Category Archives: Culture & Traditions

Creative Arts, Culture & Traditions, Eco Learning, Fine motor skills, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Imaginary Play, Mark Making, Natural World, Science, Sensory Play, Technology & Construction

Exploring Eggs and Nests 🐣

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Plenty of eggs exploration has been going on this week…
The children have been learning about how birds are making nests at this time of year and will soon be laying eggs. They have been creating their own clay eggs and various Easter designs.

Eggs Role Play and Exploring  Properties & Materials
“This is Bird World!”
“This egg is light and this one’s very heavy.”
“It’s made of stone.” “This one’s made of rock.”
“This one rattles.” “That’s metal.”
“That’s a rooster. Don’t put him in the pond – roosters can’t swim, but ducks can swim ‘cos they’re waterproof.”

“These are the baby birds saying “We’re hungry!”“


Birds & Block Play:
“Look, we’ve built this for them. This is the tree bird (green), this is the water bird (blue) and this is the lava bird (orange).”

Later we made birds’ nests using twigs, ivy, moss, fern, leaves and feathers. Great snipping and fine motor skills!

“I like the smell of that” (ferns)
“Maybe we should go outside and put these out for the birds. It should be up a tree so we need a ladder. We need feathers as well…”

Making Eggs with Clay Modelling

Painting the Clay Eggs

Printing Marbled Eggs
The children squeezed shaving foam, then added marbling inks to create a marbled pattern on egg shapes.


Designing individual Easter Cards


Eggs exploration and squidgy colour gel beads in the water tray


 More Nest-making and an Egg matching game. 

Have a very Happy Easter and Spring Break, everyone!

 

 

Creative Arts, Culture & Traditions, Fine motor skills, Food & Cookery, Fun, Learning at home, Literacy, Numeracy & Mathematics, Videos with ELCC Staff

Warm Pancakes and Warm Hands… 🥞🧤

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There’s still lots going on for you in Google Classrooms.
This week Miss Lawson has posted a second Virtual Nursery, where you can choose from a variety of fun learning experiences, including stories and cutting out newspaper letters.

In addition there are some recipes and demonstrations from your Key Workers on making pancakes this Shrove Tuesday:

And for more fun making things, if you want to keep your fingers toasty in cold weather, in Google Classrooms you can also watch Mrs Toman‘s Skills Academy video on how to create Hand Warmers using  some old socks and rice,

 

Culture & Traditions, Learning at home, Literacy, Videos with ELCC Staff

Time for a Story (in Scots)

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If you feel like cosying up for a great story with one of your nursery teachers, there are several to choose from in Google Classrooms.
This week we have been thinking about Scots literature, so you  could  join Mrs McCarron and her tiger friend to read The Tiger Who Came to Tea in Scots.

Did you know that some animals have a very special name in Scots language? For example….
A fox is called a tod 🦊
A frog is called a puddock 🐸
A mouse is called a moose 🐭
An owl is called a hoolet 🦉
A tiger is a teegar. 🐯
On Google Classrooms Mrs McCarron shares one of her favourite stories with you about a very hungry teegar.

Or you might listen to Mrs Branco reading The Gruffalo in Scots language.

Creative Arts, Culture & Traditions, Fine motor skills, Fun, Gardening, Group Pink, Group Red, Group Yellow, Imaginary Play, Literacy, Mark Making, Natural World, Outdoor Learning, Science

⭐️ Shining Stars ⭐️

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In Arran the children have been getting into the Christmas spirit – role-playing and hammering in the elves’ workshop, potting their hyacinths in silver pots, creating seasonal artwork, using clay to design decorations of their choice, counting penguins, making cards, calendars, lanterns and much more…
What a busy bunch!
Outdoors we have been exploring the properties of ice and enjoying frosty walks to Busby church gardens.
Role Play: “It’s a polar landscape.”

Literacy: In the Story Box,  The Gruffalo’s Child has been very popular, with the children keen to act out the story and make up their own versions using the props for character and setting.
Stick Man has been another seasonal favourite story to explore.

We also read Little Owl and the Christmas Star and looked at different types of stars, before the children designed their own.

Rolling, moulding, cutting, imprinting: the Red, Yellow & Pink groups experimented with clay and water to create stars, snowmen and other decorations,  using beads and various implements to make patterns, then metallic paints with varnish to finish them off.


“I’m going to make mine so pretty!”


The children were very proud of their different shining stars. We hope you enjoy hanging them on your tree or around the house!

Science: Planting & Growing: We have been watching the hyacinth bulbs that we planted start to grow. The children repotted them in silver pots for you and hope you enjoy the flowers later at home.

Science: Watch us mixing up fake snow using baking soda and hair conditioner…

Science: Ice Experiments: nature has kindly provided us with lots of thick ice shapes to investigate and experiment with.



Outdoors the children had great fun rolling down hills and investigating bugs found under logs

“I want to hold the wood louse… we have to be gentle. I’m going to put him back.” “Look, black beetles!” “A centipede!”

We have been gradually adding to our Kindness/ Christmas Tree with snowflake decorations, sunshine sticks and kind deeds.

“Share my lego with friends.”  “I helped with lunch.”

Making lanterns to light up Busby


Numeracy: Christmas counting games


The children have also been offering ideas for a new nursery logo and then voting for their favourites to create a simple pictogram.




We’ve seen some fabulous Christmas outfits!

We wish a Merry Christmas to all our star children and their families!
We hope you have a very happy time together during the break.

Creative Arts, Culture & Traditions, Fine motor skills, Fun, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Literacy

Celebrating St Andrew’s Day!

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St Andrew’s Day!

The pink and yellow group have been having lots of fun celebrating ‘St Andrew’s Day’.

We decided to make our playdough ‘blue’ and ‘white’ as we learned that ‘blue’ and ‘white’ are the colours of our Scotland flag.

We mixed, measured and kneaded the dough to make our Scottish play-dough!

We had lots of fun using our fine motor skills such as cutting, sticking and gluing to make our own Scottish kilts! The ‘pink‘ and ‘yellow’ group learned about tartan and that each kilt has different colours and patterns on it. We created our own patterns on our kilts!

Have a look…

The ‘pink’ and ‘yellow’ group also read the storybook  ‘The Gruffalo in Scots’ by Julia Donaldson and learned the Scottish way to say certain words like;

‘Moose’ – ‘Mouse’
‘Broon’ – ‘Brown’
‘Hae’ – ‘Have’
‘Whit’ – ‘What’
‘Lang’ – ‘Long’
‘Sherp’ – ‘Sharp’

We then ate porridge and potato scones for our snack!

“I have porridge for my breakfast!”
“I love porridge!”
“I live in Scotland”

We finished our exciting day by listening to the nursery rhyme ‘3 Craws Sat Upon a Wall’ and trying some Scottish dancing! We had lots of fun learning and celebrating St Andrew’s Day!

Creative Arts, Culture & Traditions, Fine motor skills, Fun, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Music and Dance, Natural World, Science

Some Spooky Goings on…

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In Katrine Room (Yellows and  Pinks), the children’s talk and excitement about Hallowe’en has inspired lots of learning – they’ve been building (with bones), designing, learning about spiders and bats, enjoying songs, dancing, story-telling and science experiments.

We’ve been talking about our bones and where they are in our bodies, as well as reading Funny Bones and practising the Skeleton Dance. If you want to try the dance at home, here is the link: https://youtu.be/Pbl4BNkAq_U


Experiments and imaginative role play have been going on at the water table and all around the room: “We’re filling the spider bowl up to make a bath for the snake…”   “We’re making a triple berry pie…”  “It’s a disgusting pie!”

Spider & Bat Studies
The children have shown a keen interest in bats and spiders from  wildlife magazines. So we’ve been studying them with books and videos and later made some models of them. Good fine motor and threading skills were on display as the children poked pipe cleaners and string through holes to construct spiders.
“That’s a tarantula.” “I’m going to the make the one with orange legs.”


We also tried  different ways to make giant webs…

Fine motor skills were further tested whilst picking spiders out of webs using tweezers and other tools.



With great concentration, children selected shapes to make bats, tried their hand at pumpkin printing, and created individual lantern designs – the best bit was when we put out the lights and lit them up!


In Science experiments they studied the life cycle of a pumpkin, dissected them, and then planted pumpkin seeds. We look forward to watching them grow…

Culture & Traditions, Food & Cookery, Loose Parts, Sensory Play

Heart Bakers

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Our master bakers have been busy mixing, kneading, rolling, cutting, scooping and squeezing to make their Heart Biscuits on Valentine’s Day.

“I’ve never used a spatula before!” “A heart means you love your family.”

“I’m going to make 3 love hearts from the one dough.”
“Its a bit runny.”

 
“Can you do pink around it? Its like painting.”

Squeezing Icing helps Early Writing!
“A heart means you love your family.”

ADVENTURES WITH HEARTS
– sharing, comparing, naming the colours, counting, feeling, describing, what are they made of?

“I pick this one with the silver curls. I like the swirls and curls and lines and the dots.”
“Who wants this one? Its beautiful.” “Feel this one. It feels like a teddy.”
“This is number ten.”
“I love all the colours – yellow, blue, red, pink, green and purple.”

“This one’s made out of paper and this one’s made out of wool.”
”These are the same kind. Is this pink glitter?”
“I like this one. What is it made out of?… That’s wood, and that’s paper.”
”There’s a heart inside you – that’s the one you’re talking about…”

Creative Arts, Culture & Traditions, Fine motor skills, Food & Cookery, Literacy, Mark Making

The Year of the Rat

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We have been celebrating and learning about Chinese New Year in lots of different ways:
Acting out the story of the Great Race;
Taking part in a Chinese Dragon Parade;
Tasting noodles, stir-fried vegetables & prawn crackers;
Making paper dragons, lanterns, dragon frieze and lucky red envelopes;
Hearing all about Chinese New Year from Ivy’s Mum

Gong Xi Fa Cai !

Colourful Rice: pouring, measuring, sensory & imaginary & play
Team effort: many hands worked hard on our Chinese dragon frieze – drawing, printing, cutting, sticking, colouring

 

Dragon Parade

A feast of Chinese foods
   
The Animal Swimming Race Story 
Creative Arts, Culture & Traditions, Fine motor skills, Food & Cookery, Literacy, Mark Making, Music and Dance

Celebrating Scottish Culture

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During Scottish Literacy & Burns week, we have been busy in the nursery exploring different aspects of Scottish culture:
We are learning about Robert Burns and his life;
We’ve been dancing to Scottish music in gym and the playrooms;
We are cooking and sampling porridge, haggis, neeps and other Scottish foods.
The children have loved learning to sing “Three Craws sat upon a Wall”, making their own crow masks and spotting “craws” on the school roof.

Our wee ceilidh

One craw
Porridge with a choice of jam, honey, bananas and blueberries
Making tartan designs

Yum! Oats make us strong.