We hope you’ve had a lovely Easter holiday and found plenty to do at home. We’ve missed seeing you in nursery, please keep sharing your photos with us on Twitter or comment on our blog posts.
Below are some more ideas for learning at home.
Literacy and English
In the garden, use a paint brush and a bowl of water to practise mark-making skills. You could paint lines, shapes, pictures, numbers, letters or words.
Make up a silly story about a naughty spider. What have they been getting upto? You could tell your story, draw it or ask someone to write the words for you.
Keep practising writing your name. Remember the first letter needs to be a capital letter and is bigger than the other letters. Do you have a middle name? Try that too!
Numeracy and Mathematics
Sing ‘Five Little Ducks’ and use 5 toys to be the ducks. Each time a duck swims away, take a toy away. Notice how there are fewer ducks.
Talk to your grown up about the number 0. What does this number mean and what number comes after it? Have a look for this number on phones, calculators and anywhere else you can find it. Practise writing this number. Do you recognise the number 10 or 100. There are zeros in them!
From your bedroom window, count how many trees you can see. Then try from your front door. Which view has more?
Health and Wellbeing
Choose a song you love and make up a short dance. Teach it to your family and maybe share with us on Twitter!
On the Earthwatch Europe Facebook page, there are ten activity cards sharing ideas for exploring nature using toilet roll tubes. An example is shared below:
We hope these ideas are helpful and that you have lots of fun learning at home.
As part of STEM fortnight, the children have been reading Greta and the Giants (the story of Greta Thunberg). In the Story Box they explored which animals are endangered through habitat destruction and made their own signs to say “Stop”, “Help” and “Save Our Planet.”
The children created a frieze from the story – making a forest, drawing the giants, people and houses, and writing signs.
Exploring the Story Box
String printing to make the jungle grasses
“I want to make a Stop sign.” EH
“We’ve drawn the giants.” EP
“This is all the houses.” FD
“That says Help.” SF
The giants “smashed the trees… I drew all the people – the big people and the little people.” LM
“Litter” (is dangerous for sea turtles) MF
“Did you know that in China they are chopping down the bamboo that pandas need to eat?” IMM
“Orangutan! That’s King Louis. What do they do in the trees?” EH
Local author (and Busby Nursery mum!) Breea Keenan and illustrator David Nichol will be taking part in World Book Day celebrations, presenting their brand new rhyming picture book Nessie’s Selfie on Friday 6 March.
Breea will read the story to Busby Nursery and Primary One pupils and lead a discussion around its themes of inclusion, equality and friendships. David will talk through the book’s map of Scotland and will also show the children some of Nessie’s Selfie concept artwork.
The children will then be able to colour in their own Nessie monster which they can bring home – so please make room on the fridge for some new Nessie artwork!
To order a signed copy of the book for your child, which costs £7.99, please email: hello@newsofnessie.co.uk to arrange a bank transfer. A signed copy of the book will be delivered to the nursery/school.
Some of the children have been visiting Busby Library this week. They were so excited to learn about all the different activities going on in our local community library.
Peter the librarian read us some lovely books and told us how to join the library.
We voted for our favourite book and ‘Wolfie the Bunny’ won. “I loved the bit when Dot said she would eat the bear from the toes up, it’s a bit scary but funny”.
The children have been enjoying exploring rhyme through fabulous books like “Oi Frog” & “You Can’t Let an Elephant…”, alongside Rhyme bags, Story props and Rhyme Fishing in the Water Tray. They have taken great delight in generating their own rhymes, inspired by the books, and have come up with some great rhyming lines!
“Miss MacFarlane sits on a darling.”(EK)
“A rocket sits on a docket”(EH) “A giraffe sits on a path.” (NN) “Never let a bee come to tea.” (IMM) “Don’t give a scare to a bear!”(EP)
“Don’t give a coat to a goat.” (MN) “Don’t let a bear sit on your chair… or your hair”(FD) “Don’t let a bunny eat your money.” (EC) “That’s not a song because it’s just words. A poem is a thing that rhymes.” (HN)
“Honey… and money.”
“Pig rhymes with wig!”
“The wig is too… BIG!”
“Goat goes in a….boat.”
Fishing for Rhyming Objects in the Water Tray. “Egg rhymes with peg!”
“Tree rhymes with me.”
“What rhymes with petal? That is made of metal!” “And it rhymes with Gretel… and kettle!”
The children have been learning all about how things grow, as we look forward to Spring and also our Spring Event next Thursday morning, March 5th.
The children used cupcake cases, paper quilling, chalk, pen, scissors, crayon and glue to create their individual daffodil designs: “I know a different way to do it.” “All I did was fold it in and cut it like this.”
“The trumpet part is orange.” “I’m going to twist it round by myself.” (quilling)
Planting Iris Bulbs: we have planted indoors and outdoors, and are comparing how quickly bulbs grow in the different environments.
“Put a seed in, water it and wait till the sun comes.”
“One of my iris bulbs turned into a white flower.
The other one was yellow.”
“The bulb is round.”
“It has roots.”
“Mine has grown big.”
Singing “Ten Little Daffodils” and imitating how they grow.
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 & playTeam effort: many hands worked hard on our Chinese dragon frieze – drawing, printing, cutting, sticking, colouring
The nursery children have been busy in imaginary worlds of dinosaurs, fairies and robots: “Look, come and see – someone lives behind this door…. It’s a spider!” “Tinkerbell lives there.” “Look, I found these magic beans. If I plant them they will grow into a beanstalk.” “The dinosaurs can make footprints in the sand.” “That one’s triceratops, that’s tyrannosaurus.” “We need to make buttons for the robot.”
Two old bin boxes become great “robots”.
“Dinosaurs eat meat. Some live in the water, some can fly.”
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.
Keep up to date with what we're getting up to in nursery!
We were looking for minibeasts in our bug hotel. 
