Category Archives: Natural World

Eco Learning, Learning at home, Music, Natural World, Outdoor Learning, Science

Bird of the day: Blackbird

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Thursday’s bird is the Blackbird:

Blackbird has shiny black feathers.
He has a bright yellow beak and a yellow ring round each eye.
He is about 25cm long (try looking for number 25 on a ruler).
He likes to eat worms, insects and berries.
Mrs Blackbird is not black… She is brown all over and so are young blackbirds.

Blackbirds have 3,4 or 5 babies which hatch from blue speckled eggs.  Mum and Dad feed them together:
Mrs MacLeod  once had a pet blackbird called Blackie who started coming to her doorstep every morning and evening for raisins. He loved raisins!

The Beatles wrote a lovely song called “Blackbird”. You can listen to it here. See if you can clap or tap along.
https://youtu.be/Man4Xw8Xypo

Eco Learning, Learning at home, Mark Making, Natural World, Outdoor Learning, Science, Videos with ELCC Staff

Bird of the Day: Starling

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Wednesday’s Bird is the amazing Starling:


– Starlings are bold noisy birds who like to hang around together, chatting.
– They are mainly black with white speckles, but if you look closely you can see flashes of shiny metallic green and purple in their feathers.
– They have quite big feet and so walk about a lot.
– They are omnivorous, which mean they eat all kinds of things, including seeds, fruit and insects.
(I always see them in the car park at Silverburn shopping centre. I think maybe they wait there to pick up scraps of food dropped by shoppers….)
– At night just before they go to bed, Starlings gather together in huge flocks and do something REALLY AMAZING!
Click on the green link and watch this video to see what they do:
https://youtu.be/M1Q-EbX6dso

Flying around in groups of thousands, the starlings move together like a giant swirly black cloud, making wonderful patterns in the sky! It is one of the great sights of Nature! It is called a Murmuration – a great word. Can you say “Murmuration”…?
Mark Making Challenge:

If you have any black paint and some cotton buds, you could try dipping a cotton bud in paint and dabbing it on paper to make a picture of this amazing sight. Or just use a pen, pencil or crayon to make dots and create a murmuration of starlings or any other pattern you like.

 

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.

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

The Great Outdoors 🌳🍁

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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.

 

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…

Creative Arts, Eco Learning, Fine motor skills, Fun, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Imaginary Play, Mark Making, Music, Natural World, Numeracy & Mathematics

September Days with the Yellows and Pinks 🍁🍄🍏

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As Summer turns to Autumn the children have been learning about what is growing and changing with the seasons. The Yellow and Pink groups have been exploring Autumn through song and role play, making leaf prints, counting conkers and acorns, and chopping  apples and plums from the trees to find their seeds. We have been talking about harvesting and where different foods come from:
”Carrots and potatoes grow in the ground.” “Apples and pears on trees.”
“That’s wheat… it gets made into Weetabix!”

Autumn role play corner in the Katrine Room.

The children painted an autumn frieze after looking at art by David Hockney, Gustav Klimt and Andy Goldsworthy. They wanted to make bats and fairies to add to the forest and glued on real leaves.

David Hockney’s autumn woods


They later designed Autumn fairies using wooden pegs and leaves.

 


Chopping apples and plums, using hammer & nails to create squash hedgehogs, and designing leaf people.


Using leaves to copy a repeating pattern and create designs.

This week the children wanted to make a Safari Park for wild animals. They were fascinated to read the brochure from Blair Drummond Safari Park and tried drawing their own maps of it.
They also modelled a cave for the bears using Mod Roc with balloons, powder paint and water.

In Numeracy we have been learning about pattern.  At Together Time the children identified, described and matched different animal patterns.  They practised their aim and number identification with this Beanbag number game. Watch them in action!

If you would like to sing our Autumn Song with your child, here are the words (the tune is The Farmer’s in his Den).  Have fun!

Autumn time is here, autumn time is here,
It’s getting very chilly now, ‘cos autumn time is here.

The leaves are falling down, the leaves are falling down,
Yellow, red and gold and brown, the leaves are falling down.

The animals gather food, the animals gather food,
Nuts and seeds and juicy fruits, the animals gather food.

The farmers gather crops, the farmers gather crops,
Peas and beans and broccoli, and we can eat them up.