To start off our Eco Week at Netherlee Nursery Class, we wore bright colours and switched off all our lights to mark Earth Hour: the biggest movement to protect our planet. 

The children were given a candle to take home to join in with Earth Hour on Saturday 24th March.

To explore Biodiversity and how to protect and enhance the environment and the creatures within it, the children planted sunflowers. While planting we explored how sunflowers attract wildlife and how their pollen can benefit the planet. The sunflowers were planted in newspaper pots, demonstrating how paper is recycled into other useful items.

On Wednesday we encouraged everyone to bring a book to nursery they no longer read and participate in our book swap.  Raising an awareness of how we can reduce, reuse and recycle by giving our unwanted items to others to use.

The children were invited to create an Easter Bonnet at home and wear it to nursery on Thursday. In keeping with our Eco theme the bonnets could be made from recycled materials found at home.

To mark Fairtrade Fortnight the children became Fairtrade detectives, identifying and bringing items to nursery that had the Fairtrade logo.

When baking we used Fairtrade items to make some Fairtrade Crumbly Banana Squares.

The children worked hard to identify items that were Fairtrade and items that were not. 

We even had a Fairtrade hunt in the nursery grounds to see how many Fairtrade items we could find.

Although Fairtrade Fortnight is finished the children are still looking out for Fairtrade items and discussing the impact they have.

On Friday 26th January we participated in a Big Bird Watch. We identified the birds visiting our garden for one hour and submitted our results to the RPSB.

We did a lot to prepare for our Big Bird Watch.

We made bird feeders to attracted birds into the gardens. 

We made recycled binoculars to help us with our Big Bird Watch.

We created pieces of visual art.

The Big Bird Watch was a great success. We saw lots of birds.

The countryside rangers from Dams to Darnley visited us following the Big Bird Watch to help us learn more about the birds of Scotland.

On Monday 18th December we had our Christmas Parties at Netherlee Nursery Class.

We enjoyed a festive snack. 

We played party games including pass the parcel and musical statues.

And… we even had a visit from Santa!

Monday 20th November started UK Road Safety Week in the nursery. We used Ziggy books to explore and discuss road safety.

Some children recorded their understanding of road safety through their art work.

Some children played ‘traffic lights’ in the nursery garden.

To apply their learning from throughout the week a number of the groups visited the main road near the nursery. They were encouraged to identify a safe place and demonstrate waiting until it was safe to cross (waiting for the green man), holding hands, looking and listening for traffic and walking safely across the road.

We recently had Jim Duffy from Mary’s Meals visit us to tell us all about the wonderful work Mary’s Meals does for the world’s poorest children.

Jim told us about a way we can help. We can fill backpacks with various items and send them to the children to use.

We had parents/carers come to the nursery to help sort all of the backpacks.

Thank you to those who donated and helped!

We have started our group park visits and the first groups to go were the white, red and green (am).

During their visits to the park, the children explored the local area and found some animals and insects living in the park.

The children threw sticks in the river.

They collected items such as sticks and leaves. to use while in nursery to make a variety of items.

The also participated in a nature walk were they were given the opportunity to explore the signs of Autumn.

This week we used natural resources from outdoors to enhance the children’s learning opportunities.

Conkers

The children were introduce to the traditional game of conkers. This experience developed the children’s hand-eye coordination, which will positively impact their mark making skills. 

Leaves

During their outdoor day some children collected leaves and decided to display them in the nursery. They made leave bunting and while creating it they developed their one to one counting and  an understanding of adding one more to an amount.

On Tuesday we received a survey to determine how the children travelled to nursery. The children helped to turn this survey into a graph and some even made their own graphs asking their peers how they travelled to nursery.

To give the children an understanding of Maths being a gateway into many career paths and opportunities, we invited parents, carers and relatives into the nursery to speak with the children about how maths ‘is everywhere’ and is relevant to day-to-day life and work. Thank you to all of our volunteers.