Month: February 2024

Hello everyone, we will now be uploading our learning blog monthly as opposed to fortnightly. Here is a little snippet of everything we have been getting up to during the month of February! 

Outdoors: Out in the garden, we have been continuing to explore the ‘Stanley’s Stick’ story as we have been creating a variety of things with sticks. This month we made tepee’s using sticks, ribbon, tape and string and we also went into the Glen and built a den using large sticks and foliage.

We have also been exploring minibeasts and going on regular bug hunts whilst out in the garden. We have been collecting the data from these bug hunts to work out which minibeasts we have the most and least of in our nursery garden.

We have explored the weather during the month of February, in particular the rain. We have observed the rain and discussed where the rain comes from, linking this to the seasons of Winter and Spring. We have also recorded which areas of the garden are the rainiest using homemade rain catchers. We measured how much rain each of the rain catchers collected to find out which area was the rainiest.

We have continued to explore shapes outdoors, going on shape hunts in our local community to see if we can find shapes in our environment. We collected the data from our shape hunt using tally marks to record how many of each shape we found. We then used natural resources to create our own 2D shapes.

We have been developing our early numeracy skills whilst outdoors through a variety of experiences. We have been exploring subitising, estimation, measuring, patterns and identifying/sorting numerals.

STEM: In the stem area, we have been exploring magnets and learning about how magnets work. We have discussed forces of magnets using concepts such as attracting and repelling different objects. We have also been learning which objects are magnetic and which objects are not magnetic and recording our data.

We have also been exploring things that fly and how these things work, this has included things like hot air balloons, aeroplanes and kites. We also made our own flying objects and took these to the gym hall to test them out.

Story Corner: In the Story Corner, we have been exploring our emotions, particularly love as there have been lots of discussions about Valentines Day and people who we love. We have been reading books surrounding feelings and thinking about what makes us feel loved. We drew some of the things that made us feel loved which included things like football and our families.

We have continued to explore the ‘Snail and the Whale’ story by Julia Donaldson. We have been exploring all of the different animals within the story and sorting these into groups based on their habitat.

We have shown a really keen interest in story telling this month and so have been creating our own story books through mark making and re-telling stories.

Creative: In the creative area, we have been exploring shapes through art and the work of different artists. We have explored some famous artists who specialise in abstract art working with shape. We have also been exploring the weather and creating different art work to represent the weather such as making clouds and rainbows using a variety of materials.

Snack and Baking: In the Snack and Baking area, we have been developing our self help skills by using a variety of different utensils to prepare and eat snack including eating our snack using chopsticks. We have been making some exciting new things for snack such as frozen jelly and yoghurts which were a suggestion from one of the children.

Literacy: In the Literacy area, we have been developing our fine motor skills and scissor skills by participating in some scissor challenges such as cutting certain shapes and patterns using scissors.

Numeracy: In the Numeracy area, we have been exploring quantities and the value of numbers as we have been counting out a variety of objects to correspond with a specific number. We have also been exploring problem solving and matching as we used the numicon to create ‘Numicon City’ by using the correct amount and sizes of numicon to fill the space.

Outdoor Learning Group: We have been exploring forces using our new water rockets. We filled the rockets with water before using the pump to pump air into the rockets, creating bubbles and pressure inside. Once the rockets were full of air and the pressure was high, we observed the rockets blast SO high into the air.

We explored sinking and floating as we made rafts using lollipop sticks and sticks. We added different natural materials to the rafts including sticks, stones and leaves to see if this would impact the rafts ability to stay afloat.

Community: We have been involved with our local community as we have been attending ‘The fun zone’ at Twechar Healthy Living and Enterprise Centre. We have been developing our gross motor skills, balance and coordination as we have explored the equipment here as well as building positive relationships whilst playing with our peers and working as a team during play.

Teaching time with Mrs Smith:

Talk4Writing- The children voted for the new talk4writing story and the winner was… Jack & the Beanstalk. We have been busy learning the actions to the story and the children have been using the Group Story Map to help them remember the sequence of the story. Over the next couple of weeks the children will get the opportunity to become authors and create their own story maps based on Jack & the Beanstalk.

Hello everyone,

Here is our home link activity for this fortnight from Mrs Smith, the activity is surrounding our Talk 4 Writing story which is ‘The Gingerbread Man’. The video is linked belong, we hope you enjoy! 🙂

Here is our fortnightly update of all of the fun and learning we have been having at nursery.

STEM: In the STEM area, we have been engineers and builders as we have been constructing brides to help the Gingerbread Man cross over the water safely. One of the children designed a boat to help the Gingerbread Man cross over the water, this was very creative. We have also been experimenting with Gingerbread Men to explore what would happen if they fell into the water, some of the children thought that the Gingerbread Men would float and some others thought they would melt. We found out that in fact the Gingerbread Man sinks and melts when he falls into the water. The children then went on to building boats out of various different materials in order to try and keep the Gingerbread Man safe and help him avoid the water.

Literacy: In the Literacy area, the children have been continuing to explore letters by using ink and letters stampers, we have explored the letters in our names and have practiced spelling out our names using these.

Numeracy: In the Numeracy area, we have been working on estimation and counting. We discussed how many gems we thought it would take to complete a pattern and then counted these afterwards to see if our estimation was correct. We have also been exploring 1-1 correspondence above the number 10. We have been discussing size using a variety of sizes of blocks and have been matching these to the correct spaces.

Sensory and Water/Sand Play: In the sensory and water/sand play area, we have been investigating how water changes from one form to another (ice into water and water into ice). The children mixed the coloured water and developed their fine motor skills as they added food colouring to the water using droppers to do so. We then put the water into the freezer and left it to freeze and become ice. The children then developed their problem solving skills as they discovered different ways to remove the ice from the tub and melted the ice using different methods.

Home Corner and Snack: In the Snack area, we have been exploring the eat well plate and discussing what foods are healthy and unhealthy. The children discussed the effect that food has on our bodies and that we need food for our bodies to grow. We have been making a variety of healthy snacks in the Snack area, including fruit kebabs, yoghurt parfait and some other yummy things!

Story Corner: In the Story Corner, we have continued to explore our Story of the Month which is ‘The Snail and the Whale’ by Julia Donaldson. We have been reading this story regularly and listening out for key components and interesting information throughout. We have created some art work to represent the story such as a whale for our display wall, we looked at photographs of real whales to explore what it should look like. We explored making snail trails and made lots of different marks using a variety of tools, copying the trails that the snail makes in the story.

Creative Area: In the Creative area, we have been exploring shapes using different shape cutters. We have been using the shape cutters dipped in paint to print the shapes.

Outdoors: Whilst outdoors, we have been continuing to explore football as we have been playing the game in teams and working on our general fitness as the professional football players do. We have been developing our gross motor skills, balance, coordination and strength whilst participating in exercise classes with Arran, running races and football drills. We have also been continuing to explore the ‘Stanley’s Stick’ story as we made stick people using play-doh/clay, sticks and loose parts. We have also made paintbrushes using sticks and feathers. We have been focusing on numeracy outdoors as we have explored using ten frames with loose parts and made different shapes using sticks. We have been exploring and learning about plants and flowers, beginning to learn the names of different parts of a flower and about how flowers grow. Our children have learned about respect for living things including plants and are respectful to our natural world.

Teaching time with Mrs Smith:

Talk 4 Writing; As part of the Imitation stage we have been busy learning actions to the story and using a story map to help us remember the order of the story. We have been learning that when we read the story map, we start at the top and read from left to right until we reach the bottom of the map – just like reading the words in a book!

We have also been using a story tray with small world figures, to act out and retell the story. This has encouraged recall of the story and also developed imagination skills as children have created their own versions of the story using the small world figures.

Word Aware; Our 2 focus words are “around” and “twisty”. In order to make these words more meaningful to the children, they were selected from The Gingerbread Man – he ran “around” the kitchen and then down the “twisty” path. Ask your child to show you the action for each of the words and what the words mean.

Numeracy

We have been continuing to learn about how to recognise and sequence numbers.

We have been developing our subitising skills. This is the ability to recognise the number of objects in a group without counting e.g. dots on a dice. We have been looking at regular patterns and irregular patterns. We have used 5 & 10 frames and small gingerbread men figures to create regular patterns.

With irregular patterns the children have been encouraged to talk about the different groups of objects they see e.g. I see a group of 3 and a group of 2. That makes 5 altogether.

Outdoor Learning Group: We have been continuing to explore the story ‘The Snail and the Whale’ as we read the story interactively whilst out in the woods. We told the story as we walked through the Glen and the children hung different pages from the story on the branches, collecting these on the way back as we recalled the story.

PATHS: During PATHs we have been discussing feelings, how it is okay to have feelings, and that everyone has them from children to adults and even our pets. We focused on the feelings of happy and sad. We then looked at real images and drawings of people expressing sad and happy faces and discussed the changes that may happen in our faces such as a smile or tears and we spoke about how people’s faces can tell a lot about how they are feeling. The children used fantastic describing words and thought about the reasons why the people may be feeling the way they were, such as being exhausted, bored, tired, excited, loved and scared. We then discussed ways of managing our feelings if we are sad and who we can speak to if we need help. Some of the suggestions were speaking to mum or dad, talk to the teacher and give your friend a hug. We have continued to give compliments at the beginning of each session and we would be grateful if you could encourage your child to give and receive compliments at home. Thank you for your continued support, Alison, Judith and Tracy.

Burns Night: To celebrate Burns Night at nursery, we had a lovely traditional Scottish lunch consisting of haggis, neeps and tatties followed by some Scottish shortbread. We also tasted some Scottish snacks including oatcakes and shortbread during our Snack time. We learned some traditional Scottish dances and listened to some Scottish music. We also made some Scottish flags and thistles in the creative area using a variety of resources.