Category Archives: Outdoor Learning

Fine motor skills, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Health & Wellbeing, Imaginary Play, Literacy, Mark Making, Outdoor Learning, Science, Technology & Construction

May Days and Creative Ways

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The children have been using all kinds of exciting creativity in their play. Great minds at work!

Planting our herb garden and creative cup stacking. “Tah dah!”


Young Scientists in the Making:
“Scientists work really hard.”  “Can I be a scientist?

Helicopter Stories:
In Helicopter Stories, the children make up their own stories and are then each given the “stage” to act out their story, with friends taking part as various actors. It is great for building self confidence, esteem, focus, and talking and listening skills. We have had some wonderful stories, including “The Rhino and the Fight”, “The Orange Dog”, “The Magical Unicorn Food” and “The Red Racing Car.”


Some of the children wanted to create their own puppet show too. Great acting and storytelling skills were on display!

The children wanted to turn an old cardboard box into a den and had lots of great ideas about how to design, decorate and upholster it:


And for Mrs McInnes’s special birthday this week, they carefully designed her cards and created a very special cake:


“Happy Birthday, Mrs McInnes!”

 

Community, Eco Learning, Fine motor skills, Fun, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Health & Wellbeing, Natural World, Outdoor Learning, Science, Social Subjects

The Joys of Spring

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We had a lovely morning exploring the joys of spring in nearby Busby Church gardens. The children loved the freedom of the outdoors and they went on a Colour Hunt, finding blossom, daffodils, dandelions, stones, and bugs under logs. They were very excited to discover and study wood lice, slugs, worms, centipedes and bees, and they took great care to look after the nature around them. We also had fun trying out different viewpoints – including  lying down and upside down…


“We found bugs and snails.” “Wood louse is brown.”




The children found “pink blossom”, “brown tree stumps”, “a green tree”, “white stones”, “yellow daffodil heads”, “blue sky” and “purple pansies” on their Colour Hunt.
We have also started to look at the life cycles of various creatures, including frogs, and match them to their habitats.
 “Worm lives in the ground!”   “Bird in the nest.”

Here is a video of some tadpoles that Mrs MacLeod was lucky to see in a small pond last weekend. What other new life have you seen growing this Spring? Let us know!

Creative Arts, Eco Learning, Fine motor skills, Gardening, Group Pink, Group Yellow, Imaginary Play, Literacy, Natural World, Numeracy & Mathematics, Outdoor Learning, Science, Sensory Play, Technology & Construction

Science Adventures: Space and Planting

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The Wonders of Space

The children in Pink and Yellow groups have recently showed an interest in learning about Space, so they have been designing rockets and reading the story of Little Moon in the Story Box to find out more about planets and black holes…


Exploring the Story Box and experimenting with different sphere shapes


Rocket Number Games and Play Dough Aliens


Creating Rocket Designs and Junk Modelling

We also tried making some paper mâché planets by mixing up a paste of water and flour, dipping in newspaper strips and tissue paper, then wrapping them around balloons.

“I think that one looks like our planet – Earth.”
“This one looks like Mars and that one is the sun.”
“Rover is on Mars.”
“Craters are on the moon.”
Earth has “more water” than land.
“That’s a gas giant!”

The children also began some other experiments with balloons and discovered static electricity when they found they could rub the balloons and make them stick to the walls.

Planting and Growing

Mrs McInnes has been showing the children how to plant grass seeds to make Grass Heads, and they have been learning what a plant needs to grow.

We have been carefully watering the plants for 2 weeks and look how quickly the grassy hair grew!


Time for a hair cut!

Some other outdoor fun in the sun!


 

Gardening, Group Blue, Group Purple, Group Red, Health & Wellbeing, Imaginary Play, Literacy, Mark Making, Outdoor Learning, Science

Fun in the Sun

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The children in the Purple, Blue, Green and Red groups have settled well back into nursery. We have been taking advantage of the lovely weather with lots of exciting outdoor learning experiences such as pouring/ filling in water tray, painting, planting, reading and developing our gross motor skills on the bikes.

Fine motor skills, Health & Wellbeing, Learning at home, Mark Making, Natural World, Outdoor Learning, Science, Sensory Play, Technology & Construction

The Wonder of Snow ❄️

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Hello everyone,
This week we are focusing on Sensory Play and Fine Motor Skills.
We have been given a free gift of one of the best sensory experiences ever – SNOW – and lots of it!

What have you been doing with this sparkly new toy?

If you are building snow people or an igloo, or rolling giant snowballs or sledging, these are all great for your gross motor skills like strength and co-ordination, as well as your creativity. Drawing or writing your name in snow is also really good for your fine motor skills.

And we can use all our 5 Senses to enjoy the wonders of snow.
For example can you –
– See the snow sparkling in sunlight, like millions of tiny diamonds?
– Hear the “crunch crunch” sound as you stomp through the snow?
– Feel snow with your hands, feet, cheeks?
– Smell the freshness in the air?
– Catch a snowflake on your tongue – how  does it Taste?
What do you notice about the snow?
Snow has many different forms:
When is falls, is it light or heavy?
What about when it is rolled into a giant snowball?
And when it melts, what is it like then?
What colour are snow shadows?

Have fun investigating and playing in the snow!

 

Eco Learning, Health & Wellbeing, Learning at home, Outdoor Learning, Science, Sensory Play

Amazing Ice

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We all have five senses in our bodies. Do you know what they are all for?

You can find out more about your senses in this video: https://youtu.be/XUMiPK6LZBI

Mrs Krivickiene did something very interesting at the weekend, using her senses – Forest Bathing!

“I went on a mindful walk in the woods. On a mindful walk, I try to use all my senses and pay attention to everything I can see, hear and feel. I use my eyes to notice the colours, spot an animal or a bird. I use my sense of touch to feel the texture and temperature. I use my ears to listen to the sounds of the wood and then try to guess what makes it and if it is a close or a distant sound. And I use my nose to smell. There is even a special name for mindful walking in the woods – it’s called “forest bathing”. Just like having a bath makes your body clean, forest bathing helps to release tension and feel calm.

So yesterday, on my mindful walk I found some pretty amazing staff that I would really like to share with you. I spotted hair ice, that is a rather rare phenomenon that can only be found on dead wood. This hair-like shape of ice is made by a special kind of fungus. Isn’t it amazing that such a thing as fungus can make its own style of ice!
It felt cold just like any ice but it was very delicate and was breaking down easily.  What do you think it looks like? I hope you will try “forest bathing” next time you are on your walk and it will help you to discover something new and amazing that could be shared with all of us.”

Have you seen any different types of ice whilst outside? Sometimes it makes wavy lines, sometimes circle patterns, sometimes it looks like gemstones. Sometimes it is thick, sometimes thin and fragile. Isn’t ice amazing?
Eco Learning, Learning at home, Outdoor Learning, Science, Sensory Play, Videos with ELCC Staff

Bird of the Day: Robin

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Friday’s Bird is the cheeky Robin.
The Robin is many people’s favourite with its bright red tummy.
Robins are very friendly and will often come up really close to us. They sometimes follows gardeners around because when gardeners dig in the soil, they might turn up worms which Robin will then fly down and eat.
Robins’ eggs are a creamy colour with reddish speckles.
They have many different songs and they sing for most of the year. Listen to this one singing a Winter song in a tree last week:
Bird Quiz: Let’s see if you can remember the names of the 6 birds we have looked at over the week. See if you can point to each one and say their name:
How many did you get right?
Making Bird Food 

On Google Classrooms you can find a video of Mrs MacLeod showing you how to make fat balls to hang out for birds.
And here’s a great idea from Mrs Marshall of how to make bird food, using cereal:

Making a bird feeder is a great way to help out our feathered friends in wintertime. All you need is pipe cleaners/string, Cheerios/Hoops cereal, and something to hang your bird feeder with such as ribbon. Start by threading Cheerios/Hoops onto pipe cleaners/string – a  great fun fine motor skills challenge (you may enjoy munching some while you thread!). Leave space at either end to twist the ends together or tie together to ‘seal’ the ends. Add a ribbon or string for hanging and your bird feeder is done. Hang and enjoy watching the birds enjoy their snack! Remember to hang them in a safe place for visiting birds, avoid low spaces where they are within a cat’s reach, and avoid open and noisy areas.

The Big Garden Bird Watch

If you are taking part in the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch this weekend, have fun and we hope you spot something.
People who watch birds have a big long name – Ornithologist.
Sometimes they use tools like binoculars to help them spot birds. You could also take a bird book when birdwatching to help you identify birds, and perhaps some seed or raisins to attract the birds.
But really the only tools you need to watch birds are these –

– Eyes and Ears. So keep looking and listening and you can be a Young Ornithologist!

 

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.