Oakburn Early years centre

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.

 

This week staff have rotated to new areas in the nursery. Some fantastic learning has been taking place.

Art area

In the art area this week the children have shown an interest in butterflies and we explored different ways we could create them.

On Monday, we used sponges with an electric band in the middle to create imprints of the butterfly shape. Some children chose to use paint brushes to put the paint onto the sponge and some children chose to place the sponge directly into the paint before placing it on their piece of paper, pressing down and lifting up to reveal their butterfly.

On Friday the children created symmetrical patterns on their butterflies wings using collage resources.

STEM area

This week in the STEM area, the boys and girls have been helping to decorate the area and decided to make our own terrarium! We started by collecting some soil from our garden and fill up the tank. We then planted a variety of different seeds and picked some of the nursery resources to decorate the terrarium! Now we will watch what grows over the next few weeks and observe how our mini ecosystem develops and flourishes! This will teach the children about the environment and how to look after it, as well as, observing up closely how nature develops over time! Fantastic week my little scientists 👩‍🔬 🧑‍🔬🌱

Woodwork Area

This week In woodwork the children let their ideas come to life!

We started right from the beginning with some of the children who hadn’t been in the area before then worked up to making houses and even paw patrollers!

The children all showed lots of confidence while using the tools 🛠 and came up with fantastic ideas of what to make. I can’t wait to see what ideas come next week!

Outdoors

This week outside the children have been looking for bugs We’ve been helping take care of them and finding out the names of different ones, and where they live and what they do. We have been finding lots of bugs underneath long pots,stones and taken care of them by putting them in the bug Hotel This is been so much fun outside. Well done boys and girls for taken good care of the bugs 🐞🐛🪲🐜🕷️

Block area

The children have been busy in the block play area this week. They have shown an interest in transport and have been investigating how to build roads, bridges, tunnels and ramps. Children have been their developing teamwork skills as they worked together to create transport systems.

The Village

Welcome to our cosy campsite sensory area which is located upstairs in our ‘village’ area.

This week we have been developing our nurture area where the children can speak about how they are feeling. The area is based on our favourite book ‘The Colour Monster’. When it is finished the children will be able to select how they are feeling and log it with a coloured peg on some ribbon. It’s a perfect opportunity to start a nice chat, building peer to peer and adult to peer relationships. The children have also enjoyed drawing emotion faces on paper plates to add to the display.

We also have our campsite area with tents, cosy cushions and our favourite stories. The rest of the area will be made up of sensory tiles the children can explore with all their senses. 👀 ✋ 👅 👂 🏕️

We will keep you updated as the area develops!

Home Corner

This week I have been developing the home corner. I have added lights and a sensory fish lamp this was to create a calm cosy house area with interactive role play opportunities with a nurturing baby area and cooking area. There is now a dressing room with jewellery, brushes and dress up opportunities. On the outside I have created a role play outdoor garden to interlink with the house corner. We have a pretend camp fire, books, plants and comfy seating area with lots of story books available.

2-3 Room

Our little acorns have been learning about caterpillars. The children through books have been developing an understanding of their life cycle. The children were able to make simple choices of the colours they wished to use to decorate their butterflies, developing colour recognition. N.B said “caterpillars hide in leafs”. This led to the children sorting leafs into “big” and “small”.

Small World

This week in the small world area we have been exploring insects. We have been learning about the life cycle of different insects. The children created their very own bug houses and butterflies.

Forest School

We searched for sticks the length of our arms, found a flat area and scraped away the top layer of soil to save as many microorganisms as possible before lighting our fire. We then discussed how to light a fire safely and how to behave around a fire when lit. After having a shot of using a match to light a fire, we lit a bigger fire to cook our kebabs over. We then extinguished the fire with cold water and when cool, scrunched the charcoal up with our hands and scattered it around the woodland. Making sure we were leaving no trace of us behind. This was a very fun morning and it has been a lot of fun seeing the children develop and grow a love for the environment they were learning and playing in. Well done guys! 👏👏👏

Courtyard – Gross motor skills

this week In gross motor the children have been enjoying developing their balance and coordination skills along with some teamwork skills. The children made their own soft play course and to go on it you had to crawl walk jump and slide.

STEM area

This week the children have been exploring using tools, positive risk taking and design while using our cork boards, tacks and mini hammers. We have been enjoying this activity indoors and outdoors. ☀️

The children have been learning about staying safe around tools and sharp objects and have embraced being able to use tacks and hammers.

They have been designing pictures using the shapes and animals and have been so proud to show the staff their amazing creations! 🔨 🤩🥰

Expressive area

In the art area the children recreated their own flowers using paint and real life flowers. This experience encouraged social skills and fine motor skills f🌺🌸🌼🌻

Acorn room

This week we have been looking at different stories. We have been reading the tiger who came to tea, and the children loved making and decorating their own cupcake for the tea party. We also had some lovely flavoured teas which the children enjoyed experimenting with ☕️🧁

The courtyard – Block Area

This week in the block play the children have helped move and change the area. We decided to introduce a quieter space for the children to explore block play in a different way. This could be through jigsaws, drawing, or simply taking a seat after a long day building! With the hotter weather creeping in it has given the children a nice shaded place to relax in the courtyard. The children decided to place the pillows in the area and helped move all the blocks around! Fantastic decorators!

hope you all have a lovely weekend

Jocelyn

 

 

 

 

World of Work Week 👩🏼‍🍳🧑🏽‍🏭🧑🏻‍🔬👨🏽‍✈️👩🏻‍🔧

This week we have been celebrating world of work week where we have had visits from parents and professionals to talk about their occupation.
On Monday we had a visit from Julie at Glasgow Hospital Charity to talk to us about the teddy bear hospital.
The children learned lots about Glasgow’s children’s hospital and what doctors and nurses do to support and care for children.
Afterwards the children got certificates to say they had received their ted-ical degree.

On Tuesday we had visits from 2 parents sharing their jobs with the children.
This morning we had Vittoria from Honeybee Bakery showing the children what it’s like working in a bakery. The children had opportunities to decorate cupcakes, practicing their piping skills.

In the afternoon we had a visit from Victoria who discussed all about being a dentist and showed us how important it is to keep our teeth clean and healthy.
She then discussed different foods and the children had to decide if they were healthy for our teeth or unhealthy.
We got shown lots of tips on the best way to brush our teeth

On Wednesday we had a visit from Pamela who told us all about working in a shop and the role of staff with stacking shelves, using a till, using money and using an app in store to shop and helping customers. We then showed Pamela around our own Oakburn shop.

On Thursday we had visits from 3 parents.

In the morning we had Karina, a Speech and Language therapist talking to us about how the brain and trachea work and how these control our speech and other non verbal ways to communicate.

We then had Stephen talking to us about what it is like working on an off shore rig as an engineer and what/who he might see on his journey onto the rig.

In the afternoon we had James talking to us about what a civil engineer does on the railway, discussing bridges and tunnels. He then helped us build our own bridge using blocks in the block area

On Friday we had visits from 3 parents. In the morning we had Nikki, a Physiotherapist talking to us all about what a physiotherapist does, how to strengthen our muscles and bones after an injury and what it is like using prosthetic limbs and how these feel and work.

We then had a visit from Jaz, a scientist telling us all about what it is like to work in a laboratory and working with bacteria. We found out what bacteria is and how this helps doctors decide what medicine we need to make us feel better. We then made our own Petri dishes of bacteria.

In the afternoon we had Sarah, a midwife talking to us about how to look after babies before they are born and what machines are used to check on babies and give scan pictures.

A huge thank you to all our parents who volunteered to take part in our ‘world of work week’. The children had a great time learning about lots of different job roles and what these entail as well as sharing the jobs of their parents with their friends.

Acorn Room

The children were observed exploring the cars outside. The children were able to copy a few words and actions to the wheels on the car. This extended to the children mark making with the cars. R.B identified he made a “blue” mark. N.B was able to identify the shapes they drove to “circle”, “triangle”, “square”. A.T showed an interest in the “fire engine “. The children then chose a puzzle to sort. We spoke about people who help us.

STEM room

We have been discovering sound waves in the STEM area. The children have been using glass milk bottles filled with colourful water each filled to different volumes. The children have been investigating what sound each bottle makes when they tap it with a metal spoon, discovering higher and lower pitches. We also found out we had made a xylophone when all the bottles were joined together, making some lovely high to low and low to high notes.

Next we took part in the dancing rice experiment where we made rice move by the vibrations from the sound waves alone! Afterwards the children designed and made 10 sensory sound bottles which will be kept in the STEM room to be played with.

Courtyard – Construction

With the theme of castles still on everyone’s mind from last weekend’s celebrations, the children have built some amazing one’s for themselves! This one pictured was definitely a highlight with a “throne room”, “a queens bed”, and even a “slide to the royal garden”. 🏰 Working together and discussing ideas were key learning concepts of this experience, as well as, using their imagination! I’m so impressed with how well and complex the structures are becoming in the construction area! As usual, amazing job everyone!

Courtyard – Gross motor area

This week in the gross motor area the children have been enjoying hopping, balancing and jumping through different activities. They had shown an interest in hopscotch and using a bean bag to miss out numbers, the children also learned using you arms helps you to balance. The children had enjoyed risk assessing for themselves and understanding that they can ask for help if struggling.

Home Corner

We have started looking at different lifecycles in the story corner. The children have been using their handprints to make different bugs such as ladybirds and bees.

We also took another trip to the library where we found some lovely books about the lifecycles of different bugs. The children learned about road safety and how to keep safe when out and about.

Fine motor area

We have been learning about the Coronation 👑 of King Charles. We talked about what he would be wearing and the children have been designing fabulous crowns with jewels using their fine motor skills. 👑👑

The children have also been using their imagination and writing  skills to make a shopping list for all the things we would need for a Coronation party 🇬🇧 🎉. There were some fantastic ideas including balloons, crowns, bunting, crisps, juice, hot chocolate and lots and lots of dancing 💃 🕺

Have a lovely weekend

Jocelyn