Category Archives: Outdoor Learning

Digital Technology, Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

Making our own wasps and their nests….

July 26, 2023 Miss Keith Leave a comment

After exploring our real wasps nest last week we have now created our own nests. We made our very own paper mache nests.

We blew up our ballon’s and used glue and old newspapers to stick all around the balloon. We got quite sticky !

We had to let them dry overnight and then did it all again to make them really hard. The boys and girls then gave them a coat of yellow or black paint. “ Mine looks like a wasp”.

The children were able to self select their own resources to add to their nest after painting them. My nest is going to be very yellow. We also found some textured paper which looks like the little holes that the wasps climb in and out of. The nests are looking really great now. Well done.

Everyone had so much fun making their own flying wasps. We had to measure , fold , colour and cut the paper then add a paper clip to help it fly . The children worked out that if you stood a bit higher up the wasps would fly better , but we had to be careful so we didn’t wobble and fall off !.

After all that hard work we had a try at directing our bee bot 🐝 wasp. We went forwards, backwards we had a practice with right and left . Some of our 🐝 wasps even manage to go down a ramp. Who knew that wasps could be so much fun .

Article 13- You have the right to find out things and share what you think with others.

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning

🌻 Sunflowers 🌻

July 24, 2023 Mrs MacRae Leave a comment

Our sunflowers have grown so tall in our garden. We have planted then from a tiny seed and have been nurturing them. After discussing how tall they have grown we calculated how many days it took for our sunflowers to flower.

It took 111 days for them to grow this tall.

”That’s a lot of days”

“They are taller than me”

Taking some inspiration from the beautiful sunflowers. We decided to paint some in the studio. We selected the colours of the sunflowers and have be busy painting some fabulous sunflower pictures this morning.

Here’s just a few of our amazing paintings. Look out for some coming home to brighten up your walls. 😃

Article 28 – You have the right to education

Expressive Arts, Outdoor Learning, Technologies

Summer holiday fun 🌞

July 21, 2023 Ms Partridge Leave a comment

This week the children have had lots of fun building dens and making summer homes in the garden! They have loved talking to each other about their busy summer plans. The children enjoyed sharing stories with their peers about all the fun things they have been getting up to, which sparked lots of creative role playing fun…

”I’ve got a beach house in Italy. We have pasta and clams there, that’s my favourite. I can make you some”

“Who wants gelato? Come and get it!”

We have been experimenting different problem solving techniques as we create our dens, using various resources from the garden and working cooperatively with one another offering suggestions to help implement our designs…

“let’s put it through the wee hole so it doesn’t fall down . Look, it worked!”

The children showed great imagination, exploring the garden to find different cosy spots to decorate …

“cheeeeese!”

After being so busy decorating our little summer homes it was time for a well deserved rest!

The children demonstrated great communication skills throughout as they worked as a team to help each other, and most importantly they had fun! Keep up the great work everybody 🤩👍

Digital Technology, Outdoor Learning

Wasps came into our garden !

July 14, 2023 Miss Keith Leave a comment

The children have noticed that there has been wasps around our lovely sun flowers that they have grown in the nursery garden. We thought that it would be good to learn a bit about them. Where do they live ?

We we’re lucky enough to have a real wasps nest to look at. There are lots of little holes were the babies wasps lives until they are big enough to be worker wasps. These wasps only live between 12 -22 days but the queen wasp can live up to one year.

The wasps nest is made from the wasps chewing bark in their mouths mixing this with their saliva and when it becomes dry it forms a paper type material. We learnt that wasps like sugary sweet foods and this is why they can fly around our food !

We watched a short film on how wasps make their nests. Wasps nest are usually found in sheltered warm places. “ I have a wasps nest in my garden on the tree . We should never touch the nests or the wasps .

If a wasp 🐝 comes near you we must stay still as a wasp will sting you if they think they are in danger. Only female wasps will sting you. If a wasp should land on you you can flick it off gently with a piece of paper. We all had a practise but fortunately there were no wasps actually on us.

We have enjoyed finding out all our wasp information. We might even build our own wasp nest using paper mache.

Article 33 -I can be protected from danger.

Outdoor Learning, Snack

Growing our apple and orange seeds today 🤔

July 12, 2023 Mrs Johnston Leave a comment

Today we decided to reuse our seeds from snack to see if we could grow our own fruit……how do we do this?
First of all we had to wet some paper towel then…

We put the seeds on the towel with plenty of wriggle room…..

We added a little cinnamon to help prevent our seeds rotting

Then we added another wet piece of paper towel put them in a zip locked bag and put them in the fridge

We’ll need to keep the seeds damp and wait to see what will happen……🤔

We also tried to grow some orange pips…

We soaked the orange pips for 30mins

We placed them between 2 pieces of cotton wool with a little cinnamon, put them in an air tight bag but this time……

We found a nice warm space in the kitchen above the oven, again we’ll need to make sure the pips are damp and let’s check on them in a couple of days to see if anything has happened……?🤔

Article 28 You have the right to education

Literacy, Outdoor Learning

We’re Going on a Book Hunt

July 7, 2023 Mrs Miles Leave a comment

Today we took a trip to the library to return some books and also to choose new ones. We are focusing on rhyming in the story corner this month so we chose a book full of nursery rhymes and also a story which rhymes. While at the library, Peter read us a story about a cat and we had to help choose the cat’s name by giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down. He ended up being called Tricky because he was tricky to name!

We also learned how to use the special machine to check in and check out books.

On the way back to nursery we decided to go through the forest to collect sticks for throwing over the bridge. We spotted a huge hole in the ground and thought maybe a bear would live in there! 🐻

We have decided to find books about bears on our next visit to the library.

Check out the website for your local library as they are running lots of family and special events during the school holidays.

Outdoor Learning, Snack

🔍🔍🔍 What can we spy in the garden today???

July 3, 2023 Mrs Johnston Leave a comment

Today we went into the garden with torches and magnifying glasses to see what we could find 🤔

We searched down at the bottom of the garden…..I wonder what we might find???

We found a pea plant and Isla told us “the bigger the pod the bigger the pea, the smaller the pod the smaller the pea!”

We collected them all in a bowl.

We shelled our peas comparing the different sizes of the peas

We were very pleased with the amount of peas we found 😀

We had to be very careful and check if any of our children were allergic to green peas

Article 13 You have the right to find out things

Outdoor Learning, Trips and Outings

Wild walks

June 29, 2023 Mrs Miles Leave a comment

Today we decided to go for a walk and one of the children suggested we go to see if the river has been flooded by the rain. As soon as we crossed over to the wooded area we noticed how much the plants had grown and we had to walk like penguins with our hands by our sides to avoid touching the jaggy nettles and thistles. We found lots of secret paths but some of them were too overgrown to get through. One of the children found a secret path to the river but we decided it would not be a good idea to follow it in case we slipped into the water!

Once we found a safe way to access the river we had a great time watching it flow over the rocks, pretending to be pirates and jumping in muddy puddles.

On the way back to nursery the children noticed an area where some one had set a fire and the ground had hardened. They told me that there is lava and magma under the ground and we decided to make some volcanoes when we got back to nursery.

We had lots of fun watching the fizzing of the baking soda and vinegar reacting!

Article 13- You have the right to find out things and share what you think with others.

Outdoor Learning

Delicious summer salads harvested fresh from our garden 😁🍓

June 19, 2023 Miss Mitchell Leave a comment

Today some of the children noticed that our chard had grown “I wonder what else has grown that we could pick”

“Look the peas have grown big, Let’s pick some, I bet they taste good” “ I know we could make a salad, let’s see what else we could put in it”

“ Look there’s a big red strawberry it looks ready let’s pick it, but there’s only one ready” “ we could cut it into four, and have a piece each”

“Look I think the cauliflower looks ready, it’s to hard to pull it out myself can you help me ? “ Yeah sure” 1,2,3, pull.”

“yeah we did it”

” We could have carrots in our salad” “ My Mum has a sauce on her salad it makes it taste better” “I’m going to make a dressing “ “ I’m using lemon juice and oil”

“Mix,mix,mix”

“I’m cutting up the carrots small for our salad” “they are a bit dirty, I need to wash them”

“I think the dressing tastes lovely “ “My favourite is the cauliflower, I could just eat it all day” “ Peas, peas are my favourite they are sooooo sweet”

Well done children great team work glad you enjoyed your home grown salad🤩 I wonder what we could plant next?