🌻🌸 🌼 Marvellous May 🌼 🌸 🌻

May has been another busy month for the Purple group.  We have had lots of lovely visits from our parents and carers and have also taken part in lots of fun learning experiences as we are approaching the end of our final term at Nursery.

❤️ Stay and Play ❤️

May marked a really special time for the Children at Cross Arthurlie Nursery. For the first time since the nursery opened, we were allowed the children’s family inside the Nursery. The children were over the moon to show their loved ones around all their favourite areas in the nursery and also had the opportunity to introduce them to their nursery friends too.

The aim of the Stay and Play model is to work with children and families to encourage them to play and learn together to improve attachments, strengthen bonds and children’s overall development.

 

👟🎾 Sports Day 🎾👟

The children had a great time taking part in sports week.

We have had relay races and potted sports on the grassy hill and also had their parents and family spectating to cheer them on.

Cycling  and  scooter fun in the playground and parachute games in the gym hall.

We also had fun learning a dance routine which will be performed by our preschoolers at their Moving On Ceremony.

Finally we had potted sports, football skills and crazy catch in the nursery.

Playing sports can  help children to develop their social skills and help to set them up for positive relationship building for life. Through an event like a sports day children get the chance to show leadership, teamwork and communication skills as they interact and face new challenges.

🐣 April in Cross Arthurlie Nursery 🐣

 

The children returned in high spirits after the Easter holidays and were excited to share how many Easter eggs they all received! Some of the children went on holiday and for days out with their families and have loved sharing this with the other children and staff.

This month the Children have been exploring the indoor sandpit which had previously been used for water play. They have been really enjoying the texture of the sand and have been having fun filling and emptying and also making shapes and patterns with their fingers. This is a really lovely sensory medium for the children to explore.  Some key skills that sand play enhances include: fine motor skills, hand & eye coordination, creativity and children’s sensory skills.

🌸🌿🌼 Outdoor Fun 🌸🌿🌼

All of the children have been really enjoying the lovely weather we have been having recently and have been spending more time outdoors in the sunshine. They have been busy planting different plants and seeds and also taking part in more physical activities such as an obstacle course they created.

Whilst the children are outdoors they are developing their physical fitness through jumping and running which is helping their bone density and improving their coordination, strength and gross motor skills.

 

 

🟣 🟩🔺Shape and Pattern🔺🟩🟣

We have been continuing to learn about shape and patterns and the children have been trying really hard to remember all the names for the different shapes and their properties.

Learning about patterns and connections will help the children to make their own predictions and form logical connections. It’s an important foundation for later mathematical thinking and reasoning.

 

🛕🧱 Block Area 🧱🛕

The block area is always one of the popular areas for the Children to play and create. Recently the children have enjoyed using the bigger wooden blocks to create bigger structures such as ‘Castles’, ‘Jails’ and ‘Dens’.

The children are developing their fine and gross motor skills to lift and construct the blocks into their desired positions whilst giving them an understanding of balance and construction.

Block play helps the children learn to take turns and share materials, it also allows for them to develop new friendships, become self-reliant and increase their attention span whilst cooperating with others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

🎈🎂 Birthday time 🎂🎈

 

One of our children celebrated their 4th birthday during their week at Nursery and all the children sang happy birthday to him which he was very pleased about.

Lots of our children have been celebrating birthdays recently and it is lovely to hear restrictions have allowed for them to have lots of fun parties with their friends.

 

 

 

🔩🪛Woodwork 🪛🔩

The children have started to explore the woodwork bench within nursery and have really enjoyed putting on their safety goggles on and practising their concentration skills.

The children were firstly able to identify and select different screws that would fit into their screw board and then move on to practise their fine motor skills.

They were able to hold the screw in place and then use their other hand to turn the screwdriver to screw the screws into place. This is a great way of developing the children’s hand eye co-ordination and their patience too.

 

 

👟🎾 Sports Week Practise 🎾👟

We have been having lots of fun, using our Monday gym slot time, to practise for our up and coming sports week. The children have been trying out some different activities that will be included in the sports week, which include jumping, throwing, hopping and balancing.

The children are really looking forward to having their grown ups come along to the playground to watch them all take part.

 

 

🌸 Marvellous March 🌸

March has been a very busy month for the children in the Purple group! The children had lots of fun throughout the month and have been extending their learning and development throughout lots of different learning experiences.

✍🏼 Drawing ✍🏼

The children continue to practise their pen/pencil control during their time in nursery. They are extending their  pincer grip and their ability to draw more detailed drawing and precise images.

 

 

📖 World Book Day 📖

World Book Day was part of our marvellous March fun. The children really enjoyed dressing up as characters from their favourite books and taking part in lots of fun book inspired activities throughout the day at nursery. Some children from the primary school even came to our nursery to read us some stories too!

 

 

🎂Cross Arthurlie Nursery turns ONE!🎂

 

Can you believe Cross Arthurlie Nursery has been open a full year?

We had lots of fun all day long and the little ones loved showing off their own teddy from home, which they brought to the Teddy bears picnic in Nursery.

The children enjoyed decorating cakes and dancing and even had some special visitors from the School and Carlibar and Arthurlie Nursery, where some of our children attended Nursery before Cross Arthurlie Nursery opened.

 

 

 

🧸Goldilocks and the three Bears 🧸

After celebrating the Nursery’s first birthday, when the children brought their own teddy’s  for the teddy bear’s picnic, the children were keen to make a Goldilocks and the three bears cottage.

We had a great time making the three different sized beds and setting up our home corner to look like the bear’s cottage. The children enjoyed getting creative with the paint to make the beds and also partaking in sensory play with Porridge in the tuff tray.  We had lots of discussions about size and which bed/ chair/ bowl belongs to which bear. This is helping to improve the children’s understanding of quantity, size and amounts.

 

🧑🏼‍🔬 Science Week 🧪

As part of Science Week the children enjoyed several different science themed experiments throughout the nursery both indoors and outdoors.

Here the children are experimenting with food colouring and investigating if different coloured food colouring would turn the white rose petals red, blue or green.

The children really loved pretending to be scientists with their goggles and aprons on and were ever so careful measuring the food colouring and water to go into the test tubes. They even kept on top of assessing the flowers ever day to see if there was any changes to the flowers.

The blue flowers definitely worked the best and we created blue roses!

 

 

🔢 Numeracy 🔢

We have been placing a focus on numeracy at our group time slot recently.

Here we were enjoying one of our new wooden numeracy resources, where the children took turns to find the missing numbers, count the correct number of discs and find the corresponding colour of the shape also.

The children are showing great improvement in their concentration and listening skills at group time.

Well done everyone!

 

 

🀽 We have also been learning how to play Dominoes and are continuing to learn the skill of reading the wooden Dominoes and counting the dots to see what number they represent.

 

 

The children’s numeracy knowledge has also been extended through number jigsaws at group time too. The children worked as a team to find the matching jigsaw pieces and completed the game successfully.

Well done!

 

 

 

🌿 Cress Heads 🌿

Continuing on from the Science week , the children took part in the cress heads experiment.

Here the children were extending their development in turn-taking, patience and listening skills. The children were also increasing their numeracy knowledge by counting  the correct number of cotton balls to put in their cups and also the correct amount of  syringes of water to put in their cups.

I took photos of the children’s faces too, to put on the front of their cups, once the seeds start to grow the children will look like they are growing some lovely green hair!

The children are also all dressed in red here as it was Red Nose Day!

 

February Fun at Cross Arthurlie

 

February has been filled with lots of fun,  friendships  and fabulous learning for the  Purple group!

Chinese New Year

 

The children celebrated Chinese New Year within the Nursery by making Chinese lanterns, chicken noodle soup and developing their numeracy skills with the Promethean board,  Chinese dragon activity. The children are continuing to work on their turn taking skills within the nursery and are becoming more patient whilst waiting their turn. Their knowledge of numbers 1-5 have also been strengthened whilst completing this task.

Well done Purples!

 

 

Back to Front Day

The children had a great time wearing their clothes back to front to raise some money for the Nursery! Thankfully nobody put their shoes on back to front, or there may have been a few accidents!

 

Painting

 

Painting is always available to the children daily in the nursery. They love to get creative in the art area and messy too! Some of the children prefer to use their hands for painting and we support the children’s choice to explore different medias to further their creativity.

We continue to prompt the children to put on their own aprons when they enter the arts and crafts area, they are aware of the guidelines and often help each other put on their aprons too. I love to see the children helping each other and develop their friendships throughout their play and learning during their time in Nursery.

 

 

Planting in the Garden

Some of the purple group were involved in completing some planting in the Nursery garden. We made a herb window box, filled with strawberries, rosemary, mint and thyme. The children are learning about caring for plants and remembering to water them in order for them to grow. They loved getting their hands dirty and patting down the soil. Hopefully our plants survive the cold weather and by summer time will be blooming beautifully!

 

 

Ice & Outdoors

 

February has brought us some very cold weather indeed, but the cold weather never puts the littles ones off playing outdoors! The muddy puddles in the garden are always popular choice and put to good use once the children have their wellies and puddle suits on.  The children particularly enjoyed exploring and breaking the frozen ice on top of the muddy puddles and sinks in the mud kitchen. We watched throughout the day as the ice melted and disappeared, as the temperature changed throughout their time at nursery that day.

 

Gym Hall Fun

 

Monday mornings is our allocated time or Gym Hall fun where Mr. Flemming plans a lesson, using his coaching expertise to develop the children’s gross motor skills.  The children love their time in the gym hall and are continually  developing  several skills such as jumping, climbing, balancing and crawling.

It is lovely to see the children’s abilities progress from week to week and their confidence grow whilst completing the different physical activities. They are learning to follow instructions whilst being outwith their daily environment of the playroom. At the end of each session we participate in a circle game which the children get very excited about!

 

 

Puzzle Time

Jigsaws are one of the children’s favourite activities to do in Nursery. They especially enjoyed our new rocket puzzle, which has lots of pieces to match together. I was so impressed at how well the purple group worked as a team to complete the puzzle and how their problem solving skills are developing every day.

Well done Purples!

 

Froebelian Occupations

Miss Ramsay has started completing learning experiences with the children based  on the theorist Friedrich Frobel. His studies have a focus on children’s abilities to work independently and strengthen their fine motor skills and hand muscles. All the experiences work under an umbrella effect, which are all interlinked.

The children have been involved in learning about how to thread a plastic needle with wool and create pictures by threading wool through the holes of woven fabric.

Wooden slat work has also been a favorite for the children, where the children place wooden sticks on a black background to create different images. Their creativity and imagination is encouraged whilst completing this task.

Paper perforating, was also heavily enjoyed by the children. Here they were able to create little images by using a tooth pick to prick through the paper onto a foam background. This exercise is helping develop the children’s pincer grip, which is helping get the children ready for holding a pencil when they begin hand writing.

 

 

 

 

January Blog – Purple  Group

 

Literacy

 

The children have settled back into the nursery rhythm and routine very well after their Winter break.

We have been learning about the letters of the alphabet and the different sounds they make. The children have been working hard to try and identify the letters in their own name and explore the sounds within each others names too.

 

 

Exploring Shapes

 

The children in the purple group have also been learning about 2D and 3D shapes.

The following images show the children exploring coloured pebble shapes and how they can be used to create and represent different pictures. They each choose a card and then worked within a group environment to create their chosen pictures. The children patiently waited their turn to choose their shape from the box, helping to improve their patience and turn taking skills.

 

 

2D Shapes

 

The focus on shapes continued throughout the month of January. Here the children are sorting and matching triangles, rectangles, diamonds and hexagons. They each managed to sort and identify specific shapes and then create patterns and images from them.

The children’s knowledge of the names of different shapes are improving all the time. They even managed to complete the activity cards too.

 

 

 

Promethean Board

The shape theme threaded through to all areas of the nursery. We worked together on the digital technology  available in the playroom, helping develop the children’s problem solving and critical thinking. We also explored mirror images and symmetry too and the children managed to solve the puzzles on the screen to find the missing halves of the images.

 

 

Creative Area & Playdoh

Numeracy

We explored shapes into the Art area too. We introduced mathematics and numeracy by following the Playdoh recipe. The children took turns at using the measuring resources to follow the correct measurements and amounts required to make the perfect mixture. The children’s gross motor skills are being developed by mixing the ingredients together. They had fun rolling and cutting with the different shape cutters, increasing their knowledge of identifying shapes .

 

 

       

 

 

December Blog

Story of the Week

The boys and girls in the Purple group have been focusing on the story ‘ Stick man’ for their story of the week. They helped to draw and colour in a sign for our display in the Nursery and they were very good at trying to stay within the lines. They loved listening to the story of stick man and all the places Stick man went throughout the story.

Black Line Drawings

The Children have also been drawing  a self portrait in their special journals. They were able to produce a drawing that they thought looked like them. The children are  beginning to add detail to their drawings and spend time talking about the different features of a body.  They have all  been working really hard  their pencil grip and how they mark make.

 

Wriggly Nativity

The boys and girls have been hard at work for the whole month of December, rehearsing for their performance of A Wriggly Nativity. They have all been practising their dancing and singing and all the rehearsals paid off. They performed the show on the big stage and were all brilliant. Well done everyone, we are all very proud of you!

 

Jigsaw

We have also had fun trying to solve the tractor jigsaw puzzle. They worked as a team to create the finished picture. The boys and girls have been learning about patience and turn taking and managed to let everyone have a turn at trying to get a piece of the puzzle to fit. They were very pleased with themselves and with the finished result.

Healthy Eating

Some of the children wanted to learn more about food and were curious about the large food books we have in the nursery. We spoke about the different food groups and what types of foods are good or bad for people to eat. The children knew lots of sugar wasn’t good for a healthy diet however its okay for a treat!

Drawing – Group time

Some of the children love to draw so  at group time we focused on giving all the children an opportunity to draw and they really enjoyed themselves. They are working on their pincer grip and pen control and they are finding out which hand they feel most comfortable using.