Category Archives: Technology & Construction

Group Purple, Health & Wellbeing, Outdoor Learning, Technology & Construction

Feeling thankful with the Purple Group

November 18, 2020 Miss Murphy Leave a comment

This week the children have been helping Mrs Walker develop our block area, the children have shown a particular interest in building castles, they have been developing their mathematical language as they described their castles.

‘My castle is taller than ………., but hers is longer’

‘I built a long castle for the Queen’

‘My castle is like the Statue of Liberty, really tall and the colour teal, the statue of Liberty is in New York in America’

As part of Health and Wellbeing Week, we have been discovering what our peers are thankful for. The children thought carefully about this, and posted their answer in our gratitude jar.

‘I am thankful for my Mum’

‘I am thankful when my Grandpa kisses and hugs me’

‘I am thankful because my Mum takes me to the park all the time’

We have also been taking part in a wide range of activities outdoors. We were making muddy handprints and creating obstacle courses, developing their gross motor skills and problem solving skills. Well done everyone.

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

The Great Outdoors 🌳🍁

November 10, 2020 Mrs MacLeod 1 Comment

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, Fine motor skills, Fun, Group Red, Health & Wellbeing, Imaginary Play, Literacy, Mark Making, Numeracy & Mathematics, Outdoor Learning, Technology & Construction

The Red Group Rev into Action! 🚘

August 31, 2020 Mrs MacLeod 1 Comment

The Red Group are currently based in the Lomond Room in Arran building. They have been eagerly exploring the characters in the exciting story of Supertato and have been role playing his adventures and daring rescues.

In Early Science experiments, the children tried different ways to free the peas from inside the frozen ice, adding salt, hot water and using various tools.

The Red Group have also been studying different vegetables and talking about how and where they grow. Then they made their own vegetable characters using different resources and re-enacted some of the key story scenes from Supertato.

“My favourite bit is when Supertato runs!”
“They put him in the jelly…”
“He wanted to kill the vegetable market…”

At group times the Red Group have been enjoying songs with actions, story-telling and talking about their feelings.

Outdoors they have been busy catching rain, puddle splashing and investigating forces with ropes (after reading the story of the Invisible String.)

Mixing powder paint with rain and experimenting with colour.

Using gloop to play and experiment with colour and shape.

Creative Arts, Family, Fine motor skills, Numeracy & Mathematics, Science, Technology & Construction

Creative Junk Modelling with Mrs Marshall

May 28, 2020 Mrs MacLeod Leave a comment

DEVELOPING CREATIVITY, PROBLEM SOLVING, LEARNING AT HOME WITH JUNK MODELLING
I hope everyone had a lovely weekend staying safe at home. Katie was helping me sort out the recycling and after finding plastic bottles and kitchen roll tubes, she decided to make a space rocket.

Katie used a small plastic bottle and cut a piece off a kitchen roll tube. She stuck them together with sellotape and wrapped red paper around them both, folding the paper at the top to make a triangle shape. She cut out triangle shapes for the fins at the bottom and covered them with red paper and cut other shapes for the windows.

Let’s explore your recycling – first check with your parent or explore it with them, to make sure it is safe to use – and see what you can find. There are lots of great objects such as cereal boxes, egg cartons, plastic milk bottles and kitchen roll tubes which can be ripped or cut and stuck together with sellotape or glue. You can transform the materials into whatever you choose and then paint or decorate them – what can you create? If you are using scissors, remember to sit down and use them safely.

Junk modelling is great fun and helps develop children’s creativity as they use their imagination and construct freely, while developing problem solving skills and resilience as they work out how to make their creation. Constructing also helps develop fine and gross motor skills, which helps children to manipulate tools better and supports the development of early writing skills.
Could you be a future engineer, exploring materials and deciding whether a material is strong enough? Why not send us photos of your creations to our Twitter account?
Have fun being creative!

Creative Arts, Family, Fine motor skills, Learning at home, Loose Parts, Mark Making, Sensory Play, Technology & Construction

Family Learning

March 19, 2020 Mrs Toman 2 Comments

Learning at Home

Below are some fun activity ideas that could be done at home.

If you wish, you could share pictures of your learning in your learning journal.

Act Out a Story

Act out a scene from one of your favourite books. You could use costumes, props, make your own puppets and even set up a stage!

Mark-Making

Find interesting materials to draw and write with. These could be messy materials like paint and mud.

Make Play-Dough

Make playdough with

2 cups of flour, 1 tsp. salt, 1 tbs. oil and 1 cup water. Add food colouring, glitter or herbs and spices.

Missing Number

Write out a line of numbers (e.g. 0-10). The adult should cover a number for the child to figure out which number is missing.

Loose Parts

Find interesting objects like bolts, marbles and pine cones. Use them to make groups of 5s etc.

Junk Modelling

Use up some of the items in your recycling bin to make models. These could be robots, buildings or inventions.

Counting Games

Counting tins in the cupboard, estimate the number pasta shells in the jar and count the steps in the house.

Threading Pasta

Make some jewellery using string and pasta. You can decorate your shells with paint or glue and glitter.

Watch the Clock

Keep an eye on the clock for o’clock times. Have a think about the time of day that you do different things like have your meals and go to bed.

Matching Coins

Find some money and sort the coins into matching groups. Can you recognise the £1 coin? Practise spending your money at the shops.

Sensory Play

Fill bowls with different sensory materials like rice, jelly, gloop (cornflour and water), soapy water and cereal. Play in them all, try to describe how they feel.

Take Photographs

Take photos of different scenes. This could be family, your toys, plants or interesting patterns.

Below are some useful links for online resources:

https://www.storylineonline.net/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/school-radio/nursery-rhymes-songs-index/zhwdgwx

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/games/get-squiggling-letters-mobile

https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/

https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/advice-for-parents/fun-ideas-learning-at-home/fun-ideas-ages-3-4/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/curations/nursery-rhymes

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/3-5-years/counting

https://www.funwithspot.com/

https://www.nasa.gov/kidsclub/index.html

http://www.bobthebuilder.com/en-gb/activities/more

http://www.kidspsych.org/index1.html

http://www.twinkl.co.uk/offer

https://www.science-sparks.com/science-and-stem-challenge-cards/

http://www.vooks.com

http://www.bigbrownbear.co.uk/magneticletters/index.html

https://resource-bank.scholastic.co.uk/

https://www.learningandexploringthroughplay.com/

https://www.youtube.com/user/CosmicKidsYoga

https://www.abcearlyyears.org.uk/index2.html

https://www.robinhoodmat.co.uk/learning-projects/

Apps

The Hello Atlas

Bookbug

BBC iPlayer Kids

Alphablocks

Numberblocks

Community, Creative Arts, Family, Imaginary Play, Mark Making, Natural World, Outdoor Learning, Performance, Technology & Construction

Welcome Spring !

March 18, 2020 Mrs Toman Leave a comment

Below is a selection of the Spring banners our children created to decorate the hall for our Daffodil Tea. They practised their Spring songs to sing to parents and visitors and thus helped raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care. Well done to all the children and a big thank you to all who supported the event!!

Creative Arts, Imaginary Play, Mark Making, Science, Sensory Play, Technology & Construction

Space

February 14, 2020 Miss Henderson Leave a comment

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.

Imaginary Play, Literacy, Outdoor Learning, Technology & Construction

Imagine that…

January 21, 2020 Mrs MacLeod Leave a comment

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.”