Category Archives: Literacy

Health & Wellbeing, Learning at home, Literacy, Music and Dance, Social Subjects, Technology & Construction, Videos with ELCC Staff

All Around the World 🌍

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Bonjour! Here you can watch Mrs Small and her friend Mr Fox (Monsieur Renard 🦊) as they welcome you to Languages Week and go on a French colour hunt.

Now why not find a favourite toy to sing and dance along with Mrs Marshall. 🇫🇷 This French song is called “Je peux sauter”, which in English means “I can jump!”
You can jump, clap, turn and walk with your toy or do it yourself! 

And Mrs Branco reminds us how to sing our French Song about how we are feeling.
Would you like to join in with Pierre?
Comment ça va aujourd’hui?

Here are the words to help you sing along:

“Bonjour tout le monde comment ça va?
Bonjour tout le monde comment ça va?
Bonjour tout le monde comment ça va?
Comment ça va aujourd’hui?

Tres bien merci comment ça va?
Tres bien merci comment ça va?
Tres bien merci comment ça va?
Comment ca va aujourd’hui?

In Google Classrooms you can enjoy hearing Mrs Ahmed read The Hungry Caterpillar for you in Urdu, a language which is spoken by many people all over the world. 

And Mrs Boyd has also been offering some fantastic Gaelic lessons in Google Classrooms. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Gaelic is a Scottish language which is still often spoken in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Here is a taster:
“Hello and Failte gu Gaelic! Welcome to Gaelic. Join me, Murdo the teddy bear and Seamus the seal in learning Gaelic. Here we will learn how to say welcome, introduce ourselves and even sing a Gaelic song. Have fun learning Gaelic!”

 Do you or any of your family speak or know any other languages? Another fun way to explore languages is to try out the Hello Atlas App. It is free to download and allows you to explore how to say “Hello” and a few other simple phrases in all sorts of languages, choosing from a map of the world.


Food & Cookery, Health & Wellbeing, Learning at home, Literacy, Numeracy & Mathematics

Bonjour tout le monde!

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Bonjour everyone, 🇫🇷
This week our learning will be focused around languages, of all sorts, Arts & Crafts and ICT.

Miss Lawson says: “This week, I have made a ‘virtual nursery’ which you can access through the green link below. On here there are lots of different activity ideas, videos and links. Please have a play with it. As there is a holiday weekend coming up, I have included enough activities for both this week and next.”
https://www.thinglink.com/scene/1412606731015421955


Skills Academy:
This week  we’re making French crêpes to celebrate Languages Week. Below is a recipe. A short demonstration video is also available on Google Classrooms. Enjoy!

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.

Health & Wellbeing, Learning at home, Literacy

How are you Feeling?

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How are you feeling today?
Miss Hampton has recommended this great story about all our different feelings.  It is called Lucy’s Blue Day and is written by Christopher Duke.

You can listen to Lorraine Kelly reading the story by clicking on this link:
https://youtu.be/UmrUV8v-KQg
It’s a very good book to read, especially on a day when you might be feeling not quite right. Miss Hampton has suggested that:
“if you are missing your friends or your other family members, maybe you could draw them a picture or write them a letter. Maybe your grown-ups could help you to post it or email it. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I did and afterwards you could discuss it with your grownups. What was your favourite part of the story? What didn’t you like? Was it thumbs up, so so, or thumbs down? Do you ever have happy, angry or sad days? What makes you feel better? Talking about my feelings always makes me feel better, or a walk outside in the fresh air.”

 

Eco Learning, Learning at home, Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Science

A Bird a Day: Thrush 🎵

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In the run up to the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch, we will give you a titbit about a different bird each day to help you spot them and learn a little more about them.

Today’s bird is the Thrush:
Thrush has a brown body and a smart white tummy with brown spots.
Thrush is about 20cm long. If you have a ruler you could look for the number 20 on it to find the Thrush’s size.
Thrush has  a lovely song and likes to sing from the very tops of the trees! 🎵🎶


Thrushes are quite shy but you can often see them hopping about in grassy areas as they like to pull up worms there. Snails are another favourite food.
In Winter it can hard for Thrushes to find any worms if the ground is hard and frozen, so you will sometimes see them in the trees eating up all the red berries…

Here is a little rhyme for you about Thrush:

Mrs Thrush is in a rush,
To find some food for tea,
Because she knows that when it snows,
The ground is going to freeze,
There won’t be any worms to pull,
And so to keep her belly full,
She gobbles up the berries
On the bushes and the trees.

You could ask an adult or a big brother/sister to read this rhyme to you, then try saying it back to them, a line at a time.
Can you think of another word that rhymes with “Thrush”? Maybe you could make up your own rhyme or a story about Mrs Thrush.
Or you could try drawing her lovely speckled tummy.

And let us know if you see one!

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!

Eco Learning, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Health & Wellbeing, Imaginary Play, Literacy

We are Together

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Continuing with Health & Wellbeing Week, the Pink and Yellow groups have been exploring feelings through various props in the Story Box, inspired by the lovely book “We are Together” by Britta Teckentrup. It is a story about self belief, resilience, and the power of friendship.

“Look at this… Sun up in the sky with rain. The rain becomes a rainbow!” “I don’t mind rain.”  “I hate rain.” “This one is a shooting star.”

As they played with the props the children also began telling their own stories:
“Evil seagulls come out when there’s a storm. The butterfly will wait” (till the storm has passed)



“We need to add more people.”

“This sounds like birds singing.”

“This one makes it heavier.”

Aw… all cooried up with a soft blanket and heart pillow…

”If storm clouds gather and we’re caught in the rain,
Let’s splash through the puddles until the sun shines again.”
(from “We are Together”)

Creative Arts, Fine motor skills, Group Blue, Group Green, Health & Wellbeing, Life Skills, Literacy

Health and Well-being with green and blue

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For health and well-being week we have been discussing and learning all about our differences and similarities.

We have been reading “Elmer the Elephant“ which conveys the important message of being proud of who you are despite your differences. The children used the character puppets to act out the story as Mrs Branco read to them.

With a choice of a variety of different materials the children were able to create their own transient art elephants.

Some of the children also decorated an elephant picture to take home. Lots of glueing, sticking and colouring to help develop our fine motor skills.

 

Following on from Elmer the children listened to the story “All Kinds of People” , helping us to visualise the differences there are in people. They then used mirrors to assist in their self portraits, this opened up a dialogue between the children about hair colour, eye colour, height and skin tone etc.


We were able to express to our friends the things we liked about their pictures and the differences between us. Each picture was beautiful and unique just the same as us!