions and for making sure that everyone who wanted to was able to sit up in the cab. Let’s hope that the children remember all that you told them about keeping our community clean and tidy.
The “Word of the Week” in the Raindrop Room will be ‘rehearsal’ while the Rainbow Room will have ‘graduation’ as their final “Word of the Week”.
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