After reading ‘Room on the Broom’ the children decided they would like to make their own Halloween potions. We used lots of natural ingredients like pumpkin seeds and pulp, herbs, spices and petals.
We had a few horrible ingredients too like Goblin snot and Giant’s toenails. The children used lots of different utensils to measure, stir, pour and mix our ingredients.
There was lots of great descriptive language being used when talking about our potions and the children came up with some brilliant names:
“Pumpkin in space”
“Unicorn in a bush”
“Dragon fire”
“Stinky Slime”
Afterwards some of the children used their mark making skills to make potion recipe books.
Bookbug promotes positive interactions through telling stories, singing songs, rhymes and play. We have been taking part in sessions over the past few months to help encourage new friendships and develop positive relationships between staff and children.
We have also started our family session within the centre and have loved seeing how many families have joined us so far. Sharing stories, songs and rhymes with your children also have a huge impact on your child’s language development. Taking a few minutes each day to read a story or sing a song will help form positive parent and child relationships and help develop the connections in a child’s brain that promote emotional development. It is also a great way to have fun!
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.
The yeti storyThis book was torn and tatty so we replaced it.Books with dinosaur charactersLift the flap booksThe WorrysaurusMore books supporting our emotionsBooks with monstersBooks reflecting our diversityBooks promoting inclusionBooks to support emotional development
The strawberry plants that we planted in April have finished producing fruit so we have been very busy caring for our strawberry patch.
We have been weeding out some grass that has grown there and cutting off leaves that have turned brown.
We noticed that lots of runners have grown from our strawberry plants and we have been learning how to plant these using compost, pots, trowels, dibbers and watering cans, so that we can grow new strawberry plants.
One of the children thought it would be a good idea to make a new sign for our strawberry patch so we used some old wood and acrylic paint to make a new one.
We have also been developing our awareness of how we can care for the environment by reusing and recycling different items. We made our own plant food by cutting up banana skins, left over from snack, into small pieces and adding them to old bottles filled with water. After a few days, the banana water will be ready to use as plant food to help our strawberry runners to grow.
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.
“I can’t reach. It’s too high!”
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.”
At Glenwood, we use a ‘Fun Friends’ programme to encourage the children to learn new skills and to help build their confidence. ‘Fun Friends’ is aimed at improving communication skills, social skills and building resilience.
These are the skills and phrases that we frequently use with the children:
Here are some snapshot interactions demonstrating ‘Fun Friends’ in action. It began when one little boy was scared to go down our new slide. Two other children noticed this and offered support to their friend. They were determined to help his confidence and independence by encouraging bravery. They helped him to overcome his fear and then celebrated his achievement with him.
The girls gave the child encouragement.One of the girls held hands with the child to go down the slide to help him feel safe.One of the girls then held the child’s hand and supported him to sit at the top of the slide alone.“Come on! You can do it! I will catch you!”
“Well done! You did amazing!”
The perfect example of kindness, compassion and love at Glenwood.
We welcomed Tommy Millar (Football Development Co-ordinator) and Kerry Comerford (Active Schools Co-ordinator) along to Glenwood for some mini kicker taster sessions. We are looking forward to next week’s session!
We harvested some of the potatoes we have been growing in our garden.
We boiled them to make some yummy mashed potato and used the leftovers to make potato scones for snack. So tasty!
Why not try our recipe at home-
450g floury potatoes, peeled and cooked 1/2tsp salt
50g butter 100g flour
1. Mash potatoes,add salt, butter and flour to give a stiff mixture. 2. Turn out onto floured surface, knead gently and roll out to a thickness of 1cm. 3. Cut into triangles and cook on a hot greased griddle for 4-5 minutes on each side.
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.
“The black seeds are tiny.”“Awww the little white ones are so cute! It’s going to be all warm and cosy in here!”“I want the yellow and red ones.”
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.
“It looks like it’s doing a wee dance.”
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!
“We need to give it some water next”“A sunflower has to have some sun!”
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…
“Oh yuck…what will we do with the slug?”
“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.
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!
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.
“I’m drawing rain at the top. Plants need water so they can 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.
“There are lots and lots of weeds here. I need to dig them all out.”
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.
“This slug is really big. It’s all slimy.”
Using soapy water and sponges we washed out old plant pots so they are ready for planting our new seeds.
“I like the bubbles in the water.”
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.
“I can see the eyes. They are really small.”
To decide what we are going to plant we used buttons to choose our three favourite fruits or vegetables to grow in the garden.
“I like strawberries.”“Strawberries are the winners. They have the most.”
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:
Do you have an old sheet lying around?
Do you have some empty spray bottles and/or paintbrushes?
If you do, then this activity might be the one for you!
You can help your child develop their big, gross motor muscles and their small, fine motor skills through painting on a large white sheet.
In this activity, the children were using varying brush sizes to accomplish the “splat” look! They have been developing their gross motor skills through using their shoulders, arms and wrists to splat with the brushes and they challenged each other to see who could splat the furthest.
“I have big muscles so I can splat mine the furthest.”“Maybe I can do it the furthest because I can do a full circle with my arm!”
The children have also been developing their fine motor skills through the use of spray bottles. The children are manipulating the nozzle and using their knowledge of direction to ensure that they spray the sheet.
“Don’t point it to the ceiling or the paint will go all the way up there! We need to keep it down low.”“I like spraying the bottle. It makes my fingers strong.”“This nozzle is a bit tricky to press, I need to use two hands to do it!”“I need to point it at the sheet to make marks on the white bits.”
Did you know?
One of the most important skills developed through art activities is fine motor development. During art experiences, your child’s small muscles in their fingers, hands, and wrists are exercised and strengthened, helping to make learning to write easier!
Ideas to develop your child’s fine and gross motor skills at home:
● Spray bottles with paint or water- your child can spray a sheet to decorate it or spray the flowers to help care for them!
● Paint brushes- a variety of sizes are perfect to develop your child’s fine motor and pincer skills! Helpful hint- larger handles can be useful for younger children i.e. siblings under 3 as they will be able to grip the handle better!
● Chalking outdoors.
● Painting on large areas such as sheets or A3 paper will encourage children to use their bigger muscles in their shoulders and arms.
Painting and creating with your child, not only helps their creative development but it also stimulates their brain. They can also learn about colour mixing and colour recognition through art activities. Painting doesn’t always have to be sitting at the table with a paintbrush and paint, the opportunities are limitless; be creative and offer it to your child in a variety of ways, like large-scale painting, cling film on windows, window paints, and stone painting (to name a few!) Painting opportunities are great for developing your child’s social skills and their communication as they learn new terms, words and phrases and talk aloud about their thoughts and processes. We would love to see some Tweets of the art activities your child has taken part in at home.
We have been busy baking at Glenwood. First, we researched what we wanted to bake and looked at a range of recipes. We chose one for gluten free shortbread. Then, we talked about what ingredients and equipment we needed and we set up the table. The children were discussing the different measurements they would need and they worked as a team to weigh out the shortbread ingredients.
“I need another two spoonfuls of this sugar!”
“I’m mixing it all together!”“I like shortbread. Do you like shortbread?”“I’m going to pour this flour into the bowl”
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?”“I doing rainbow colours!”
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!”“The water is blue.”“This ice is slippery!”“We made a puddle!”“That is condensation!”
The children have enjoyed learning about where honey comes from. We read a story called ‘The Beeman’ about a bee keeper and we also read a poem about the importance of honey bees.
“ The queen bee is bigger and that’s The Beeman.”“Bees help the plants.”
The children learnt all about beehives and honeycomb and even tried some of the equipment that beekeepers use.
“It’s like a hat!”“It smells funny!”
“The comb has honey in it!”
We tasted some honey from the beehive.
We learnt that bees do a waggle dance to tell the other bees which direction the best flowers are in, so that they can collect nectar to make honey. The children enjoyed trying their own waggle dance.
We decided to use the honey to make a delicious honey cake for all of the children to try.
Some of the children wanted to learn some more about bees, so we had a look at our big encyclopaedia and used the iPad to scan the QR code. It showed us a video about bees collecting nectar.
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.
“Let’s look on the computer.”“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.
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!
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.
Filling, Sorting and Counting.
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.
Using Tools
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.
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 blue is sinking to the bottom!”
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.
“The yellow one is turning green!”The tissues are rainbow coloured now!”
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.
“I need more mud so it goes darker!”
The children developed their confidence by talking and exploring a variety of vocabulary when asked to describe the texture of the mud.
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“Pumpkin in space”
