Many thanks to everyone who came along to the online coffee session last Wednesday.  It was lovely to see so many of you on screen and actually have a bit of a catch-up.  We discussed our pre-schoolers’ transition to Primary 1.  Some of our parents have had the opportunity to visit the Infant Building in the school, for a guided tour with Mrs Stillwell and Mr Graham. If you did not manage to book an appointment to do this, you, and your child, will be welcome to visit on our next in-service day – Thursday 6th May.  Please phone the school office 955-2251 to book a time for your visit.  Our pre-schoolers had an opportunity to visit the Primary 1 classrooms and Active Learning Zone during the Easter Holidays when nursery was open, but the school was not.  The children really enjoyed this visit and came back full of excitement and enthusiasm.  We will be repeating this again over the school’s summer holidays and if your child did not go over in the Easter break there will be more opportunities to get to know the layout of the school building, then.

We traditionally have a joint active learning project which our pre-school children take part in along with the Primary 1 classes.  This year we will not be able to meet up as we are all in our own bubbles, however we have devised a way to take part in collaborative learning, by doing the same activities and investigating the same subjects, then meeting up on Teams to share our learning.  While not ideal, it still allows us to have contact and see each other.  We are going to become explorers and research the lifecycles of butterflies, frogs and sunflowers, watching their development in our classrooms/playrooms, in the garden pond and in the polytunnel.  We are going to have great fun and learn lots!  Look out for news and photos of our learning on your Learning Journal and in the blog.

One of our mum’s asked if there was any chance of having some Forest Kindergarten sessions in this last term as her son had really been looking forward to them.  Unfortunately we will not be able to offer the session a week for 6 weeks we did pre-covid, but we do intend to take groups of our pre-school children for some Forest Play adventures over the next two months.

We also discussed graduation.  At present our plan for graduation is to have a separate wee event for each of our playroom bubbles.  We are really hoping that the infection rate continues to fall and that we will be able to invite parents for this special celebration.  Dates will be confirmed this week and we will keep our fingers and toes crossed!  Should this prove impossible, we will record a wee graduation video for every pre-school child.

Thanks again to all who managed along- apologies for the less than slick presentational style.  Though I have been to loads of them, I have never hosted a Teams chat before! Hopefully I can only get better!!!! Thanks for your patience and good humour!  Hope to see you again soon!