Our last week before the summer holidays has been filled with lots of fun and laughter. Our ECC beach party was a great success, even with the slightly overcast weather. 🤣 🏝️ ☀️

A big goodbye and good luck to all our children starting their new adventure in Primary 1 in August, we will miss you all ❤️  Pop into the ECC on your first day of Primary 1 to show the staff you looking all grown up in your P1 uniform ⭐️

We would like to say a massive thank you and fair well to Jan❤️ As many of you will know, Jan has worked at Mauchline ECC for 27 years, working within EAC for over 40 years. She will be a massive loss to our team but we are super excited to wish her well on her retirement and all the new adventures she will have. I’m sure she won’t be a stranger✨

It’s also coming to that time when Cara finishes up to start her maternity leave. We wish her and her partner all the best during this exciting time and can’t wait to meet her new arrival👶🏼🍼💕💖

And finally, a massive thank you to all the staff past and present, children and families for another great year. We look forward to going again in August! Have a wonderful summer holiday and be safe☀️

Lots of love from all the staff at Mauchline ECC ❤️

This week, the children had been talking about the “Aurora borealis” from the weekend, this sparked an interest in the night sky and finding out more information about space. We used the internet research engine to fact find about planets and solar systems in space. We have enjoyed creating our own spaceship and creating our own astronaut suits.

We also enjoyed using various coloured stones to create a transient art planet 🌎 . We explored information books to develop our knowledge around planets before exploring a range of small loose parts, developing hand-eye coordination.

 

In the creative area, we added tubes of coloured paint to the water for them to experiment and watch colours mix. The children worked hard to open the tube to mix the colours and was excited to watch it pour changing the colour. Creating their own Aurora borealis.

We were in the Quiet Room as the Music Room was busy this week but we still had fun doing our music and movement to the “Sticky Kids”. 💃🏽🕺🎶

Outdoors, we have been working on our problem solving and thinking skills. The children created their own obstacle course outside and tested their gross motor skills and understanding of behind, in front of, above and below. They were able to work together as a team to create different challenges and could adapt the course to make it more challenging.

The children have been very engaged in the construction area, using thinking and problem solving skills to create a house with friends. The houses had walls, windows and doorways. They explored risky play as we had to figure out a way to keep our house safe from falling and use our safety skills to manoeuvre loose parts.

As part of Health Week next week, the ECC are participating in walk to school week. Attached is the themes for each day.

 

Indoors

This week we have continued exploring our interest in animals and further explored animal habitats and animal pattern. We have been learning about the tropical jungle and forest in Africa and the Wetlands and Waterways. We explored shape and pattern throughout this learning and also enjoyed lots of imaginative play and construction/problem solving. We created our own African necklaces in the art area, focusing on pattern and colour and also drew our own jungle scenes.

We continued to expand our learning through research using iPads and the Promethean board. The children learnt some new words this week such as; endangered, species and extinct!

“Endangered means there isn’t many animals left in the world”

“Species is the different animals”

“It means there’s none left”

Links to the Curriculum; Social Studies, Science, Technology, Numeracy, Expressive Arts.

Outdoors

This week we have began exploring space. The children were keen to take part in the planet hop where they discovered things about the different planets, this is part of our focus outdoors in line with the book “How to catch a Star”. Some children made their own rocket-ships using magnetic shapes then expanded on this by making larger rockets that they could sit in. Lots of imagination and team work through construction too.

Links to the curriculum; Science, Health and Well-being, Numeracy, Literacy

Out in the Community

We explored the local community when out a walk and discussing the importance of road safety and keeping ourselves safe when in the community 🚦 We also popped in to the local shop to say hi to the shopkeeper 😊

Our woodland Wednesday we continued to expand our focus on insects and used our investigation and exploration skills to find them.

During both of these visits we focussed the importance of listening to an adult, road safety and keeping safe , the purpose of the green cross code, stop, look and listen ✋👀👂 recognising key traffic signs and noises.

Links to the curriculum; social studies, health and well-being, science

 

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend!
Beth✨

In the playroom, we have been enjoying den building. We used wooden blocks and various types of material to create houses for some animals. 

In the creative area, we are beginning to learn about the lifecycle of a butterfly with a main focus on caterpillars at the moment. We have been working on number recognition and have began to explore symmetry, shape and pattern further.

 

Curricular Areas – Science, HWB, Numeracy, Technologies

As a result of the children’s vote, we will be moving on to gymnastics during our gym time  🤸‍♀️. This week we were exploring movement skills, competences and concepts. The children were developing their movement skills through practice and energetic play as well as learning how to move their body & exploring how to control it. Next week we will be introducing larger apparatus  🧗‍♀️

Curricular Areas – HWB

Outdoors we have been enjoying imaginative play, we created our own cafe in the mud kitchen and explored different ingredients.

The children have continued to explore architecture through drawing and problem solving in the construction area.

 

As part of Mental Health Week, we have explored various activities throughout the week. This included mindfulness activities, children’s yoga and lots of discussion and stories to support our children’s wellbeing. Also a focus on children’s rights. Thank you for taking part in Express Yourself Day and our HWB home-link.

Hope everyone has a lovely holiday weekend!

Beth⭐️

Indoor learning

This week we created our very own Elf Workshop indoors🎁. We explored different skills in this area such as development of our fine motor skills through cutting, developing hand eye co-ordination and exploring different shapes and sizes with the wrapping paper. We also created our own shop at the play dough area, beginning to explore money and focus on sharing and turn taking.

 

We read the story Oh Lila. This story aims to help children to develop an understanding that you go to a trusted adult for help, understand who that trusted adult might be and understand that asking for help is good thing to do. Below is a resource to discuss Oh Lila at home.

On Thursday we celebrated St Andrews Day🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 We spoke about who St Andrew was, what he means to Scotland and how we celebrate. The children experienced Scottish music, dance and a story as well as some exploring pattern through Scottish Tartan in the art area.

 

Outdoors we focussed on imaginative play, we created our own cafe in our new mud kitchen; naming it the Star Cafe⭐️ We made our own Christmas menus and role played as families, chefs and customers. We also enjoyed a lot of loose parts to create Santas workshop and sleigh🎅🏼

Remember next Friday(8th) is our Christmas concert🎄🎅🏼 We hope you can all make it! We have been working extremely hard on our songs🥰

Have a lovely weekend everyone

Beth☺️