Tag: visitors

Mini Pots of Care Day

Along with many schools and nurseries throughout the country, the children celebrated “Mini Pots of Care Day” on Wednesday by decorating pot wrappers for the daffodils they had nurtured over the winter and then taking their pots home to someone they care about.

We were also delighted to be able to present a large cheque to Sheena from Marie Curie Cancer Care, thanks to the generous donations from families and friends. Even after we had written our large presentation cheque, more donations came in and the children have currently raised an amazing £549.35. Thanks to Sheena and Henry the bear for explaining how our money will be used and a huge thank you to all those who contributed to our wonderful total.

As you can see from the photos, we all looked after our daffodils very well. We hope they survived their journey home in the windy weather.

Top Performance

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.

Music To Our Ears

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.

Garden Designers

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. 

Pictures help us find ideas.

More Fiddle Fun

As promised, Mrs. Roberts came back to talk to the morning children about the fiddle.  Like the afternoon children, they enjoyed singing along while Mrs. Roberts played and as you can see from the photos, some of them enjoyed the opportunity to try out the little fiddle.

If you click on the link below and turn up your volume, you can hear the children enjoying a good old singalong.

am singing

The Storytelling Daddy

Rory’s Daddy came in to tell us the stories he had written using Scottish dialect. We heard about a little girl called Rosa who wanted to be a barber and enjoyed the story of a ‘moose’ who went to the moon. Rory’s Mummy was also able to explain the story in Polish to some of the children.

As a thank you we sang them the Scottish songs we have been learning which they seemed to enjoy. We would like to thank Rory’s family for a wonderful storytelling visit.

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.

Welcome to Miss Young

Miss Young, our student teacher, has been enjoying getting to know our children this week and the children have had good fun learning about shape and colour with her. So far, they have been making pictures using shapes in different colours and have had great fun with a jumping and colour matching game in the garden. We hope Miss Young enjoys her placement with us and look forward to her activities in the next few weeks.

Click on the photos to make them bigger.

Hello to our new children

We would like to say a big thank you to St. Columba’s playgroup staff for facilitating a visit for the children who will leave them to come to us next year. The weather was kind to us for both visits so the children were able to enjoy playing outdoors with the current Nursery children, who looked after our visitors well. We always feel a little sad when we wave off our children to Primary 1 but it’s exciting to know that we have so many new children starting with us in August. Thank you, St. Columba’s for sharing your lovely children with us last week.

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