Category Archives: Literacy and English

Sharing Stories Together

May 10, 2024 Mrs Husbands Leave a comment

by Mrs Silvester and Miss Zangrande

Sharing books with children is a great way to help children develop language and communication skills. Books can introduce topics to children to help them to understand the world around them. The children have enjoyed creating their own story books. The adults scribed the children’s stories and colourful illustrations were added by the authors. There was much excitement when the stories were read aloud and shared with friends.

The children made a cardboard box setting and sock puppets to act out the stories to their friends as the audience. The children’s interest continued making and using puppets to act out scenes of traditional tales and stories, adding character movement and props to the story.

While at the woods the children collected sticks and leaves to help put together a story scene for the Gruffalo using another cardboard box. We added material to our woodland scene and finally brought the puppets and story book to life. They enjoyed retelling and acting out the story of the Gruffalo in the deep dark woods together enhancing their learning.

- Achievement, Literacy and English

Creating Stories

February 1, 2024 Mrs Brown Leave a comment

Our children love to be creative. Look at the wonderful stories they composed. They shared their stories with the adult who wrote down their words. The children then drew beautiful illustrations and wrote their name as the author.

- Pupils, Health and Wellbeing, Literacy and English

Children as decision makers

November 7, 2023 Mrs Brown Leave a comment

We noticed one of our books was torn so we repaired it with sticky tape. Lots of our books were looking tatty so Mrs Brown asked us what books we would like for the nursery.

“I like this kind.”(held up a flap book from the book corner)

“I like dinosaur books.”

“I have a Yeti story in my house. I’d like that for nursery.”

“I like monster and dragon books. I am not scared by them!”

“I like this book.” (held up Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson)

Adult- “I love Julia Donaldson books…. Do you think we need some more by that author?”

“Yes! We were looking for the Snail and the Whale in nursery but we couldn’t find it.”

“Yes, look at all those ones we could get.” (Looked at inside cover of the book to point to other titles by the same author)

“I like the Gruffalo and the Gingerbread man. I have them in my house.”

“I like the Worrysaurus.”

Here are some of the books we bought, just as requested by the children, along with some others to reflect our nursery values. We look forward to more books being delivered soon, including the ever popular Julia Donaldson titles and some traditional tales.

This book was torn and tatty so we replaced it.

Health and Wellbeing, Literacy and English

Teamwork

September 21, 2023 Miss Abernethy Leave a comment

by Mrs Sylvester

In the garden, some of the children have been enjoying a story about a hedgehog who learns the importance of friendship and being helpful. In the story, the hedgehog struggles to remove an apple from his spikes and is helped by a donkey.

To retell the story, we found a toy hedgehog and donkey but we also needed an apple. The children thought we should gather some apples from the apple tree in the nursery garden but unfortunately the apples were out of reach. With little success, the children independently tried to reach the apples using various techniques such as jumping up high, using hula-hoops and even sticks to reach the apples from the branches.

However, when the children shared ideas and worked together they were finally able to reach the apples. Just like in the story, the children learnt the value of friendship and teamwork!

“I can get the apple with the hula-hoop. I tried but I didn’t get it. I can’t reach it!” “I will try with this big stick!”

“I’ll get the crates to stand on. Pass me a stick! I will get it! I got one!”

“We can use the apples for our hedgehog story.”

Literacy and English, Sciences

Virtual Nature Schools – Water

February 9, 2023 Miss Abernethy Leave a comment

by Miss Liddell

During our Virtual Nature School journey, we explored the theme of water.

We asked the children to think about places where they might find water. They had lots of great ideas such as in rivers, seas, ponds, “in our taps” and “in bottles.” One child shared:

“When it rains and then I can jump in big puddles!”

The children then decided they wanted to play outside in the puddles and explore the water. However, we had one BIG problem…it wasn’t raining! Somebody suggested:

“We could do a rain dance and make it rain!”

This led to a whole range of creative learning experiences. We watched videos of Native Americans doing a rain dance, we made headdresses and we explored and played musical instruments.

“Where did he get those big feathers? What’s that called?”

The children were disappointed when their rain dance did not work so we discussed the water cycle to understand how rain is made.

We learned lots of new vocabulary such as evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection.

We also did some fun experiments to see how the water cycle worked.

“Boiling water is hot. It will burn you!”

Expressive Arts, Literacy and English, Technologies

Batty About Bats!

November 29, 2022 Miss Abernethy Leave a comment

by Mrs Burnett

November has provided so many opportunities for quality conversations with the children and helped nurture a love of inquiry and investigation.

After the excitement of Halloween, the children were talking about scary things they had associated with having been out guising. Vampires and bats were a recurring theme, which some children seemed genuinely worried about, so we explored a little about bats to dispel the myths about them being scary.

“They drink your blood.”

“Bats are scary…but not Batman. I like him.”

“I don’t like them, they frighten me.”

Investigation

We talked about how we could find out more information on bats and discovered we could ask people to see what they know, we could look up books in the nursery and we could look on the computer to help us.

“My daddy knows a lot about stuff, I could ask him”

We considered what we wanted to know about bats, which included what they eat… particularly do they drink people’s blood at Halloween, but also where they live, where they sleep and what do baby bats look like?

Children naturally have inquiring minds and researching together further develops an interest in discovery. It also reinforces that it is ok not to know something because we can all learn something new.

“He is like a little mouse.” “Awwww, it’s so cute.”

“It has a funny squashy face!” “They eat midges….yuck!”

We discovered that bats are not so scary after all…even vampire bats because “they don’t live in Scotland.” The children particularly liked the pictures of the Natterer’s Bat which they nicknamed “the laughing bat” because “he is smiling” in the photos. We learned that many of the species of bat we have in Scotland are tiny and most weigh less than a £1 coin, which felt very light when we held the coin in our hands. We even found out what bat poop looks like!

Development

We learned online that you can make your own bat box .

“It’s a bit like a bird house.”

Some of the children drew pictures of the bat they wanted to make a house for and even drew a design for a bat box.

With the help of a social enterprise that specialises in recycling wood, we sourced a bat box that the children helped assemble using the tool bench. One of the children even tested it out for size using a dinosaur!

“I want to make a house for the laughing bat.”

Our bat box is ready for the spring when the bats come out of hibernation and everyone now agrees that bats are not scary any more.

Expressive Arts, Literacy and English

Small World Play

November 11, 2022 Miss Abernethy Leave a comment

by Mrs Cramb

Small world play is when children use figures and resources in miniature to build stories and play imaginatively. Your small world could represent a real-life place like a farm, zoo, nursery, home or it might be a completely imaginary world.

Small world play offers a fantastic opportunity to grow a child’s imagination and is also an outlet for their emotions. Children can do everything from acting out routines or recalling past events, to building their own unique stories.

When observing the children, l noticed that they were using their imagination to pretend that they were superheroes. I asked the children if they would like to create their own superhero small world. They decided they wanted to create a small world for some of our superhero peg people. The children selected an empty box from the junk modelling and recycled it into an amazing building for our superheroes to explore.

The children chose the colours to paint their box and used different patterned rollers, which gave the outside of their box some texture. They added some small stones, twigs, logs and leaves. Once it was finished and dry, the children were ready to explore their building with their superheroes.

Creating small worlds helps your child to develop their language skills, imagination, curiosity and friendships, as well as allowing their confidence to grow. It also allows the child to think and ask questions about the different environments that we live in and the ones that they want to create.

There are many benefits of children making and exploring small worlds so please join in at home and allow your child to take the lead, while you support them in creating at their own wonderful world to explore. You could create your own characters using wooden clothes pegs, wooden lollipop sticks or even use the children’s own toys like safari animals, farm animals or dinosaurs. Anything goes, it’s your small world!

Literacy and English, Sciences

Virtual Nature Schools

November 1, 2022 Miss Abernethy Leave a comment

by Miss Chrystal

We have recently introduced the Virtual Nature School program within our centre. This term, we have been using natural resources to develop speech and language skills through a range of activities, all led by the children’s interests.

The children have developed their communication skills through a variety of different water and mud play experiences. This has enabled the children to explore new vocabulary, talk about their ideas and think about how things change within the natural environment.

Water

The children have been exploring the different ways that we can experiment with water and colour change. We made our own clouds and rain using shaving foam and food colouring.

The children became confident at using a range of resources such as pipettes and paintbrushes. They were able to describe the change of state when the ice melted and also describe the colour changes that took place in the water.

We also explored different pictures of water experiences and the children discussed of what they associate each picture with:

“I see water at the park.” “ I go swimming.” “When it is raining, I can jump in puddles.”

Mud

The second element we explored was mud. The children led their own learning within this block with staff observing the children’s play. We were fortunate that it rained so we put on our wellies and waterproofs and went to play in the mud.

“Look, muddy puddles! I am jumping so high to make a huge splash!”

The children were engrossed in their play. They used their imaginations and they were confident to express their ideas and interests. They created their own mud paint as well as using paper to create muddy footprints from their wellies.

The children developed their confidence by talking and exploring a variety of vocabulary when asked to describe the texture of the mud.

“It is squelchy!”

“The rain has made it all gooey and sticky!”

Literacy and English, parents

World Book Day 2022

March 7, 2022 Mrs Husbands Leave a comment

We celebrated World Book Day by coming to nursery in our pyjamas and bringing in our favourite stories (and teddies!).

We had a special snack of Gruffalo Tusks…

We shared lots of stories through the day and a special ‘thank you’ goes to our visitors who read stories outdoors.

There is a World Book Day Token for everyone – we hope you enjoy reading the special £1 books that you can use it to buy.

Literacy and English

Mark Making

November 3, 2021 Miss McCallum Leave a comment

The children have been busy enjoying exploring different ways of mark making inside the nursery and outside in the gardens. Mark making gives children the opportunity to express themselves and explore using a variety of tools and materials, while also supporting development of fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. Furthermore, mark making allows children to develop their creativity and imagination, and communicate their feelings.

Here are a few photos to show you what the children have been doing:

Paper and Pens

“My butterflies are flying away in the sky.”

Paint and brush

“Do you like my stripes?”

Chalk

“I like drawing outside with the chalk”

Large floor drawing

“I’m using lots of crayons to draw lots and lots of circles.”

Playdough stampers

“They look like little flowers.”

Car ramp tyre print

“My car is going down really fast. I can see the paint.”

Gloop

“It feels all sticky on my fingers.”

Rollerball painting

“The balls are mixing all the paint together.”

Salt

“I’m drawing an aeroplane.”

Feather writing

“This is quite tricky to hold the feather.”

Large painting

“Can you reach up to the top like me?”

Shaving Foam

“My hands are so messy.”

There are many more mark making ideas that you could try at home such as ice writing, mud painting, shadow drawing or crayon rubbings on different textures.

Please remember to share your learning on Twitter @Glenwood FC #Glenwoodlearningathome

Literacy and English

Story Stones

September 30, 2021 Mrs Husbands Leave a comment

Story stones are great resources for developing children’s communication skills, promoting their language skills and encouraging their imagination and creativity.

Here are some ideas you can use story stones for at home..

Add the story stones to a sensory bin.
Place them face-down on a table. Children can begin a story and then flip over a story stone to incorporate that idea or prompt. Remember it does not need to be in sequential order!
Read a book together with your child. After the book, tell the story again using the story stones.
Play Kim’s game and see if the children can identify what character or scene is missing.
Practice sequencing stories by lining the story stones up in the order of a story.

When using the story stones use language such as:

Once upon a time..
The next thing to happen…
Suddenly…

These phrases help develop your child’s ability to predict and retell stories they are both familiar and unfamiliar with.

All you need to make your own story stones are:

Stones of any shape, size and colour
Paints or paint pens

If you try this at home, why not share your photographs with us on Twitter @GlenwoodFC

Literacy and English

Bookbug at Glenwood

September 22, 2021 Mrs Husbands Leave a comment

In all our rooms we love exploring our favourite books. We use puppets and props to help us retell traditional tales.

“The troll is scary! He tries to eat the goats. I like the bit when the goat hits him with its horns.”

Taking part in regular Bookbug sessions, we have enjoyed listening to familiar stories and we have been learning some new songs, as well as reciting our favourite nursery rhymes.

Look out for links to our Google meet Bookbug sessions next week for Math Week Scotland and you can join in from home too!

Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Literacy and English, Numeracy and Mathematics, Sciences

Playdough and loose parts play

June 22, 2021 User deactivated Leave a comment

The orchard bubble have been busy!

The orchard bubble has shown a great interest in making playdough over the last few weeks. The children have taken responsibility for their own learning by coming up with different ideas of how they want to create their playdough from colours and texture. “I want blue.”

“I want pink.”

The children had shown an interest in loose parts and wanted to include this in their playdough experience. By incorporating loose parts with playdough the children are developing their fine motor skills. They use a variety of movements such as pressing, rolling and stretching. This will help to strengthen the muscles in their hand which in turn will help them with their writing skills.

“I want to use leaves.”

“Oooohhh feathers.”

The children showed ownership over their creations and seemed to enjoy the fact that they could start again when one model was finished. They did show interest in taking them home so our next steps will be trying to create models with loose parts and clay.

“Can we take them home?”

Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Literacy and English, Numeracy and Mathematics

Musicality benefits

June 16, 2021 User deactivated Leave a comment

From a very young age children benefit in all areas of their development when taking part in musicality sessions.

Literacy

Helps children understand the meaning and the sound of words.
Helps develop their listening skills (loud, quiet)
Rhyming
Syllables (clapping out)
Helps them predict
Imagination
Conversation
Follow instruction

Maths

Counting beats
Number song
Recognition of numbers
Recognition of Shapes And their names
Rhythm pattern

Gross and fine motor motor skills

Jumping, hopping, skipping and dancing.
Helps them develop and control their body movements.
Better control at manipulating objects (instruments)
Helps strengthen their muscles.
Moving the instruments in all different directions(up downside to side, front back)

Social and emotional skills

Interaction with other children.
Introduction to different kinds of music and cultural differences awareness.
Increasing confidence in performing
Sharing resources.

Literacy and English, Numeracy and Mathematics, Technologies

INFORMATION COMMUNICATION AND TECHNOLOGY

May 4, 2021 Mrs Brown Leave a comment

Through play opportunities children can experience a range of resources that support their ICT knowledge and understanding.

CHOOSING ICT TOYS

In Glenwood, the children can choose ICT from a choosing book. The children chose a voice recordable game which supports children’s numeracy and literacy skills.

TORCHES

During their learning the children were interested in the shapes and patterns made by the light and shadows outdoors in the sunshine. To re-create shadows indoors light from a torch was projected onto a hanging sheet. The children used their bodies and open-ended resources to explore shadows, identify shapes or people from behind the sheet.

BEE-BOT

The children programmed a small robot to move forward, backwards, left and right movements to move around the floor. A programmable toy can support literacy and numeracy skills.

REMOTE CONTROL TOYS

Using remote-control toys children learn about cause-and-effect. As they play as they work out which buttons make the car go in each direction. The children set up an obstacle course with ramps to drive up and down, or tunnels for them to drive through. This is a great way to develop a child’s hand-eye co-ordination. Some of our remote control toys are operated by the iPad.

INTERACTIVE BOARD

An interactive smart board allows images from a computer screen to be displayed onto a classroom board where the children can interact with the images directly on the screen using a tool or even a finger.

IPADS/TABLETS

Ipads are available as part of the nursery’s continuous provision and children are encouraged to use them to record their achievements and share it with others using the ipads.

IMAGINARY PLAY

During their imaginary role-play children are provided with old ICT equipment. Children are observed in the home corner using the ICT in real life situations i.e. an office, a train or even a trip to space.

EXPLORING ICT AND HOW IT WORKS

Taking apart old pieces of everyday ICT equipment to look at what is inside and how it works is a popular activity. Children explore the inside of old clocks, computer boards, telephones and CD players.

Literacy and English, Numeracy and Mathematics

How big is a dinosaur?

March 19, 2021 Mrs Husbands Leave a comment

Many of the children have been enjoying playing with the new dinosaurs. We had lots of questions so we watched some videos on Tig Tag Junior. We learned about how they became extinct.

“When a big space rock made some dust it made the place go dark. Then without sunlight the plants died. Then without plants the plant-eating dinosaurs died. Then all the meat-eaters died. Then they all started to die. Extinct.”

“What size was a T-Rex?”

We used books to research and discovered that a Tyrannosaurus rex was 12 metres long. Would it fit in our playroom? Let’s find out by measuring…

Our playroom is 10 metres long – “T-rex’s head would be next door!” Which dinosaur is smallest? We researched on the iPad. Compsognathus was 60cm long and 40cm tall.

Let’s put them in order…

Literacy and English, Uncategorized

Remote Learning: Time to Rhyme

February 4, 2021 Mrs Husbands Leave a comment

Rhyming words are words that have the same ending sound: bat & cat, frog & log, car & star… Learning to recognise rhyme is an important step in learning to read.

Nursery Rhymes – Sharing songs and nursery rhymes with young children is the first step towards this and also helps create a bond with their carers.

Find out more: https://www.scottishbooktrust.com/reading-and-stories/why-share-songs-and-rhymes

The Scottish Book Trust has a Bookbug App for you to share stories, songs and rhymes together. Find out more here.

The CBeebies website also has lots of nursery rhymes to share. Click here.

Once your child understands rhyme you could make up some silly ones together… why not try Humpty Dumpty?

Humpty Dumpty sat in a tree, he fell down and hurt his …

Humpty Dumpty sat on a bed, he fell down and broke his…

Or Twinkle, Twinkle?

Twinkle, Twinkle little mouse, hiding in your little…

Twinkle, Twinkle little moon, I’d like to eat you with a …

Rhyming Stories – Lots of children’s stories are written in rhyme. As you read with your child, try missing out the last word to let them fill it in.

Here are just a few authors who write rhyming stories:

Lynley Dodd – Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy
Jez Alborough – Fix It Duck, Some Dogs Do
Kes Gray – Oi Frog, Oi Dog, Oi Cat, How Many Legs?
Nick Sharratt – Chocolate Mousse for Greedy Goose, Don’t Put Your Finger in the Jelly, Nelly!, Octopus Socktopus
Giles Andreae – Commotion in the Ocean, Mad About Minibeasts
Clare Freedman – Aliens Love Underpants
Dr Seuss – The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham

One of our favourite authors is Julia Donaldson and some of her rhyming stories have been made into animations. Why not watch some together? Zog and the Flying Doctors

Rhyme Games

Create a rhyming basket – Collect together pairs of rhyming objects – they could be toys or household items. Take out an object… can you find it’s rhyming partner?

Go on a rhyming treasure hunt – Collect together some objects again but this time challenge your child to find a rhyme around your house or garden. You might put in a star (to rhyme with car), a parrot (rhymes with carrot), a bee (to match with knee or tree), a cat (rhymes with mat or hat) or a bear (to rhyme with pear). I’m sure you will think of many more!

Play I-Spy – On a walk or in the house, you could play a rhyming version of I-spy…

I spy with my little eye, something that rhymes with bee.

I spy with my little eye, something that rhymes with bog.

It’s OK if your child makes up nonsense words – that means that they have understood the concept of rhyme.

Why not play this rhyming game on the computer with Grover from Sesame Street?

Share you rhyming fun on Google Classroom or Twitter @GlenwoodFC #Glenwoodlearningathome

Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Literacy and English, Numeracy and Mathematics, Technologies

Loose Parts

November 18, 2020 Mrs Brown Leave a comment

Did you know, Loose Parts have no specific function or goal?

They can be moved, arranged, designed, taken apart and more!

Using loose parts the children explored patterns, building, and teamwork. By using the blocks, small cuts of wood, guttering and some cardboard boxes, they were able to build a house with a chimney and talk to each other about the placement of the resources!

There are a variety of resources lying around within your home that can be utilised as loose parts such as:

Pots and pans
Spoons, sieves and mashers
Tin foil
Sheets
Sticks, leaves
Plastic bottles, bottle tops

Check out the poster for more ideas!

When children interact with loose parts, they enter a world of “what if” that promotes the type of thinking that leads to problem solving and theoretical reasoning. Loose parts enhance children’s ability to think imaginatively and see solutions… the use of loose parts is open ended and limitless!