I n d o o r s 😊

This week in the ECC we have been exploring Scottish Castles🏰🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 The children began learning about Scottish castles and explored when they were built, how they were built and what they were used for. We even had a look at the castle in Disneyland. The children have been building on their enquiry skills, help to understand how people from different cultures used to live and comparing and contrasting the world today and the past. The children were also using technology to explore castles and find out useful information.

The children have also been exploring shapes and creating their own mosaic castles.

Links to Curriculum; Social Studies, Expressive Arts, Technology, Literacy.

Beginning to explore Scottish dancing within the ECC and we are having a special guest attending the ECC next week- a highland dancer from Aileen Robertson School of Highland dance to perform to the children 🕺.

C r e a t i v e     A r e a 😊

In the creative area we have been exploring the work of an artist, Steven brown art and we even created our own McCoo and the children named it May McCoo 🐮

Links to the Curriculum; Literacy, Expressive Arts, Social Studies.

Week beginning 8th January 2024

We are beginning to explore Scotland in the ECC.🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿We have watched some videos of highland dancing and began to copy the moves, we discussed the type of clothing dancers wear and where they might perform, leading us to discussion of Edinburgh Castle🏰.

Children have been using a small world castle to role play using their imagination and a selection of Scottish, tartan dress up clothes to support increasing knowledge of their own country.

Building our own Scottish castles🏰🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿  in our Scottish highlands imaginative area working on gross motor and team work skills.

Leading up to Robert Burns day we will be exploring Scottish songs and rhymes and learning a Scottish poem “The wee rid motor”, a copy of the words have been put on learning journals.

Creatively children have been exploring the saltire flag of Scotland using craft materials. Whilst learning all about Scotland the country we live in, we used our imagination and creativity skills and created her own Scotland flag 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 with the playdough.

Outdoors we have been exploring the Scottish weather which this week has been frost and ice. Children have been experimenting how to extract ice from the equipment and then see how small they can make it. Conversation led to discussion where we may find ice and interest has led to mountains. We will continue to explore  more about Scottish mountains and our weather through play.

We will be learning more about Scotland over the next few weeks.

CfE areas – science, technology, expressive arts, literacy,  numeracy, RME, social studies, health & wellbeing.

Please check learning journals for our latest newsletters and dates for up and coming personal plans meetings.

Hope you have a lovely weekend, Lynnette x

Week beginning 18.12.23

What an exciting week we have had in the run up to the holidays 😊🎉🎅

🄸🄽🄳🄾🄾🅁🅂

Indoors this week, the children have enjoyed exploring transient art 🪵🌲

https://earlyimpactlearning.com/transient-art-definition-examples-activities/

They enjoyed exploring various materials and creating Christmas trees using moveable objects 🎄 This encourages creativity with open ended resources and supports language and communication skills.

Some children created play dough before exploring various shape cutters, making Christmas ‘cookies’ 🍪 We added some cinnamon spice to the play dough and enjoyed using our senses to smell and touch throughout. We also decorated some gingerbread biscuits with our TAP teacher Hannah before eating them 😋 The children discussed the different smells, taste and touch. Some children described the biscuits as spicy, salty and minty 🍪

P A R T Y!

On Tuesday we enjoyed our Christmas party 🎈 All children looked amazing in their party clothes and enjoyed taking part in some party games. We played musical bumps, Christmas corners and had a prize for the best dancer. We danced to a selection of Christmas music and showed off our favourite moves 🕺 Also, thank-you to the parent council for donating a special party snack 🍬

P A N T O M I M E

Our N5 children had the opportunity to watch our in school pantomime on Wednesday ‘ Robin Hood.’ They all thoroughly enjoyed the performance.

Oh yes they did! 🍿🎭

🄾🅄🅃🄳🄾🄾🅁🅂

Outdoors this week some children enjoyed making a gaming station using wooden planks and crates. The children worked together and shared the resources well. They also created an ice rink using the wood, working together and working as a team.

Some children created a water slide with balance materials 💦 They took it in turns to explore the slide and had great fun. This supports the development of large motor skills as well as encouraging problem solving and creativity. The children also demonstrated balance and co-ordination skills and supported each other throughout. Due to a weather warning, outdoors was not permitted at the end of the week for the safety and welfare of everyone 🌬

The staff at Mauchline ECC wish all our children and families a healthy and happy Christmas 🎄Stay safe and we can’t wait to see what 2024 has in store for us all 😀

𝐿𝒾𝓈𝒶 x

This week in the Main Playroom the children have been exploring different traditions for Christmas and finding out the true meaning behind Christmas 🎅🏼  🎄

RME/ Literacy

This week in the Art area the children have been making gingerbread men. We have been focusing on the story of the Gingerbread man and making our own song.

We have also been Creating our own Christmas biscuits 🍪 🎅The children have been exploring the play dough and creating Christmas biscuits to sell in our Christmas shop 🏬

Expressive Arts/ Literacy

This week on outdoors the children have been continuing to explore distance through mathematical language. We set a challenge to see who could make the sleigh travel the furthest 🛷.

Indoor Learning

The children have been busy writing letters to Santa and creating patterns to make their own wrapping paper. They have been using the Christmas cutters in the dough area to make shape cookies, they were discussing the different shapes and selling them in their Christmas Cafe. The children have been focusing on how Christmas is celebrated in different countries around the world and the meaning behind advent. On Thursday the children wore their Christmas jumpers and enjoyed a Christmas lunch in the dining hall.

Curricular Areas: Health and Well-being, Expressive Arts, RME

Outdoor Learning

This week the children who have been outdoors have been using their  imagination to build a boat and travel to South America, using the iPad to find different countries and how far away they are. They had fun exploring the frost and ice, using warm water to make patterns and write on the ice and watching it melt. They also made Christmas lights using paint and talking about the length of their lights, being long and short. Some of the children made bird feeders to take to the woods during their Woodland Wednesday visit, whilst at the woods they listened to a story that explored senses and explored the change in weather❄️

We would like to thank everyone who came along to our Christmas sing-a-long this morning, we hope you all enjoyed it and were as proud of the children as we were. 🎅🏼👏👏😊

Have a lovely weekend everyone 🎅🏼🤗

Jan

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☺️

Indoor Learning

The children explored the music room in the school this week.  They were introduced to a variety of musical instruments, drums, maracas, bells and tambourine. The children focused on “beat” and learned to tap out their name  on the instruments.

Curriculum Links: Expressive Arts.

We have been beginning to introduce Christmas as it’s all the children are talking about.  Yes it’s only November but the children are busy preparing!  The elves  in Santa’s workshop have been busy making items for the Christmas Fayre.

Indoors-

This week in the ECC we have been celebrating Nursery Rhyme week 🎶

We have been focusing on reciting our rhymes, identifying rhyming words and the odd one out. Parents also attended the ECC to participate in song and rhyme time with their child, thank you to all who attended 🤩 🎶

Links to the Curriculum; Literacy, Numeracy, Expressive Arts.

This week group 4 attended the woods and began exploring and risk assessing the woodland area. The children also enjoyed discussing the weather and the changes in the weather ☔️ 🌧 The children were also using their senses to explore 👀 👃 🖐