by Miss McCallum
This year’s theme for British Science Week was time.
We followed the instructions and made our own sand timers. We used a stopwatch to count how long our sand timer ran for. It was two minutes.
Using our sand timers we timed how long it took for our colour changing flower experiment to work. We made predictions on how many times we would need to turn the timer over.
by Mrs Burnett
Continuing our theme of Spring planting, what a lot we have learned from simply planting a few little sunflower seeds.
Back in March, to set the stage for World Down’s Syndrome Day we used fundraising seed bags donated by one of our lovely children, to sow some sunflowers indoors.
We scrutinised the differences between the seeds of the normal yellow sunflowers and a new red variety we had discovered.
We carefully followed the instructions on how to plant the seeds, learning what plants need to grow.
Keen to learn what was happening to our seeds under the soil, we looked at fact books about sunflowers and watched time lapse videos of the sunflower life cycle on the iPad.
We have been checking our pots regularly and when the sunny weather came, we transferred them to a sheltered spot in the garden. We ordered them by size and gave each one a number and a name including Bonzo, Sunny and Apple Crumble!
Developing our numeracy skills, we have been having a go at estimating and then measuring the sunflowers’ height progress, plotting the results on a chart.
During a sunflower health check, we spotted that two plants had mysteriously lost their leaves. On closer examination we noticed a rogue slug and problem solved together…
“It’s just a baby one.”
“It will eat our sunflowers.”
“We have to take it away from Bonzo!”
“Maybe we could put it in the bug hotel for a holiday?”
Having gently relocated the slug off on its holidays and continuing to provide Bonzo and friends with tender loving care, we are trying hard to be patient as we wait for our sunflowers to bloom.
Roll on summer 😎
by Mrs Clark
Learning about time is an important skill for children because it is something they will use throughout their whole life.
At Glenwood, we use routines, events and play activities to link with times and seasons to help build our children’s awareness.
Calendars are a fantastic resource to encourage talk about important events such as birthdays and annual celebrations, and we use these to help our children to learn about dates, days of the week and months of the year.
We play games such as ‘What’s The Time, Mr Wolf?’ to develop children’s understanding of o’clock and the numbers on a clock face ranging from 1-12.
Having the opportunity to use clocks and watches encourages our children to record and display their own ideas about time and build an understanding of both analogue and digital time.
We make connections to the changing seasons as we access daily outdoor play and look at resources that we wear or use. This helps our children to develop an awareness of the features of the four seasons.
On a daily basis we also make use of visual timetables, sand timers for turn taking, sing songs, look at books and use online resources to help our children have a greater understanding of time. We also talk about different times of the day e.g. morning, afternoon, evening, and use language associated with time e.g. now, then and next.
We hope that this gives you some inspiration for things you can try at home!
by Mrs Wilson
The children have been very busy over the last few weeks planning and preparing everything we need to get ready to start planting in our nursery garden.
We made a floor map to add our ideas about what we needed to do and what we would like to grow.
One of the ideas from the floor map was to plant pumpkin seeds so we could grow our own for Halloween. We learned that pumpkin seeds are planted on their sides and when they are growing they will need lots of water.
We have been developing our fine and gross motor skills as we used trowels to dig out weeds and turn over the soil in our raised beds so the soil is prepared for planting. Some of the children remembered that last year some of our plants were eaten by slugs, so we decided to go on a slug hunt in the garden so we could remove them.
Using soapy water and sponges we washed out old plant pots so they are ready for planting our new seeds.
Potatoes are always a favourite to grow with the children at our family centre. We used our observation skills and magnifying glasses to learn about chitting seed potatoes to allow the eyes to grow before we can plant them.
To decide what we are going to plant we used buttons to choose our three favourite fruits or vegetables to grow in the garden.
We made a graph using unifix cubes to help interpret the results of our fruit and vegetable survey.
The children are now looking forward to planting in the garden. This will help to develop their knowledge and understanding about how the different plants grow and how to look after them, as well as the opportunity to taste a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables when they are ready to harvest.
Further information about growing fruits, vegetables and flowers and gardening with children can be found on the following websites:
https://www.rhs.org.uk/education-learning/gardening-children-schools/family-activities/grow-it
https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/tips-for-gardening-with-children/
by Mrs Silvester
The children at Glenwood have been visiting Eastwood Park to explore our environment and notice signs of Autumn. We collected sticks, conkers, leaves and fir cones which we used in our play.
Our autumn nature collection was placed in a tuff tray and masking tape was used to section it off. Bowls and tongs were provided to explore nature’s treasure, developing the children’s hand eye coordination and their pincer grip . The children enjoyed counting the contents to see who had the most.
The children used the workbench and hand held drill to make a hole in the conker then threaded them together to make a conker number line. Risky play with real tools develops children’s skills including communication, coordination and fine and gross motor development.
by Mrs Clark
Our woodland adventures are always full of exploration, and it is a great opportunity for our children to investigate patterns in both their local environment and in nature to develop their awareness.
Children’s ability to see patterns forms the basis of early mathematical thinking. Encouraging children to become aware of patterns helps them to build up the skill of spotting patterns for themselves.
Children also learn to identify and talk about the shapes in patterns.
Why not go on a pattern hunt and see what you can find?
We have been learning about money and exploring coins in lots of our play experiences.
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?”
From a very young age children benefit in all areas of their development when taking part in musicality sessions.
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.
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…
We have had great fun learning how to use a variety of our digital toys.
We have been developing our use of directional language using our Code-a-pillars and Sphero.
“When you put the body bits on it goes left and right.”
“I made it go forwards then turn around.”
“The green one goes forward.”
We use an App on the iPad to make Sphero…
It took great teamwork and problem solving skills to build an obstacle course and pathways for the Wonder Bug. We had to work together to find the best way to help Wonder Bug travel from one end of the room to the other.
“We need a ramp for it to go up.”
“It will need to balance on top.”
“If we add a corner, it will need to turn the corner.”
Healthy Henry likes to eat healthy food but he says it’s OK to have a treat sometimes.
As it’s Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day, Miss Pearson would like to share her pancake recipe with you.
Miss Pearson’s Pancakes
First of all you will have to wash your hands with soap and water to make sure they are clean and dry them well. If you have an apron you can wear this as well to keep your clothes clean .
You will need:
Ingredients:
Method:
Now we can start making our pancakes.
First of all you will need to ask an adult to help you with this part as we are going to use the cooker and we have to be very careful so we don’t get burnt .
We need the frying pan to be hot.
So put a little drop of oil in the pan and wait until it is hot.
Put a spoonful of your mixture into the pan and wait for the bubbles and then turn and cook the other side.
I made 12 pancakes out of my mixture you could make big pancakes or small pancakes it is up to you.
Here are some ideas for toppings: 
Miss Pearson hopes you have as much fun making them as she did.
Cooking together provides us with lots of opportunities to practise our maths skills – measuring out our ingredients, talking about colours, shapes and sizes, using a timer – as well as helping develop fine motor skills – chopping, mixing, spreading – and literacy skills as we read a recipe.
Here are some other ideas for simple cooking activities:
Let us know what you like to cook together and show us your pancakes on Twitter @GlenwoodFC #Glenwoodlearningathome
Children learn about numbers by hearing number sequences over and over and learning the number names. Through play and everyday activities is a natural way that children will learn.
There are lots of things you can do at home with your children to learn number sequence.
Number songs are another great way to learn number sequences. Here are some Glenwood favourites (click on them to watch a Youtube video):
Playing board and card games is another way to develop number recognition and practise counting.
Another favourite game we play in Glenwood is Number Splat. This is a great way to develop number recognition. All you need is numbers 0-10 or 0-20 written on pieces of paper and a spatula or wooden spoon. Ask your child to splat different numbers in a random order. Why not have a competition?
Share with us on Google Classroom or Twitter how you have been practising your counting and number recognition. @GlenwoodFC #Glenwoodlearningathome
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:
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!
We celebrated Maths Week Scotland by taking part in many mathematical activities both indoors and out.
10 … 9 … 8 … 7 … 6 … 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … Blast off 🚀🚀🚀🚀@mathsweekscot #GlenwoodMathsWeekScotland #MathsWeekScot pic.twitter.com/IiEgpTCuOr
— GlenwoodFamilyCentre (@GlenwoodFC) October 2, 2020
We went on a Maths Walk in our local area and spotted numbers, shapes and patterns all around us.
Take a look at some of the numbers, shapes and patterns we found on our walks #MathsWeekScot pic.twitter.com/R7kQtalnsg
— GlenwoodFamilyCentre (@GlenwoodFC) October 4, 2020
Our Family Fun Bags took maths into our families’ homes as they made playdough and used the playdough for mathematical activities such as measuring, counting and number rhymes.
We are learning to use a range of digital resources to support our learning in literacy and maths.
Using programming as we learn about direction using the code-a-pillar.
Using the word wands as we explore shapes, numbers and words.
Thank you to all the parents who attended our recent STEM curriculum evening and to the whole staff team for showcasing our learning and making this evening a huge success. Our parents loved trying out some of the experiences on offer and feedback was very positive and encouraging.
Great to see all the stimulating and fun activities and nice to talk with staff and parents.
So lovely to see the amazing resources and have a chance to meet other staff members – really lovely group.
Thank you for all the staff’s knowledge and expertise!
The resources were fantastic, in particular the technology.
Loved the ideas for playing and learning at home and seeing what children do at nursery.
I wish I could provide constructive feedback, but nope! The evening and it’s content was perfect! So much effort made! Such a shame more parents didn’t come along.
If you didn’t manage along, see what you missed here STEM in Glenwood presentation
We are learning about direction as we experiment with the remote control toys. We can make them move forwards and backwards and even round in circles.
As I build a structure, I select blocks which are the same size and I create a pattern. I have to place the blocks on carefully to balance them. My friends have made a slide and when I say ‘go’ they knock down my structure then I rebuild it exactly the same way!
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