Author: Lesley Anne

As always the children and staff here in the ECC have been super busy learning lots of new things whilst having the best time.  We planned to celebrate book week by focusing on a few of our most favourite traditional stories and the children led the learning, sharing their thoughts and ideas.  Have a look at the sway below to see all the wonderful things we have been learning over the past fortnight.

The children have enjoyed listening to and discussing our NHS resource, Toby the Nosey Cat.  Toby is a nosey cat who wanders into someone’s home who is smoking cigarettes.  The story highlights the dangers of passive smoking and how smoke may make you feel.  The children spoke about, “nippy eyes”, “smelly”, “coughing” and “getting burnt”.  We also spoke about vape pens, lighters and matches and what we should do if we find these and their possible dangers.

Healthy Superhero has really appreciated your ideas on our healthy board this week, we especially enjoyed the comment that expressed the importance of “giggles” in relation to health.

This Saturday the 20th November there will a community event taking place in King Street Kilmarnock to raise awareness for Alcohol Awareness Week 2021.  The event will take place in 85-89, King Street Kilmarnock from 12 noon – 3pm.  It will be an afternoon of mocktails and mindfulness.  There will be activities to keep the children entertained while you may want to try a spot of yoga.  There will be plenty of alcohol free activities to enjoy that will help you better understand and be more mindful of your alcohol intake.

 

The children have settled into both the routine of the centre and building new relationships, with the guidance of Nurture Nerd.  We are now moving our focus onto healthy, with the support of our new SHANARRI superhero………Healthy Superhero!  A massive well done to Meah for designing and naming “Healthy Superhero”, who has been chosen to help us on our journey.

             

 We have explored dentists recently to highlight the importance of dental health and have reintroduced brushing our teeth in the centre again.  Due to COP 26 the children have been exploring how we are going to make the planet healthy too.  I would love to hear your ideas on what “healthy” means to you and your family…..is it mental health, physical, social, spiritual or intellectual?  I will have a board in the playground where you can share you ideas. Clean pens and sanitising wipes will be available.

             

We would love to share our healthy journey with everyone at home. We look forward to hearing your ideas ♥

All the children and staff have been busy this past fortnight exploring a range of resources and materials to investigate schematic play.  Please have a look at the sway below to see what we have been up to.  Happy Halloween to everyone, hope you all have a great weekend!

Our Wow Wall has become a popular focal point within the centre.  The children have enjoyed sharing their achievements from home and it is a great conversation starter.  We are sending home more wow moment sheets this week, please enjoy discussing an achievement at home with your child and sharing it with us in the ECC.  There may be a target at home you have been encouraging or a new skill. The October holiday may be a perfect opportunity to work hard on something.  We look forward to hearing all about your achievements.

Please click on to the link below to join us on a virtual tour of our new facilities here at Catrine ECC.

Have a look at the link below to find out about our visit from Theresa from Childsmile this week.  Any questions or concerns that you may have regarding toothbrushing guidelines,  please send us an email and we will be happy to discuss or share more information.  Have a lovely weekend.

eaalana.speirs@glow.org.uk

ealesley-anne.adams@glow.org.uk

Here at the ECC we actively support the health and wellbeing of all children.  We explore the aspects of health and wellbeing and what it means, to ensure that we can embed good practice in the daily life of the setting.  We use the SHANARRI indicators to guide us through our journey.   As we are just settling into our new surroundings and getting to know all these new faces, we have decided that we will start with N for nurture, where we can discuss what nurture means and how we can be nurturing people.

To get us started we had our superhero competition where the children enjoyed designing and naming their own Nurture superhero and the winner was……………Carson.  A big well done to Carson, the children thought his was the worthy winner and he spent a lot of time designing his character called Nurture Nerd.

Keep your eyes peeled for Nurture Nerd to see what we have been learning and discussing here at the centre. We would love to hear how we are demonstrating nurture at home.

 

Last week we were exploring aspects of health here in the ECC.  We had a jam packed week and I hope everyone managed a wee rest over the weekend.   Each practitioner focused on an aspect of health and provided a range of activities to promote children’s understanding and to develop their skills further.

Nutrition – Rena and Julie      

The children got to try a range of fruits in a taste session, explore vegetables in the feely tubs, explore sugar content in rethink your drink and design their own potato after reading Supertato.

Fitness – Sherrie and Michelle

The children enjoyed a Zumba/dance session, practicing their football skills, balloon racing, fill the bucket challenge and the fitness dice game.

Social/Emotional – Lesleyanne, Tammie and Leonie

The children had the opportunity to explore emotions through playdough, they had time to discuss what to do when ‘something is bugging them’, parachute games, emotion post box game  and playing board games with their friends.

Mindfulness – Carrie and Meghan

The children explored massage, yoga, bubble breathing, compliments and controlled breathing techniques.

Dentist role play – Hannah and Julie

The children explored dental hygiene through role play, information books and a fabulous selection of resources hired from the NHS.

Toby the Nosey Cat – Lesleyanne

The children got the opportunity to meet Toby the very Nosey Cat who finds himself not feeling too great after being in a smoky house, they discussed the danger of passive smoke and why grown ups should take their cigarettes right outside.

Have a look at how busy we have been ♥

As you know here at the ECC we like to use the SHANARRI indicators to guide us in our delivery of health and well being and encourage the children to become familiar with these aspects.    We have now moved onto exploring RESPECTED and what this means to us, therefore we would like to introduce our new superhero characters.   Meet Respected Star designed by Calli for the minibeasts (on the left) and Respected Ryan designed by Phoebe for the Sea Creatures (on the right).   Well done girls, fantastic job!

Please keep an eye on our Health and Well being board for updates on what we are learning.

Please have a look at the sway below, we would really appreciate your support in helping us celebrate achievement ♥

 

Have a look at the sway below to meet or say “Hi again” to Pantosaurus, our prehistoric friend who has a fun way to explore how we can keep ourselves safe in our early years.  We hope you enjoy the attached videos and links and if you still feel that you need some information or support please contact the ECC or send us an email. Lesleyanne is our fabulous Health and Wellbeing Champion here at Catrine. Relationships, Sexual Health and Partnerships (RSHP) fall under this category and therefore she will be more than happy to support in anyway that she can ♥

ealesley-anne.adams@glow.sch.org

We aim to introduce the children to Pantosaurus at the start of next week. We have started exploring lifecycles within the centre where we have been looking in particular at how a caterpillar starts off and how it develops into a butterfly.

A letter and leaflet was sent home with your child today which also explains more in relation to how RSHP is taught at early level, through age appropriate experiences.

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you to everyone who left a comment on our teamwork tree outside the ECC this week – lots of great, positive comments. 😀

I hope everyone has a fantastic long weekend and can enjoy some relaxed restrictions. Have fun and see you all on Tuesday ❤️

 

 

Have a look to see what some of the children think teamwork means to them and be sure to keep your eyes peeled next week for our teamwork tree in our outdoor area ♥

We would appreciate parent/carers to add to our Teamwork Tree their ideas of what this term means to them.

 

It has been an exciting week here at the ECC celebrating Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths with a huge range of fantastic new resources.  Each bubble have had the chance to explore and investigate our terrific learning opportunities with the silent disco being a huge hit!  We have been so busy and the week has been jam packed with learning and laughter. The smiles on the children’s faces and the excitement and curiosity during experiments has been superb. We hope everyone has a great weekend and comes back refreshed and full of beans next week ready to explore our nurture focus ♥

Press on the link below to enjoy this weeks highlights.

Today the children really enjoyed a bookbug session with Sandra in the green space, the children had great fun singing, listening to stories and using the props, thank you Sandra ♥

Today to celebrate World Book Day some of the children enjoyed the story ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’.  We read the story together and explored it further with lots of interesting learning experiences where we discussed Tigers, recalled the story, made our very own tiger masks, paintings and tiger patterns.  We also enjoyed creating our own tea party in the role play area as well as in the water tray.  I have added a video of the story for all the children to enjoy with their grown ups before bedtime.  Hope you all enjoy it too.

Below is a song I have found sung by none other than Robbie Williams himself!  Hope everyone enjoys this and tomorrow we will be exploring more stories here at the ECC, see you then ♥