Oakburn Early years centre

Acorn Room

It was nursery rhyme week in the acorn room! The children enjoyed recognising numbers on the clock, exploring the 10 green bottles rhyme and matching the numbers on 1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish alive! In our art area, the children showed off their creative skills by decorating their own version of Humpty Dumpty and created Jack and Jill’s bucket of water using a variety of paint and collage materials. At group time, each child individually chose their favourite nursery rhyme and sang it with their peers.

Story Corner

This week we have been exploring the nursery rhyme hickory dickory. We looked at pictures of clocks and identified the numbers. We put the rhyming pictures in order and also practiced singing the song incorporating makaton signs.

Block Play

In the block play area we were looking at “Hickory Dickory Dock”. The children were then able to place the numbers 1-12 in the correct order in the clock. We then used the clock game and were able to see that when the big hand was at 12 it was o’clock. Some of the children were able to identify different times including 5 o’clock and 3 o’clock.

Small World

In the small world area we have had so much fun during nursery rhyme week! The children learned all about the body through head, shoulders, knees and toes and we even translated it into Italian! Introducing different cultures through familiar themes is a fantastic way to learn!

Woodwork

The children were busy in the woodwork area creating buses for nursery rhyme week 🚌 we were focusing on the nursery rhyme 🎶 The Wheels On The Bus 🎶. The children joined in with some singing as well as woodwork to create their buses. The children used loose parts such as bottle lids, buttons and cork slices. The children practise safe woodwork wearing goggles and making sure their was only 4 people in the area ensuring everyone had enough personal space. We spoke about travelling safely when using the bus as a mode of transport and children responded with answers such as, standing back from the road, minding the step and never going anywhere without a grown up. The children explored numeracy, literacy and expressive arts throughout this experience. The children demonstrated symmetry when positioning the wheels. The children worked their fine motor skills positioning and hammering the wheels onto the bus. The children participated in a group discussion speaking about their experiences travelling on a bus and how to keep safe. The children then explored expressive arts performing singing wheels on the bus to everyone. Good job guys 👏

Outdoors

This week in the garden. The children have been helping make rockets. We have been adding water and seeing them take off different amounts of water made the rocket go higher or lower. We done a countdown from 10 blastoff. This was so much fun.💥🚀

STEM area

This week in the Stem area the children have been exploring aeroplanes. The children used different materials such as cardboard, paper and straws to make different planes. The children tested to see if their planes could fly and measured how far they go.

 

 

It was Halloween week at Oakburn,  and fire safety week ahead of firework night. here are some of the spooktacular activities we got up to!

Throughout the week the Acorn children have been focusing on fire safety 🔥!

We were creative and made some fire sticky pictures and spoke about fire being hot, one of the children told me “red is hot and blue is cold”!

In the garden the children used the spray bottles to put out the fire drawn with chalk on the ground. We pretended to be firefighters 🚒. Using fine motor and hand eye coordination to aim at the chalk fire drawings. We saved the nursery 🚨!

Woodwork area

This week in the woodwork area we focused on Halloween 🎃 we practised our fine motor skills positioning and hammering nails into the pumpkin. We discussed the different shapes we usually see on a pumpkin, drew those shapes and then used the drawing as a guide line to hammer the nails into it.

Fine motor area

In the fine motor area this week we have been creating fireworks using tissue paper. The boys and girls have spoke about how to keep safe and all of the different colours they see when the fireworks go off.

Small world

This week in the small world area, the children have done a wonderful job of decorating the area themselves, as well as, taking part in a variety of Halloween activities 🎃 👻 when asked what they found scary, the most common answer was spiders so we made our own friendly spiders and hung them from our giant spiders web! This developed the children ability to design and create their own models and was a good way to develop their scissor skills. The children also made their very own spooky stories! The were asked to illustrate and tell their story and they were all just so fantastic! We had a story about a ghost who was scared of the dark but by using a torch they could still join in all the nighttime fun! Amazing imagination 🌈 frightfully spectacular work everyone!

This week has been very busy in the art area, from making Halloween masks to firefighters and fireworks! These activities have helped to develop the children’s fine motor skills, their cutting and sticking and hand eye coordination. We have had so much creative fun this week, the children have made some fabulous pictures and have been having lovely interactions with our friends we have seen lots of amazing team work🎃 🎇.

STEM area

In the STEM area we have been exploring Halloween. The children carried out a pumpkin investigation, we carried out science experiments to create pumpkin potions, using cocktail sticks and sweeties we created our own spooky towers, the children learned about body parts by creating their own marshmallows skeletons.

Snack area

We have had lots of spooky food at snack this week!

 

 

Acorn Room

This week in the acorn room, we have began our halloween celebrations. The children enjoyed exploring halloween colours in our water tray. The children were turn-taking and sharing the different water utensils. The children also enjoyed exploring different textures through playing with lentils, halloween pasta and shredded paper!

Fine motor area

This week in the fine motor areas we have been getting into the Halloween spirit with different sensory bags.  We had find the eye of the pumpkins, put the branches on the spooky trees, give the ghost some eye, find the pumpkins and ghosts and put the pom-poms in the circle 🎃👻

Small world area

This week in the small world area and cosy corner, the children have been transitioning themes across the both areas. Using the theme of dinosaurs, the children, with some inspiration from a story book, made their own dinosaur sleepover! We then decided to have our very own dinosaur sleepover in the cosy corner with mats, blankets, and stories 😴📖 Afterwards, the children then introduced dinosaurs into the doll houses for more imaginative play! All of these ideas originated from the children and they expanded on them themselves to guide their own learning. What an excellent dinosaury week we have all had.

Block play

In the block play area the children were building bridges, they worked together with their peers and made some wonderful bridges for their cars and trains. This developed their team building skills, their fine motor skills, their listening and language skills , all while balancing and stacking the blocks and being creative with their imagination.

Future engineers in the making!

Outdoors

This week in the garden, the children have been developing their gross motor skills using the climbing frame and asking for support when needing help to cross the monkey bars. The children are building on their confidence and independence 

The children have been on a leaf hunt outside, collecting different colours and sizes of leaves. Once collected we made a chart to show our findings. Grouping by colour and size

Art area

The children have been exploring autumn though a sensory tuff tray. We have been exploring using pumpkins, comments, leaves and sticks. 🍂 🎃 🍁.

We have also been doing some fun Halloween activities 🎃 the children used apples and paint to make pumpkin pictures, building on fine motor skills and colour recognition 🎃

STEM area

in the STEM area we have been developing our fine motor skills using loose parts to make our name.

This week we have been celebrating maths week at Oakburn with a focus on shape and motion. Here are some of the exciting things we got up to!

Block Play

During Maths Week children have enjoyed matching the 3D shapes to 2D shapes. We talked about the different properties of 3D shapes and how they have different surfaces. The cylinder has circles at the base and top with the other surface curving round. The cuboid has rectangles.

Block play allows children to experience working with 3D shapes learning about and working with the physical properties.

Acorn Room

This week in the Acorn room to celebrate Maths  Week we have been exploring shape and colours as well as matching.  The children have been using their fine motor skills and coordination to match up the colour to the shapes and also creating their own patterns using the magnetic shapes.

Our little acorns have been learning to recognise shapes. The children were able to sort the dinosaur shape game.  The children identified their favourite shape as they mark maked pictures for their loved ones.

Courtyard

In the courtyard we have been exploring motion as part of Maths week. The children have been building lots of different ramps and rolling cars down them. The children were using their prediction skills to see which car they thought would be fastest. We practiced lots of positional language, talking about heavier and lighter cars, steeper and lower ramps, pushing and pulling our cars and about driving up and down. We tried letting the cars go on their own and then pushing them to see if adding force makes them go faster.

The children enjoyed role playing and also racing their cars round the circuits they had created.

Woodwork

For numeracy week in woodwork the children created some shape jigsaws, the children chose their shape and painted it in the colour of their choice, then using the saw we cut them in half. The children used self risk assessment during this activity while developing gross and fine motor skills. The children then got the chance to put them back together, using their team work skills and problem solving skills all the children managed to re create the shapes.

Malleable

The children have been using the oats in the malleable area to explore different shapes. The children used the cutters to create different 2D shapes which they were then able to identify.

we used the playdough and different shaped  buttons. We pressed the buttons into the dough to see the shape imprint.

Gross motor area

In the Gross Motor area we have been learning about  circles and semi circles. The children jumped in the hoops developing their gross motor skills, by changing direction while jumping in each hoop. They were also able to count the circles and semi circles in the line.

STEM area

During maths week in the STEM area, we have been exploring force and how it works! Firstly, we done this through making our own paper airplanes! ✈️ We threw them as far as we could and measured what number we got to! For more challenging numbers, we reinforced the concept of 1-1 correspondence for the children to count the number of items beside the written number to still work out how far they threw their plane! They were incredible throughout this! Next, the children made their own rockets and used a straw to blow them as far they could! They started out by drawing their own rocket and designing it themselves. They then cut out the rocket and attached a small pocket to the back of it. From there, they put the straw in and blew as hard as they could and watched the rocket soar! 

Outdoors

Outdoors we went on a shape hunt. The children had shape identifiers and had to find the same shape in the garden. We found loads!

Acorn Room

Out in the courtyard this week we have been exploring bugs, using our fine motor skills and also practicing our counting.  The boys and girls have been investigating the bugs in the oats – counting how many ants, ladybugs and beetles we can find.🐞🐜🪲🐛

In the acorn room our book of the month is ‘The Gruffalo’. We have being using the children’s interests in the book as sparks. LK said ‘snake’, this led to having a sensory experience of scrambled snake.

The children have been talking about making ice cream, we used the shaving foam to explore our senses of touch and even smell to create our own bowls of ice cream 🍨!

Outdoors

. The children requested to use chalk so we wrote the alphabet on the fire pit benches. The children then took turns to firstly recognise the first letter of their names and then any other letters of their name they  recognised.

I was very impressed as all children recognised the first letter of their name and some even spelled their whole name.

Afterwards the children practiced their mark making on the logs around the fire pit. ☀️

Outdoors the children have taken an interest in our new birds that have been nesting in our tree. We talked about what the birds might eat which led us on to making our own bird feeders.

STEM area

Recently in STEM, we have been exploring different life cycles and have stumbled on the topic of mould! So we started off by chopping up a variety of different foods into smaller pieces. This developed the children’s fine motor skills, as well as, introducing mathematical processes such as grouping and division. As the weeks have went on, the children have watched mould develop which has sparked a variety of questions and opened the door to different topics and discussions based around life cycle’s. Although a less practical and patient activity, it has allowed the children to better understand and witness change and growth up close! Fantastic work everyone 🧑‍🔬👩‍🔬

Story corner

In the story corner we have been looking at the story ‘what the ladybird heard’ and looking at positional language. The children used the small world animals and blocks to place the Animals ‘inside, outside and around’. Some of the children then drew their favourite animal

 

Acorn Room

This week in the Acorn room we have been looking at numbers  up to 10.  We have been doing a lots of different activities relating to numbers allowing the children to use their counting and organising skills.

The children have also enjoyed music time, using lots of different instruments to sing our favourite songs 🎶!

 

Mirror mirror! We in the art area, we used the mirror to look at our reflection and draw ourself on paper. We spoke about our features, what colour of eyes we have,musing this to mark make and create our pictures 📸!

Block Play

This week in the block play area children were busy building tall structures and compared their own heights to the buildings. This led to some very tall buildings through which children were able to practice their risk assessing skills keeping themselves and other safe.

Children role played using the large hollow blocks. A fire truck, houses, and a jail cell with some of the children being police officers and some being prisoners.

Many of our younger children have been developing their block play skills, demonstrating their ability to stack and build enclosures, some of which became zoo enclosures.

Small World Area

This week in small world we have been exploring People who help us. We have been exploring emergency services. We explored how firefighters keep us safe and what their role is.

 

STEM

This week in STEM, we have been doing lots of experiments! The children shaved soap down to very small pieces and then carefully using the electric whisk, they whisked it into crazy foam! They also mixed secret ingredients to make mini fizzing potions and watched as all the colours merged together! They all followed the instructions very well which ensured amazing potions! And finally, they used their excellent problem solving skills to melt the colourful ice in a variety of different ways using a variety of tools! I have been so impressed with the enthusiasm and involvement of each and every child! Fantastic work my mini scientists! 👩‍🔬🧑‍🔬🧪

Mark Making

this week in mark making the children have been creating their own self portraits. We looked at what makes us different and unique using the mirror to see who had different coloured eyes and hair.

Children’s Rights

The children have been helping make our rights Jenga game. They have been amazing and helped make these from start to finish. The children helped saw the pieces in woodwork and then sand them, making nice safe

, smooth edges to play with. On Friday the children helped with the next step by painting the blocks in rainbow colours to represent the different articles in the UNCRC. We will then write the key values onto each piece (safe, heard, educated, healthy, play and rest and identity) and use some clear varnish to stop them fading.

The game will then be used with the children to build their awareness of their rights by starting conversations about each value when they remove it in the game. If anyone would like to borrow this for home please come and speak to Rebecca and we will happily lend it to you. 🎨

Acorn Room

• This week in the 2-3 room we have been experimenting with size, volume and using words like “full” and “empty” while playing in the water tray.  We have also explored different textures through playing with shredded paper, home made paint (flour, water, food colouring) and breaking ice to set the dinosaurs free! In the story corner,  the children took part in a puppet show, they each got a chance to preform with their chosen puppet in front of their peers!

 

Art Area

This week in the art area the children explored mixing colours using paint . We discovered:

Red + blue = purple

Red + yellow = yellow

For wear your pajamas to nursery day we used fabric cuttings to design our own paint of pjs and discussed the different prints and patterns of the cuttings.

Outdoors

This week in the garden. The children wanted to make chocolate cake we got out the cookbook and we used lots of mud and sticks. We started by using the mud to turn into the cake and we used the sticks for candles. The children all worked together to make big cakes and little cakes. This was so much fun outside this week. Well done boys and girls

Fine motor area

For pj day this week we made our own pillows. The children learned about risky play when using the sharp needles and the importance of slow precision. The children listened and followed all the steps until they had finished each side. This experience allowed children to practise precision when sewing the dots, working on strengthening their fine motor skills and achieving something tricky!

Malleable area

This week has been imagination Week and the children have been very busy! For our Oakburn bake off day, the children have been making playdough cupcakes !🧁 The children have added different colours and flavours as well as some icing and sprinkles to decorate 🎂

For Disney day, the children made their own playdough Disney castles! 🏰 The children were able to copy pictures of the castle and build their own. Great use of our imaginations 🏰

Block Area

This week the children from the Pine and Willow groups took part in the Oakburn Bake Off. The children enjoyed weighing out the ingredients. They helped stir the biscuit, chocolate, marshmallows and sultanas together. They poured the mixture in to trays and then popped them in to the fridge. They got to sample their baking which was delicious. And we then entered our ‘three billy goats gruff rocky road bridge’ into the competition. They all enjoyed this experience, which contained science, seeing the consistency of the chocolate change after heating it. They used their numeracy to help measure the ingredients.

STEM area

Snow in the summer?! ⛄️ The STEM area may have misread the ingredients to make cornflour play dough for our bake-off themed day at nursery! But what a wonderful mishap! The children decided their own measurements of cornflour and conditioner and were delighted when the snow formed! We ran with this idea instead of trying to fix it as this was much more exciting! By making shapes, mark-making letters, and developing our fine motor skills, this activity was full of just as many learning experiences for the children! With science, even mistakes can lead to fantastic experiences, such as, building a snowman in August!

Children’s rights @ Oakburn EYC

We had a lovely visit from Ezmie and Elaine from the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland on Tuesday.

The children welcomed them and showed them around the centre, they then explored all the different areas of the nursery, even joining us for a yummy lunch of soup and spaghetti bolognese. Elaine and Ezmie were super impressed with the children’s confidence and independence moving through the nursery and at lunch time. They thought Oakburn were doing an amazing job of promoting children’s rights, in particular safety, child led practice, play, health and well-being and offering a good quality, varied education promoting children’s creativity and individuality.

We all shared lots of ideas and resources based around children’s rights, we then introduced them to our cuddly friend Belle our rights elephant.

Keep an eye out for lots more info on our children’s rights journey at Oakburn and our Rights Awareness Week in November. 💪 🐘 🛡️

Have a lovely weekend everyone !

 

The Village

This week the children have been enjoying sports week up in the village. On Monday we played lots of team games and ball games with each other and the parachute 🪂 ⚽️.

Then on Friday we transformed upstairs into a giant obstacle course allowing the children to use their gross motor skills, balance and problem solving to make their way from one corner of the village, right round and ending with the finale of a trip down the slide 🛝.

STEM

This week in the STEM area, the children have been looking at the engineering concept of bridges. Using a variety of blocks as the bases and rulers as the bridges, the children had to use their excellent problem solving skills, as well as, their fine motor skills to delicately place the ruler on the blocks without anything falling down. The children scaled this on their own by building a house-like structure and made a bridge with the rulers to combine them. Fantastic work everyone 😁

 

Art Area

This week in the art area the children made Salt paintings. Using PVA glue and glue spreaders the children marked out their picture and then sprinkled salt on top of the glue before shaking off the excess.  We then left the pictures to dry over night and painted them on the following day.

Gymnastics

As part of our dance/gymnastics day for sports week some children joined in a mini gymnastics class where they followed instructions and demonstrations to practice balancing and stretching. The children balanced standing up and on their bottoms. We practiced jumping and sang ‘knees get ready, knees get ready, knees get ready to jump’. We finished off by doing some forward rolls. Well done 🤸‍♀️

Block play

The block play area has supported children’s role play this week. A brick house was built by the third little pig, the wolf huffed and puffed and could not blow it down! The little pig put a fire on for when the wolf came down the chimney. I don’t think the wolf will be in a hurry to visit Oakburn again. Children went on a journey in their car “to see the dinosaurs” and a beautiful Unicorn Castle was created. It has been a great week with children using their language skills to collaborate, creating some large scale masterpieces which enhanced their role play.

Children used their numeracy skills to identify numbers and measure how far they had jumped. Builders used the measuring tapes to work out the length of bricks.

Malleable Area

This week in the malleable area we have been exploring clay. The children have been making clay bowls for us to use to store our beads and other small parts in. The children have done a fabulous job 👏Once the clay has fully set, the children will be able to paint and decorate them too!❤️

Mark making Area

In the mark making area we made our own paper using recycled paper, wool, glue and water. The children learned so much about recycling and the science behind making paper! ♻️

Acorn Room

A few of our acorns next steps was to develop their number and shape recognition. We incorporated this into active week. The children with support counted 0-10, L.F showed the children the numbers. The children then took turns to find the numbers and jump to them. A few children were able to identify numbers “5,3,2”. F.R lifted the number “2” and said “that’s my number”. We then carried out a shape jumping game the children jumped to see which shape they landed on “circle”, “square”, “triangle “. The children then explored our shape book, finding shapes under the flaps.

Mark Making

This week in the mark making and home corner it was festival week ✌🏼

The children strengthened their fine motor skills through sewing making wristbands for entry into our festival as well as face paints and glitter tattoos

 

Malleable Area

In the malleable area we have been making salt dough handprints. The children followed the recipe and took turns each adding and mixing in the ingredients. The children then printed their hands into the dough and enjoyed painting them all different colours.

Acorn Room

Our little acorns have been showing an interest in safari animals. The children took turns to get measured at our giraffe 🦒. The children copied as the EYW recognised their individual numbers “3” and “0”. This led to the children measuring the safari animals. L.F supported the children to recognising numbers on the measuring tape “5”. R.B and N.B sorted the animals into “big” and “small”. M.M measured her peer. We also had a very special visit from the ice cream van, we had an ice cream and then created our own play-dough ones.

Block Play

This week children had fun participating in the ‘Oak in the park festival’, taking part in various activities throughout the nursery. Block play supports creativity, imagination and symbolic representation, children can use the different types and sizes of blocks to support this. Children enjoyed role playing in the block play area where they built an ambulance and a camper van.

Children enjoyed using the large hollow blocks to support their gross motor development, building a box to jump off. Children used their numeracy skills to measure how far they could jump. Some children could jump over 150 centimetres.     Children enjoyed this, many of them taking several jumps to improve their distance.          

Children also built their own slides this week, some children even used the slide to practice their balance on different surfaces by walking down it.

It was a great week of play and learning in the block play area.

STEM

Keeping up the festival theme indoors, the STEM area focused on colours! Mixing shaving foam, conditioner, and paint, we created our own bright colours and practiced our mark making skills! Incorporating literacy and numeracy, the children used their fine motor skills to mark make marks that were important to them such as their name or their age! As the activity went on, the children discussed the senses that they used such as the colours they could see, the smells they could smell, the sound that the foam made when we squeezed it in our hands, as well as, the feeling of the foam. What a fantastic messy experience!

Art Area

This week in the art area the children have been making their own flags for Oakburn’s Festival, the children used a range of materials to glue on and developed their fine motor skills by drawing some fantastic pictures. The children then went out and sourced sticks from outdoors to use as their flag pole.

Outdoors / Courtyard

As it’s festival week the courtyard and garden have been doing lots of prep for our festival. At the start of the week the children had to use their problem solving skills to set up tents, working together.
The children dressed up in their festival outfits and later in the week we had marshmallows and hotdogs on the bbq. They were super yummy !!

Fine motor area

The children explored all the different textures using both sticks and their fingers to make and form patterns in the trays. This activity allowed the children to strengthen their fine motor skills.

The Village

Our new sensory wall up in the village is now complete. The children have enjoyed help make the sensory bags and stick on lots of resources to create our wonderful touchy-feely sensory wall.

We have also created a wind wall where all items move when the wind blows. The children have loved watching all of the windmills blow and butterflies bounce in breeze. We now plan to create sensory floor tiles the children can explore with their feet.

Please come and have a look next time you are in the centre. 🥰

Small world area

This week in the small world area we have been exploring butterflies. We explored a butterflies life cycle by looking after our very own caterpillars. The children observed the caterpillars create there chrysalis and watched them hatch turning into beautiful butterflies. The children took amazing care of our butterflies helped to set them free in the garden.

STEM area

Magic bubbles! Using a secret recipe, the children made fantastic bubbles in the STEM area! The bubbles were so strong that the children were able to hold them and even put their hands through them without the bubbles popping which sparked some amazing and fanatical discussions about what the bubbles were made from! 🌈 This idea came from one of the children so we researched how to make it happen and delved right into it! We really want the children to guide their own learning and this is a great example of that! Keep these ideas coming everyone 💡

2-3 room

Spark- N.B said “I go to the doctors”. L.F then set up the dollies and dr kits. The children were able to identify the body parts they were making better “nose”, “head”.  The children developed early friendships as they role played together N.B “ you check my heart”. We then carried out a science experiment of watching the germs run away.

Outdoors

This week in the garden. The children have been making lots of delicious muddy dishes. We have been working with the natural resources. We can find around the garden to make food that we usually eat at home and out at restaurants. Lots of fun in this garden this week.🍽️🍵😋

Block Play

This week in the block play area the children were very creative. Some children used images of famous landmarks to create masterpieces including the leaning tower of Pisa and the Angel of the North. Other children used their imagination to build castles and a city. Children have been learning about symmetry throughout the nursery this week and built some beautiful symmetrical structures. Children continue to develop their gross motor skills making obstacle courses to walk, balance and jump from.