Welcome to all our new families joining us in the ECC this year and of course to all our wonderful families returning for another busy year.  We hope you have settled well into nursery life.  We are looking forward to helping your little treasures grow throughout the coming year and ‘Reach for the Stars’.

The children have all settled well into their new routines and we already have lots planned to help our children become:

• Successful learners
• Confident individuals
• Responsible citizens
• Effective contributors

We cant wait to share some of these plans with you in the very near future, so remember to look out for information on our notice boards, twitter and the school app.

Tania and the ECC team 🙂

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Everyone in the ECC would like to wish all of our families a lovely spring break.  We will see you all in term 4 where we have lots of exciting plans to share with you 🙂

 

The children have been showing an interest in creepy crawlies in the garden, especially worms.  We went on a hunt in the mud, digging and scraping to find lots of worms.  We examined them carefully and created a wormery for them to live in.

I wonder what exciting creatures we will find next?

 

Outside we have been experimenting with various potions to help our patients in our hospital feel better.  We need to follow the recipe’s carefully to make the right medicine

We have been busy designing and building various objects in the forest room.  We have explored junk modelling, used the building bricks and are learning to assess risk at the work bench using real tools for our creations.

 

Huge thanks to Alfies mum Ruth for coming in and joining us for our monthly altogether nurture snack.

We have recently been developing our independence skills at snack and are becoming more confident at preparing our own snack and choosing what we want at our ‘buffet’ stand.

Whose parent/carer will be next to join in our nurture snack?

The Forest Room have been exploring letters and numbers through a variety of different experiences.  We are beginning to recognise them and write them using different media.

 

World Book Day – It was lovely to have the P6 & P7’s come to read to us throughout the day

 

 

Mia has enjoyed investigating different sounds with the instruments

 

Exploring torches in the dark tent.

We shone the light through different coloured objects.

Our youngest children in the Jungle Room have been busy exploring patterns in the shaving foam. I wonder what other resources we can find to create different patterns?

 

Planning 25/02/19 – 08/03/19 – Jungle Room

1. Because the children are beginning to participate in meaningful play we plan to develop their independence skills through imaginative play. A selection of clothes and jewellery will be added to the home corner to encourage dressing skills indoors and the mud kitchen will provide further opportunities for imaginative role play outdoors. Wellbeing / Curiosity, Inquiry and Creativity
2. The children have been demonstrating an interest in jigsaw and beads so we plan to focus on fine motor skills to support the development of co-ordination. We will introduce a variety of age-appropriate jigsaws and some threading materials with the beads. Wellbeing
3. Children are beginning to persevere on task as they are demonstrating an increased interest in songs, rhymes and short stories. To deepen the children’s learning we plan to increase children’s participation in these experiences by learning our song of the week and introducing familiar stories which the children can begin following/retelling from the illustrations. Wellbeing / Communication

 

 

Good Morning,

I would like to take the time to update those parents with children who will be moving on to school in the summer.

The children will be meeting their P6 buddies today, who will be supporting them with the transition into P1.  P6 will be accompanying our pre-schoolers to a whole school assembly each Friday morning from 10.45-11am and will also participate in several upcoming learning experiences together.

A meeting has been scheduled with our P1 teacher Miss Stewart to plan visits and interactions within the classroom alongside our current P1 pupils.  You will be updated on these plans as soon as possible.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns about transition then please do not hesitate to come and speak to me and I will be happy to help 🙂

Tania O’Neill

 

Planning 25/2/19-08/03/19 – Forest Room

The children have been consulted on their learning and this is what we found…

1. Because the children have voiced an interest in café’s, we plan to to explore real and imaginary situations which will help children to understand the world around them. Children will be provided with chef outfits, aprons etc to allow them to engage in imaginary situations through role play where they can dress up, discover the roles of people in a café, enjoy handling, tasting, talking and learning about different foods as well as building an awareness of how money is used (HWB 0-30a / EXA 0-14a / MNU 0-09a).
2. The children have shown a lot of interest in a variety of transport methods. To develop their learning on this, we plan to experiment with imaginative ways to show the different ways in which we can travel. Children will be given opportunities to build models using different materials and objects and to begin using language to describe where they are placing the parts they need to make their design (SOC 0-09a / TCH 0-09a / MTH 0-17a).
3. Due to more children becoming interested in building with the boxes and the wooden blocks, we plan to provide a variety of writing materials for children to draw their designs and to write stories about them or tell them to an adult to write down. Children will be encouraged to work on their own or in small groups to be creative (LIT 0-26a / EXA 0-6a)

 

Parental Involvement

We asked you:

How can we improve the support we give our families to participate in, contribute to and understand the value of their engagement in their child’s learning?

You said:

• More outings eg park, woods
• More keyworker meetings
• Show and tell
• Open parents room
• More notices on boards eg wake up shake up song
• Facebook rather than Glow/Twitter
• More written communication

What we have done/plan on doing:

• Monthly newsletters given out.  You should already have received February’s
• Notice boards have been updated.  The first board on the left now includes information on children’s learning, wake up shake up song, song of the fortnight.  This will be updated regularly.
• Floorbooks past and present are clearly on display for all children, parents and carers to view and write comments/suggestions in.  Past books can be found at the main nursery entrance and present books are located outside each playroom.
• We are currently in the process of planning a Forrest school programme which will involve all parents/carers who wish to participate. Watch this space….

 

From 29/01/19 – 11/02/2019 in the Forrest Room, we are learning to…

1. Use a range of stimuli to develop ideas for writing eg. Talk, pictures objects, own experiences and/or role play
2. Experiment with mark making through a variety of media
3. Explore different materials for measuring length, weight and capacity
4. Use mathematical language ie. Longer/shorter, heavier/lighter, full/empty
5. Accept direction from an adult
6. Adjust to new routines
7. Build models using different materials eg junk modelling

 

From 28/01/19 – 08/02/2019 in the Jungle Room, we are learning to…

1. To use new skills – dressing, toileting, eating tidily
2. To ask an adult for help when needed
3. To listen to and make music
4. To create and invent playing with words, rhymes and jokes
5. To use body movements/ gestures/ expressions/ signals/ sounds/words
6. Begin to discover what containers hold – or not

Burns Day 25/1/2019

The children all participated in celebrating traditions by joining in our annual Burns celebration.  some children confidently recited their Burns poem ‘In My Wee Rid Motor’, listened to ‘The Gruffalo in Scots’, danced to Scottish music in our tartan attire and ate some Haggis Neeps and Tatties for our snack. Marcia plays in a pipe band in her spare time and treated us to a demonstration of the drums. We were very lucky to have a go ourselves too.

Look how much fun we had…

 

What we are learning about

Numeracy – The children have chosen to learn about floating and sinking.  Children will be introduced to a variety of objects which they can explore and sort into these categories.

Literacy – Children are enjoying exploring different resources for mark making and are being encouraged to use these to develop ideas for writing eg. pictures, writing the initial letter of their name

Health and Wellbeing – The nursery has undergone some big changes in the last couple of weeks and as a team we feel that we need to focus on the new routine and settling children back into nursery life after an exciting (and quick) Christmas break.

Technology – The children have been showing an interest in technology across the room.  This area has been developed to meet these interests and the children are enjoying exploring the bee bots, torches and digital camera’s.

 

 

This week the children will be learning their burns poem:

My Wee Rid Motor

In my wee rid motor

I can gang for miles.,

Up an doon the gairden,

Through the lobby whiles.

Mony a bigger motor,

Gangs tae toons afaur.

Nane can gang whaur I gang,

In my wee rid caur.

W/C 21/01/2019

Monday	Start of “Under the Sea” Topic	Start of “Under the Sea” Topic
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday	Lending Library Burns Supper(wear tartan if possible?)	Lending Library Burns Supper(wear tartan if possible?)