🐛 🦋 The Very Hungry Caterpillar 🦋 🐛

 

At Cross Arthurlie Nursery, the children have shown a keen interest in caterpillars. One of the children found a bright green one in the nursery  garden. This sparked lots of conversations about the life cycle of a butterfly and how to care for them. We let the bright green Caterpillar go back in the garden and bought some that we could look after ourselves.

We have also been enjoying the story of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’

The children have been helping to care for our caterpillars and have been enjoying watching them  grow. From tiny little caterpillars to ‘big bushy ones’ before they went into their cocoons. The caterpillars have now hatched into beautiful butterflies and will be set free into our community garden soon.

While observing the butterflies, the children were asked what they thought was special about butterflies.

‘They are symmetrical, that means they are the same on both sides’ 

During group time, some of the children created their own symmetrical pictures inspired by our butterflies. They painted on one side of the page and folded it over to create their finished picture.

READY, STEADY, GO!

The children have been practising really hard in preparation for our sports day. Unfortunately, we had to postpone it due to the wet weather. Here is a wee snippet of the green group in action.

 

1,2,     ,4,5  MISSING NUMBER   6,    ,8,9,10

 

The Green Group having been working hard on our numeracy skills. Lately we have been focusing on identifying missing numbers from a number line. We created a human number line and took turns to take a number away. The children then had to  identify which one was missing.

OUTDOOR PLAY

 

Recently, we have had some lovely weather. Lots of children in the Green Group have loved learning outside.

 

 

We hope all our families had a lovely time over the Easter holidays. It has been lovely hearing about all the exciting places you have been with family and friends.

Whilst outdoors we have been exploring risk and ways to keep ourselves and others safe. We designed our own obstacle course and found ways to manoeuvre our bodies along the course safely.

We have also been having fun exploring different areas of the nursery garden, playing with friends, and having lots of fun.

During group time we have been focusing on identifying numbers and missing numbers on a number line. We even made our own number line. Mrs McKie hid a number and we took turns to guess the missing number.

As we explore our nursery, we’ve been developing our curiosity in the art and woodworking areas. Also learning new skills of how to care for a baby in the home corner.

Love from Mrs McKie and Mrs Sloan

 

We had lots of fun celebrating world Book Day, dressing up as some of our favourite characters. At nurture time we each cast a vote for the book we wanted to read. Mud Puddle had the most votes and, therefore, was the winning book. We also discussed the author, illustrator and the different parts of the book.

During nurture time, we have been focusing on our gross motor skills: balancing, jumping, skipping, hopping and catching a large ball. We each took turns on the obstacle course; it was great fun!

We’ve been very busy exploring our nursery environment with our peers and teachers, having lots of fun along the way. Here are a few pics showing some of the fun experiences we have taken part in.

Thanks for a marvellous March green group!

 

Love Miss Allison (soon to be Mrs McKie) and Mrs Sloan

 

February has been a very busy month for the green group. At nurture time we have been focusing on our fine motor skills.

Through simple and fun experiences such as scissor cutting, and band boards we develop dexterity and strength in our fingers. This helps us to hold a pencil and control the pressure applied when writing and drawing our self portraits.

To build on our awareness of festivals around the world we have been exploring the Chinese New Year. From watching the Dance of The Dragon to making Chinese lanterns we had lots of fun and learnt lots of new and exciting facts. We even had a Chinese inspired snack and tasted some very yummy Chinese foods.

 

In other news, our community garden is coming along quite nicely. In the coming months we will be looking for some of our grown-ups to join us, to help maintain and grow lots of exciting plants and vegetables.

Thanks for a fantastic February!

 

Love from Miss Allison and Mrs Sloan

 

 

December was a very busy month at Cross Arthurlie Nursery. We had lots to do to prepare for our Christmas market.

We had lots of lovely Christmas jumpers and hats in the nursery. Here are a few for you to see.

We had a fantastic time at the Christmas market with our grown-ups!

We had a special visitor in the nursery this week and we all received a very special gift… Thanks Santa!

The Grinch may have tried to steal Christmas, but this little Grinch has stolen our hearts – the cutest Grinch in town!

We would like to thank all our families for a fantastic year at Cross Arthurlie Nursery.

 

We hope you all had a lovely festive season with loved ones. It was so lovely to see all the children after the holidays. We loved hearing their stories about gifts from Santa and the amazing times they had with family and friends.

During January the green group has been taking part in Show & Tell at nurture time. Show & Tell sessions encourage children to actively listen to others, developing an awareness of other people and their perspectives. It also encourages the children to talk in front of their peers, developing their confidence.

 

A day in the life of …

We thought it would be nice for you all to see a little snippet of a day in the life of the children in the Green group. We are always doing lots of fun and exciting learning.

Enjoying some yummy porridge for snack.

Getting creative and making firework pictures outside.

Book bug session during group time. The children love to bounce the puppets high into the air, while singing the rhymes.

Making some French baguettes in our French café.

Sensory play in the water.

We love pouring the water to fill and empty the containers.

Developing our knowledge of pattern.

We love using the tools in the woodwork area. We know how to keep ourselves safe!

Pudsey Day

The children had lots of fun during our pyjama day for Children In Need. They took part in lots of Pudsey inspired experiences. We made Pudsey cookies and got active during a fun session in the gym hall.

This month we have noticed a big change in the weather.

“it’s cold today”…”I’ve got my hat to keep me warm”

While outside we noticed a little robin searching for some food. We made some bird feeders for the birds and other wildlife to enjoy. We will be making a bird watching area in our nursery garden to see what wildlife comes into our garden.

At group time we have been exploring upper and lower case letters, by playing games such as snap and letter lotto. We were discussing some of the letters we recognised, for example the letters in our name. We were also able to think of other words that start with the same sound “e…for egg”

🕸 Spiders and Webs 🕸

The children have shown an interest in traps and webs this month. They worked together to create their own web. They have been developing their problem-solving and communication skills when talking to each other about where the string or tape should be placed.

“You need to pass it underneath to me, so I can put it over the top.”

The children also had fun creating their own spiders. They then used the internet to research some facts about spiders.

Fun fact!

Did you know that spiders have 8 eyes as well as 8 legs? 👀🕷

Kandinsky 

From the children’s interest in webs and spiders, they were introduced to the work of a famous Russian artist called Kandinsky.  He was famous for his abstract art.

They enjoyed taking their pen for a walk to create some art work like a web. We then used our imaginations to add colour and pattern to their work. They also created some abstract shape pictures and worked collaboratively to create an amazing piece of art work inspired by Kandinsky. This is situated in the entrance hall for you to admire.

Halloween fun! 🎃 

Even more fun experiences from this month.

 

We hope you all had fun trick or treating with your families!

 

Wednesday 1st November

Now that we are back in our Nursery routine, we have been enjoying our green group nurture time. During this time we engage in a variety of numeracy, literacy and health & wellbeing experiences. There are lots of names to remember, so we have been singing the welcome song to learn all our new friend’s names.

Number Bingo was a great success!

Everyone loves a game of Snap.

!

We have started our Child Smile tooth brushing in nursery. Miss Allison has been teaching Mrs Sloan our toothbrushing song.

We read the story of “Elmer the Elephant” and then designed our own elephant.

Some of our grown-ups came into our nursery. We had lots of fun showing them our favourite areas to play and sharing some learning experiences.

Thursday 28th September 2023 (1)