Category Archives: Fun

Fun, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Imaginary Play, Life Skills, Numeracy & Mathematics, Social Subjects

Our money shopping role play game!

Leave a comment

Money Role Play Shopping Game!

The pink and yellow group have been learning about money the past few weeks. The children decided that they wanted to play a shopping game where they have to buy certain objects in the nursery with the different coins and pennies. The pink and yellow group were very engaged in this activity and had lots of fun and improved their numeracy skills!

Some of the children helped to write the number signs for the objects such as ‘1p,2p,5p and 10p’

The children were able to find the correct penny and match it to the correct number sign to buy the object of their choice.

‘It’s this one!’
‘Let’s play the shopping game!’
‘No, not that one – it’s this one!’
‘That’s a 5 and so is that one!’
‘That’s a 2 and that’s a 2 so that means I can buy it!’
‘I need this penny to buy the book!’
‘The turtle is number 10, 10 pence!’

 

Fun, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Life Skills, Numeracy & Mathematics, Social Subjects, Technology & Construction

MONEY

Leave a comment

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY

The children in the yellow and pink group have been having lots of fun learning about money! The children have participated in a variety of learning activities.

Matching pennies/coins and sorting!!

The pink and yellow group did fantastic in sorting and matching the different coins/pennies and began learning that each coin/penny has different colours, shapes and has a different number on it e.g. 1p,2p,5p,10p,20p,50p,£1,£2.

The children learned some new colours such as Gold and Silver.

They began to learn that the £2 coin is a big coin which is gold around the edges, has a silver circle in the inside and has two 2’s on it for ‘2002’

The children began to realise that a 1p/£1 and a 2p/£2 were different in terms of appearance. Miss McFarlane explained you can buy more objects with £1 and £2 than 1p and 2p.

One child noticed that one coin had a lion on it and one coin had a face on it! Great observing skills!

The children showed fantastic teamwork skills and communication skills! 

Coin Rubbing!

The children enjoyed using their fine motor skills to do their coin rubbings! They learned about the different coins/pennies and how they have different shapes, different sizes and different colours!

‘This is a circle one like your glasses!’

‘This one is smaller!’

‘This one is bigger!’

‘It’s brown!’

‘It’s silver!’

The children were very enthusiastic and curious about money and understood that you need money to buy food, clothes, toys etc. The pink and yellow group decided they wanted to play a shopping game! Look out for our next post to see our role play activity!

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… 🥞🧤

Leave a comment

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,

 

Fine motor skills, Fun, Learning at home, Mark Making, Science, Sensory Play, Videos with ELCC Staff

Slimy, Bumpy, Sticky Sensory!

Leave a comment
If you fancy some sensory & science exploration at home, why not try out one of these fun ideas from Miss Hampton, Miss MacFarlane, Miss Henderson, Mrs Krivickiene & Mrs McInnes!
1. MAKING GLOOP with Miss Hampton:
One way we can explore our senses is by making gloop. You’ll need:
2 x cups of cornflour
1 x cup of water
2 drops of food colouring (optional)
In this video Miss Hampton demonstrates what to do:


How does the gloop feel? Is it a solid or a liquid?
The great thing about gloop is it can be both. There are lots of ways to explore gloop. Did you know that cornflour is made of lots of long stringy particles and when the water is added they don’t dissolve, they just spread out? When you roll it in your hands the particles join together and it becomes solid, but if you hold it up and let it dribble it becomes a liquid.


2. MAKING PLAY SNOW with Miss Henderson:
If your fingers are getting cold from the snow outside you could make some non-melting play snow of your own.
All you will need is:
 Cornstarch
Hair Conditioner (white conditioner works best)

Mix the ingredients together to form a smooth dough. If it’s too sticky, add more cornstarch. If it’s too crumbly add more conditioner. Think about the textures and the smells as you make the dough. Is it cold or warm? Is it smooth or sticky? Hard or soft? Has the conditioner made it smell like coconut, fruit or flowers?
Another way to explore our senses and science is:
3. MAKING SNOW SLIME with Miss MacFarlane
For this you will need:
1 cup of white glue
2 cups of shaving foam cream
1/2 tbsp of baking soda
1 table spoon of contact lens solution (it must contain boric acid!) 

Put the cup of white glue in a bowl and mix in the shaving cream, then stir until well combined. Add in the baking soda and stir. Slowly add 1 tablespoon of contact lens solution until a slime has formed. Once the glue starts sticking to the spoon that’s when you knead it with your hands until you are happy with the consistency!
And there you have made your own snow slime!
Use your senses to explore the slime:
What words can you use to describe how the slime feels?
Can you think of any words to describe its smell?
Can you think of words to describe how it looks?
Does it make any sounds?   Why don’t you use different materials & tools to investigate what different sounds it makes? Go around your house and find different things to poke your slime with!

 


4. Make a SENSORY WRITING PLATE  like Mrs Krivickiene for practising your letter/number writing and at the same time explore your sense of touch.
You’ll just need a plate, any dry grains you have in your cupboard (rice, lentils, couscous, etc). Feel the grains and then write or draw in them with your finger or any kind of stick.
(If you want to avoid too much hoovering afterwards, you can do it outside, or cover the plate in cling film first.)

5. Mrs Krivickiene has  also been making a SENSORY JAR, using water, oil and a drop of food colouring. 

This is a great experience if you want to have a mindful break and look at something extremely mesmerising. Besides, there is true science behind it. Water and oil have different molecule structure (molecules are the tiny building blocks of everything you see around.) This means that water and oil won’t mix.

First,  pour some baby oil into a glass  jar or bottle. Then add some water coloured with a little food dye and close the lid tightly. Watch the effects as you gently tip and jiggle you jar…

6. As if that wasn’t all enough, in Google Classrooms this week you can also watch Mrs McInnes use all of her 5 senses as she dissects and investigates an onion!

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 ⭐️

Leave a comment

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!

Leave a comment

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!

Eco Learning, Fun, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Health & Wellbeing, Natural World, Outdoor Learning, Technology & Construction

The Great Outdoors 🌳🍁

1 Comment

The Yellow and Pink groups have been having a variety of outdoor adventures. Today we went on a local walk for a Nature Scavenger Hunt, looking out for different coloured leaves, spider webs and birds. We ticked off all of them!
We stopped to collect pine cones in the lane. We are going to wash, dry and paint them later. “We’ve found tons!”

We enjoyed feeling the beautiful tree bark.
“It feels scratchy”   “Look, I found more moss.”

“Here’s some yellow leaves!”  “Look! Spider webs!”
We also came across some blackberries and interesting fungi.
“The birds will eat them” (berries) 
“Some of them are poisonous, so you don’t touch them” (fungus)

We then walked round to the back of the new nursery building for a sneak peek at how it is coming along.

Back at  nursery, various outdoor investigations and physical challenges have been taking place:



Balancing, transporting, and building core strength

Ingenious minds construct their own see-saw

After all that… a well deserved Snack.

 

Eco Learning, Fine motor skills, Food & Cookery, Fun, Group Purple, Life Skills, Literacy, Numeracy & Mathematics, Science, Uncategorised

Potions and Pumpkins 🎃 with the Purple Group

Leave a comment

We read ‘Meg and Mog’ and ‘I think my Mum is a Witch’, inspiring us to use our imaginations and create our own spooky stories.

 

Working collaboratively with our peers we successfully made Pumpkin Soup. We carefully deseeded the pumpkin, using our fine motor skills to chop the pumpkin and other vegetables.

We developed our problem solving skills as we measured and weighed the ingredients.

The children then had the opportunity to taste their creation. ‘This soup is amazing’- R

We created our own potions using  play dough and a variety of other resources, we retold the spells from the book developing our language skills.

We developed our fine motor, sensory and number recognition skills as we matched and counted spiders 🕷 and snakes 🐍 using tweezers in a variety of different experiences.

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

Some Spooky Goings on…

Leave a comment

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…