Category Archives: Mark Making

Calling all Artists and Nature Detectives!

Hello to all the children from Busby Nursery! We hope you have been having fun playing, learning, creating and exploring at home.
Have you seen any signs of Spring through your window?
Any birds building nests or looking for food?
Any leaves starting to grow on bare trees?
Any new Spring Flowers?

The famous artist David Hockney, who is 83, was busy drawing some beautiful daffodils on his iPad last week. Here is his picture:

Here is another huge painting he once did of trees in the Spring. It is the size of a whole room. Do you like the colours?

Why not try looking for some signs of Spring through your window or on your daily walk.  You could keep a notebook of them.

Lots of children have been drawing and painting beautiful rainbows and putting them in their windows. Perhaps you could also try painting some Spring flowers or trees to celebrate Spring. You could try using an iPad like Hockney if your family has one, or you could do it with pens, pencils, coloured paper or anything else you can think of.  Let’s make a Spring Gallery. You can share your pictures on Busby Primary and ELCC Twitter.

 

 

Super Science

The children have been busy investigating and discovering through lots of exciting Science Experiments during STEM fortnight. They have been testing, describing, asking questions and observing results.
“I’m wondering what would happen if…”

Adding the vinegar…

….and bicarbonate of soda to make a gas to blow up the balloon.

Magnet experiments: “You can make it move from under the table!”

Our new BUG HOTEL. Who will visit….?

Making Bird Food with raisins, maize, mealworms and lard.

Studying the different bird species.

Adding the thread for hanging the feeders.

The children loved watching Professor Eco

Wandering Water and Colour Mixing Experiments

“I am wondering what would happen if we mix blue and red…” “It makes purple.” “We need the paper to test it.”

“What happens if we do it like this?”

Using droppers to create patterns with the colours we mixed.

Saving the Planet

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

Bring on Spring!

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.

 

Space

 

We were listening to the story “Little Moon”   about a moon that was lost in space.

After reading the story we drew pictures of our own planets and helped little moon to travel around the solar system to find his home, Earth.

We love singing along to the planets song and learning lots of cool facts!

click on the link below to listen at home:

 

The children worked together to create the surface of the moon. Lots of gluing, cutting and sticking to develop our fine motor skills.

We also made some rockets and astronauts for our tuff tray.

Our finished product! We enjoyed using our moon for role play and story telling.

The Year of the Rat

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 

Celebrating Scottish Culture

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.