Author: F Forbes

This week at Oakburn Nursery was Imagination week!

On Monday it was pyjama day! It was such good fun coming to nursery dressed in our night wear!😴

We had a very special surprise waiting for us when we arrived..A brand new garden resource had been erected over the weekend..A teepee!⛺️

To tie in with pyjama day we put a cosy blanket, books and teddies inside and read bedtime stories!🐻📚I think the teepee is going to be a firm favourite with many of our children!

On Tuesday it was music and movie day!

Outdoors we played musical instruments and made our own music using pots, pans and spoons!😆👏🙌It was quite loud!

In the art area we drew our favourite movie characters! We discussed the movies they were in and why they were our favourite. The children showed great turn taking skills listening to each other and sharing their opinions.

On Wednesday it was our teddy bears picnic. The children all brought in their favourite teddy and we set up a picnic spot in the courtyard and in the garden. The children enjoyed pancakes and jam to share with our teddies!

On Thursday it was bake off day.
we had children baking in 6 different areas of the nursery and here are the entries…

1. The Garden

the children dressed up as little bakers and made a chocolate orange cake mixture following a recipe. Using their numeracy skills, they correctly measured the right amount of each ingredient and after the mixture was made the children scooped it into whole orange peels and then they were cooked on our fire pit outside! This emphasises our outdoors natural approach to activities as well as using our imaginations to make cakes in an interesting way.

 
2 – Baking area

In the baking area the children helped make a yummy Victoria sponge. Again children used their numeracy skills carefully measuring and spooning out the correct ingredients.

3 – 2-3 room

in the 2-3 room we made fruit muffins. The children enjoyed pouring the mixture into the cup cases and using the wooden spoons to do lots of mixing, developing their fine motor skills.

4 – construction area

in the construction area We created a cake tower using homemade vanilla, chocolate and berry cakes that we made together. We used icing to stick all of the pieces together and created our cake structure, showing our great engineering skills.

5 – The garden pt 2

The children loved making mud pies in the garden using mud, dried pasta and anything else they could find! We then decorated our mud pies using bright coloured materials

6 – Malleable area

In the malleable area we explored baking in different ways using different textures and ingredients. The children mixed, stirred, moulded and rolled the play dough to make fabulous play dough cupcakes.

we hope you voted in our Oakburn bake off competition!

On Friday we finished the week by having a games week. The children got plenty of opportunities to develop their gross motor skills by taking part in games such as what’s the time mr wolf, ball games and parachute games.
We finished with a big game of hide and seek around the nursery  even the adults joined in too.

hope you all have a lovely long weekend and we will see you all on Tuesday 19th 😃.

Construction area

This week in the construction area we have been learning the names of each different blocks. We did activities such as matching the blocks to the correct shape drawn on the tuff tray and tracing around them showing our mark making skills. The children also got their hands messy using cement to stick all our blocks together. It was lots of fun.

Outdoors

Over the past few weeks we have been looking at our resources and seeing which ones needed a good clean!💧💦💧💦The children decided the mud kitchen at the bottom of the garden should have a good scrub!

Armed with soapy water, scourers and brushes we set to work! Lots of gross motor skills at play here, including using our arm muscles to move the brushes and scourers around! It was hard work! The children were fantastic! I observed a real desire to persevere and get the job done!🙌👏🌳

We discussed the importance of looking after our equipment and resources and how we all had a right to play with things that were in good condition and cared for!❤️Thank you to everyone who helped make our mud kitchen sparkle…..before it got covered in mud again!… 😆Which is of course the whole point of a mud kitchen!🙌

‘Animal World’ is coming on a treat, however some of our resources got broken, so we replaced them! We have some lovely new additions, including frogs, snails and gnomes!🐌🐸🐌🐸🐌We love having a small world area outdoors! Lots of opportunities to role play, discover, be curious and use our imaginations!🌳🤩

We are developing a sensory area in our outdoor space!🌳😍The children asked for things they could twist, squish and pop! Look at all of our new resources!🙌By playing with these we are developing our fine motor skills, exploring the sense of touch and having access to equipment which encourages mindfulness and relaxation!❤️

We are continuing to develop our mark making area… We hope you like our homemade chalk boards!❤️Fine motor skills at the ready!🤩

Garden part 2.

The children have been busy planting seeds for our wild garden! The children used their gross motor skills to turn the soil using the spades before planting the seeds and watering them.

Garden part 3.
The children have been developing their fine motor skills chopping different vegetables using knives! We discussed how to use the knife safely and talked about what different things we could make using each vegetable. “Carrot soup” – AL.

Music area

We have been focusing on numbers this week in the music are we have been introducing numbers 0,1,2,3,4,5 😊. We have been exploring numbers and songs with numbers like one two three four five once I caught a fish 🐟 alive .

Baaa baa black sheep 🐑

Five current buns in the baker 👩‍🍳 shop .

We have introduced some environmental print using some vinyls and our number line piano 🎹

Woodwork area

We have been building our own fence! We started off by measuring big planks of wood and using our mark making skills to make lines where the wood needed to be cut. After we used the saw to carefully cut the wood into smaller parts. We discussed how to keep safe when using the saw. The children showed great gross motor skills sawing backwards and forwards.

Courtyard

In the courtyard we have been looking at The Tiger who came to Tea by Judith Kerr 🐯🫖 .  The children have enjoyed role playing with the tea set and characters from the book.

The children also tried some different flavoured teas 🫖. They enjoyed tasting  the different flavours and guessing which flavour each tea was 🍋🍑

Small world

In the small world area the children chose lots of different book to recreate the stories using small world resources re creating and interacting within the different characters each story portrays.

One focus I portrayed in the small world area was people who help us. Learning about what to do in an emergency situation and the number to dial. We spoke about what each emergency service job role contains and how important they are. We were even lucky enough to get a visit for our focus from the firemen!

 

Malleable Area

In the malleable and baking area over the last few weeks we have been developing our mark making skills and looking at healthy eating. The children have grown in confidence when identifying numbers and some are able to write out their age on different mark making resources.      The children have been talking about fruits and vegetables that are good for us and what they like to eat in their homes – bananas, strawberries and carrots are some of the favourites. We used some of these fruits to make smoothies and fruit salads, while cutting up the fruits the boys and girls practiced their fine motor skills and coordination along with keeping themselves safe while using the knife.

STEAM area

We have been super busy in the steam area recently. We went on a walk to Lennox park to collect some of the things we needed to make a terrarium. Whilst walking to the park we spoke about road safety and waiting for the green man. We needed sticks, soil, rocks, water from the river and moss.  We used little bags to collect all of the items and when we got back to the nursery we put all of the items into a tank. We then got magnifying glasses and had a look inside to see what we could see. We saw a worm, slug, spiders and some other little bugs 🐜

We have also been busy learning about how to keep our teeth clean. We spoke about how if we don’t brush our teeth plaque begins to build up causing our teeth to become yellow.  We used the big toothbrush and toothpaste, moving it in circulars motions to get all the dirty bits 🦷  🪥

Literacy area

In the home room we have been developing our fine motor skills through weaving. We used scissors to cut the wool and then carefully wrapped it around, over and under pieces of cardboard, creating some lovely patterns.
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Acorn room

The children have been developing their fine motor skills using trays with flour, salt and rice. The children used their hands and fingers to make marks in the different trays. The children also chose to hide the mini beasts in the different trays for their peers/staff to find them.

In the courtyard we have been very busy exploring and learning different colours. We used many different materials and resources to explore and mix colours together to see what we can create and matching objects up to their matching colour 🎨!

We arrived on Monday to see our elf had found a pom pom and decided to have some upside down fun!😆The children thought he was very funny. We did giggle at his antics!

 

On Tuesday and Wednesday the elves got up to more mischief, which involved superheroes and a zip line!

The children have been developing their fine motor and creative skills as they decorated their own gingerbread men using a variety of craft resources. The children enjoyed creating their own unique designs 🎄🎅⛄️

 

 

We have been developing our early literacy skills as well as our fine motor skills whilst mark making in some gingerbread powder. We copied the letters on the gingerbread men and made marks in the powder. 🎅⛄️🎄

 

This week in the Acorn Room we filmed our Christmas songs to show you the songs we have been learning in nursery. We hope you enjoyed watching and listening to our videos.

On Thursday we had our Christmas party and a very special visitor came to see us. At our party we did some dancing, played musical bumps and enjoyed a party snack then we saw Santa 🎅🏼. 

The children used the glitter flour to mark make in the pretend snow using sticks, acorns and their hands. They made big & small lines, circles and enjoyed feeling the texture of the flour in their hands.

 

 

Acorn Room

The children in the acorn room have been busy this week continuing their learning through Christmas based activities. The children made hand print Christmas trees,  explored their senses with our shaving foam snowman and explored different shapes when helping decorate a hat for our elf!

Construction Area

This week in the construction area the children explored a winter wonderland! On the run up to Christmas this experience allowed the children to work on shape and number recognition as well as learning about animals who live in cold climates.

Courtyard

I set up a blank canvas of a Christmas Tree using tape and set out some loose parts for the children to decorate the tree with.  Using these open ended resources together as a part of transient art children explore shape, positioning, space, colour and texture

In the courtyard kitchen the children we have been using our creative skills to make Christmas decorations for the nursery! What do you think?

Malleable Area

This week the children have been baking gingerbread men and Christmas tree shortbread for our Christmas bags. The children used their fine motor skills mixing all the ingredients together. We explored measure weighing each ingredient. The children were able to listen carefully and follow instructions as we followed the recipe.

More malleable fun! The children used shaving foam, glitter, pom poms and pipe cleaners to decorate Christmas trees. Exploring different colours and textures.

Expressive area

We have been creating Christmas decorations for our expressive area. We made a ‘Merry Christmas’ sign using lots of sparkly materials. The children also used different shades of green tissue paper to make a Christmas tree the used lots of sequins to decorate it.

We set up a writing station where the children could use their mark making and writing skills to write a letter to santa! We told him all the things we like about Christmas then signed our names at the end and posted it in our box. We had a lovely festive week.

We decided to make winter potions using oranges, pinecones and cinnamon sticks. The children enjoyed measuring out the ingredients and pouring and emptying the liquid into different sized containers.

Discovery Area

We really got into the festive spirit this week. Santa’s workshop arrived and we were busy wrapping presents and writing cards!

On Wednesday we enjoyed Christmas Lunch! It was delicious! Our tables were very festive.

On Thursday and Friday we had a visit from Elf on the Shelf! She decided to mess up all the fruit in the kitchen and wrap up some of our nursery resources.

Have a lovely weekend !

 

Expressive Area

This week in the expressive area we have continued to explore our interest in transient art. We have been decorating little Christmas trees with a range of different loose parts. Each one was beautiful and unique!

Lots of children have been interested in mark making! We decided to use a range of different tools and different surfaces to develop our fine motor skills.

We have been developing our curiosity skills as we explored shredded paper. We were able to identify letters and numbers that were hidden throughout. We also developed our fine motor skills as we used tongs to retrieve the pom-poms. Some of the children said the shredded paper looked like snow!

Courtyard

This week the children have been getting into the festive spirit at Oakburn EYC. With the help of Hannah we have decorated both our Courtyard Christmas Tree and our HUGE outdoor tree. They look amazing!

On Tuesday we celebrated St Andrews day. We used different colours and sizes of paper to create our own tartan kilt. We discussed patterns and many of the children were able to follow a pattern using 2 or 3 colours.

It has been a very icy week in our garden and the children have enjoyed exploring the ice. This led us on to having a discussion about snow and when the snow would come. Using the iPad we had a look at pictures of snow and snowflakes. We created our own snowflakes using loose parts and cork boards. Through this activity we discussed symmetry and how to make symmetrical patterns.

Discovery Area

In the discovery area we have been focusing on our fine motor skills and this was the perfect opportunity to make paper chains and Christmas decorations to hang on our trees.

For St Andrews day we made wool patters, danced to Scottish music and read stories.

Towards the end of the week we explored loose parts introduced through a Christmas theme.

Malleable

In the malleable area we have been exploring shape through playdough. The children developed their fine motor skills as they manipulated the playdough in their hands, rolling, pressing and squeezing it. They then used our cutters to make it into a shape of their choice

2-3 Acorn Room

It is officially Christmas month within our acorn room. We have been very creative making our Christmas surprises for our families. We have had sensory experiences like our reindeer food provocation. A few children were able to identify the colours of the magical drops and count them as they added them to their bag. A few children chose to make Christmas trees with their hands. The children are learning our Christmas songs and are beginning to copy a few words and follow a few of the actions.

Just a reminder we are looking to create and igloo. We would appreciate if you brought in your finished milk cartons. Thanks in advance.

Have a lovely weekend!

 

 

 

Discovery area

This week in the discovery area we have continued to create our ‘Oakburn Children’s Rights Tree. We needed to make more hand prints for leaves and environmental print signs for each key group. Our special tree is coming on great.

We have also been mark making using a variety of different media including scratch cards. We have learned that we don’t always need to use pens and pencils… A lolly stick can be a super tool for mark making. GENIUS.

Towards the end of the week we have been making something for our families… Which is…

Elsewhere in the discovery area we have been enjoying exploring shapes. The children have been helping to make some lovely shapes to hang from the ceiling. We have also been looking for different shapes throughout the nursery. We have been playing the board game Insey Winsey Spider which focuses on shape recognition.

STEM area

In the STEM area this week we have been doing some measuring and learning about inches, mm and cm. The children have been loving measuring things around the nursery and even each other!

We have also been continuing to develop our weather wall. We have added a range of different weather types so that children can come in and record the weather each day.

Outdoors

Outdoors this week the children have been hunting for sticks in the garden to make their own stickmen. We collected different sizes of sticks and talked about the different body parts we would need. “Mines needs long legs” – ED. ES wanted her stickman to be purple so we added different coloured paint and googley eyes to extend the provocation. Afterwards the children wanted to listen to the story. We discussed some of the rhyming words throughout the story and the children were able to identify rhyming words of their own.

It has been a freezing week which has provided us with lots of exploration and investigation of ice and how it changes form. We have been smashing the ice by throwing, jumping, stomping and hitting it. We have also been discovering ways to make it melt. Please remember to send hats, scarves, gloves and extra layers in, to keep us extra cosy!

We found forest creatures in the woodland and came up with a  hide and seek game which allowed us to explore the environment in more depth. Finding lichen, we learned that it produces oxygen, which humans need to survive. This led on to a conversation about looking after our environment and how we do this.

A delivery of trees of trees have been dropped at Oakburn, which we will be planting over the next couple of weeks.

 

Construction Area

This week in construction, the children have been making Christmas decorations through wood, cardboard and arts and crafts.

Courtyard

In the courtyard this week we have been thinking about Christmas! The children have been choosing their favourite colours and designs… You will all love what we have been making.

Malleable

In Malleable area we have been exploring ‘PIZZA’. The children created their own pizza using playdough. We then created a survey to find out what our favourite pizza was. Tomato pizza was the most popular. The children then helped to prep real vegetables to make our own pizza for snack.

Acorn Room

This week in the Acorn Room we have been learning about shapes and numbers. The children used the ‘Dotty Dinosaur’ game and shape sorters to work on their shape recognition.

We read the story ‘Millie Mae in Autumn’ to learn about the weather and used leaves we found from the garden to count and glue on to our pictures. We looked at the different sizes of leaves, comparing biggest and smallest.

We have begun our Christmas activities that we are looking forward to revealing with you soon.

Have a lovely weekend!

 

 

Our little acorns

In our Small World area the children were learning about numbers 0-6 using our tuff tray with a chalk road and parking the cars into different numbered spaces.

The children were continuing to develop their mark making skills using porridge oats and glitter. This activity also allowed the children to develop their fine motor skills by scooping the oats using measuring spoons and and mini ladle.

A few children chose to engage in multiple mark making experiences and were able to mark a few simple shapes, patterns and numbers.

This week in the courtyard, our little acorns have been very busy exploring some shapes! We have used 3D shapes to match up to our 2D shapes. This then took an interesting turn to some pizzas. We cut out some smaller shapes to make our very own pizzas. At the end of the week, the children had the opportunity to bake their own bagel pizzas. Using our culinary skills we created some fantastic and tasty pizzas 🍕!

On Friday we took part in some ‘pudsey’ activities to celebrate children in need.

Discovery Area!

On Monday we focused on road safety using the Ziggy books!.. We discussed the importance of thinking, looking and listening before crossing the road and holding a grown ups hand!🚦We talked about how good walking is for our health🙌

We also thought about counting back! A concept that can be a tricky business!😀We used the dolls to demonstrate the song.. ‘There were 5 in the bed….’This was a fun and engaging way of learning to count back 5,4,3,2,1,0 !🙌🤩It’s healthy to give our brains a good number workout😍

On Tuesday we explored feelings and expressing our emotions and why this is so important for our mental health❤️❤️❤️We created a friendship and feelings wigwam and ‘Flora the feelings’ puppet paid us a visit to help us talk about how we felt!😀😍☺️We also made an interactive feelings board, inspired by the ‘Colour Monster’ book😀

On Thursday we made our own zebra crossing!🚦Collaborative working, team building and road safety awareness! The children did an amazing job!🙌🤩The sellotape proved to be a tricky business!😍I was very impressed by the children’s traffic light knowledge!🚦

On Friday it was all about moving our body to music! Dancing can help us to keep fit and makes us feel good too!🙌🙌🙌What a terrific healthy week we’ve had!❤️🤩❤️

We also added environmental print to our mark making area and updated our learning wall! Thank you to the children who helped with this! FANTASTIC!❤️🙌👏

In the stem area this week we have been learning about shapes and matching them on the mat. We have been talking about their names and how many sides they have.

We have also been talking about the weather a lot so we have decided to start a weather wall to record the weather. The boys and girls have been helping with some writing and creating pictures of different types of weather so when it’s finished we can point an arrow corresponding to what it’s like outside that day ☀️🌧⛈❄️

Expressive area!

This week we been talking about Pudsey bear 🐻 and what he represents. The children made Pudsey bear faces and added pom-poms as the spots on his eye patch. This supported the children’s numeracy skills as they counted out the spots.

Following on from the children’s interest of dinosaurs, we made a dinosaur stomp race track.  🦕The children used paint to stomp the dinosaurs to the finish line, racing each other.  The children also used the footprints to play a dinosaur bingo game.  We would call out a number and the children would stomp the painted dinosaur on to the correct number. 🦕We also made a muddy swamp for the dinosaurs to splash about in. 🦖

Literacy area

Our rhyme for the last fortnight has been Incy Wincy Spider 🕷. The children have been enjoying singing the rhyme with actions and we made an Incy Wincy song sheet for the cosy corner. The children have been moving the spider up and down the numbered drainpipe as they sing 🎶 the song and adding raindrops 💦and sun ☀️ at the correct points in the rhyme.

Outdoors
This week outdoors we have been focusing on shape. The children were using our new jigsaw stones to complete the shape puzzle. What shapes could we make by matching up the lines?

From this we decided to use a range of loose parts to make our own shapes. “I’ve made a circle” – EC.

We then used shape view finders to see what we could find in the garden that matched each shape. We talked about how many sides each shape had.
“This tyre is a circle” – SS

Construction

In the construction area I set up a small world provocation with many different constructing opportunities. The. Children helped to connect the train tracks together, built and constructed bridges, buildings and learned about road safety through signs, road markings and ziggy!
The children have also been engaging in some role play through the use of block play cementing their own bricks using tools and shaving foam to build their own towers, buildings and houses! 🏠 🧱

We have also been learning about recycling and how it helps our environment by sorting and recycling the correct materials into their own groups. ♻️ 🗑

Courtyard experiences

This week the children have been continuing to explore some stories by our author of the month, Julia Donaldson. We read the story A Squash and A Squeeze, where an old lady asks for help with her small house. The children used the building blocks to build their own small house. They used problem solving, and teamwork to put it together in a way that the blocks would stay standing. 👏

We celebrated Children in Need by making our own Pudsey faces with transient art. The children used their fine motor skills to position the items to make up the face ☺️ We spoke about Children in Need as a charity, and how they help children all over the country to stay safe, healthy and happy!

The courtyard kitchen

We have been developing the courtyard home corner this week, the children  have had lots of great ideas.  We made the area more open and put up some lovely lighting to make this area more cosy now the darker mornings and nights have come!❤️

This week Twinkle Twinkle Little Star ⭐️ has been the nursery rhyme of the fortnight , the boys and girls have been practising  singing this fabulously 🤗. We have been very busy at the easel , we have been creating our very own sparkly and Shiney diamonds 💎🔶 using a variety of Shiney and glittery materials . Developing fine motor skills by gluing and sticking 🥰.

We have also made our own stars ⭐️ using lollipop sticks and some gems to make them shine 🤩. Well done everyone for all your hard work 👏 please keep singing 🎤 at home 🏠.