Well done and thankyou to everyone who donated to our MFR Cash for Kids Mission Christmas appeal collection. We managed to collect just under £40 which is great. Mrs Reid went into Elgin with the money on Monday night and managed to purchase a range of goodies, mostly for boys, and will be taking along to a Co-op store tonight (Tuesday).

Thanks to your generosity, this will contribute to children in the MFR area waking up to gifts on Christmas morning.

A fantastic turnout from adults to accompany the children in their Christmas Read and Play session on Thursday 10th December. The children listened to the story, “The Perfect Christmas Tree”, and then using a variety of craft materials made their own perfect Christmas tree with the help of some very creative parents. Everyone’s efforts were fantastic and so different from each other’s. The children then chose the colour of lollipop sticks they would like to make a star or snowflake decoration which were gorgeous and sparkly! Everyone seemed to have a great time, and we can’t do this without the parents taking part. We thank you all for coming along and hope to see you all at the next session, probably around Valentine’s Day!

All going well, the nursery will move back to the main school building in Spring 2017 but unfortunately we don’t think the garden space is being included in the refurbishment and it won’t be ready or adequate for us to use as a whole nursery. Outdoor play  is so important in the nursery curriculum and the children should be able to access the same learning opportunitities outside that they can inside, and more. Due to this, the nursery wish to fundraise between now and then to see if we can get enough money together to make the outdoor space suitable and appealing for our children to use. We appreciate that it won’t be these children that will directly benefit from a new garden at the school but maybe some of their siblings or cousins might do in the future. We were hoping to have a week each month which will be our enterprise/ fundraising week where the children and staff will make and bake products to sell for a small donation in the hope that we can start to make a contribution towards a new garden. The fundraising for this term will start next week at our nativity. There will be items for sale in the main corridor and a tin for donations.

If you have any suggestions for fundraising please share them with staff and we will see if they can be achieved in some way. Maybe some  parents might like to gather together and drive forward the nursery fundraising committee, if you are at all interested please come and speak to staff.

Our heartfelt thanks for all your support this year so far.

The nursery would like to host a Read and Play Christmas Craft session on Thursday 10th December. This involves a parent or carer coming in to spend an hour with their child, listening to a story followed by craft making. These sessions have proved to be very enjoyable and well supported by parents, and I know the children look forward to having their parents or carers sharing this time with them. An official invitation to attend will be out shortly. The times will be; am 9.30-10.30 10.30-11.30, pm 1.00-2.00 and 2.00 – 3.00. Please let staff know which session you can attend. We look forward to seeing you there.

We currently have collection boxes on the self registration tables in the main corridor for monetary donations so that we can buy gifts for children and young people who may not get anything for Christmas this year. It has been a success in previous years and the nursery children and parents  have collected a lot of money and contributed some lovely gifts to the appeal. We are grateful for any donations no matter how small as it all adds up to allow us to purchase some lovely gifts,  in particular gifts for teenage boys.

This week we are going to be finishing off some of the things we didn’t get completed last week, like working in small groups to create some nonsense endings to nursery rhymes just for fun, also working on the children’s learning journeys and target books, and continuing with some ideas we have newly introduced to the nursery. If you hear the children mention “Brain gym” and “Playdough Disco, ” we are introducing some whole body and hand exercises to wake up their brains and their fingers ready for tackling the day ahead . . . and they love it. Here are some photos of the children taking part in these activities, we will post more as they get more  confident in the activities and what is being asked of them.

Dough Disco involves using playdough to exercise the muscles in your hands and  fingers . . . to very up beat music!

One of the exercises involved in our brain gym . . standing back to back and passing a ball to your partner . . crossing the midline of your body to wake up both sides of your brain . .harder than it looks and sounds!

We are also following a range of interests initiated by the children and the books showing these can be seen in the nursery. We are currently working on “Babies”, “Fixing Things”, “Planting seeds” and “Playdough Kitchen”. We are interested to see how these ideas develop.

World Nursery Rhyme Week

This week the children are enjoying learning nursery rhymes. They have received a nursery rhyme colouring book to take home and the parents have got a little quiz to test their memories  . . . . no cheating!!

The focus rhymes this week are;

Monday – Miss Polly Had a dolly

Tuesday – Ring a Ring o’ Rosies

Wednesday – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Once I caught a Fish Alive)

Thursday – Horsie Horsie

Friday – The Grand Old Duke of York

The children are taking part in group art work and listening to and telling us nursery rhymes.  We will be listening closely to the end rhyming sentences to see if we can hear the rhyming words.They will be completing a group activity of making up nonsense rhymes and finishing off well known rhymes with nonsense words.

“Question of the week” has changed to “Question of the Day” with a choice of nursery rhymes for the children to choose their preference – do they know the rhymes on the wall?  Do you know the rhymes on the wall?

On Friday it is Children in Need, so the children are welcome to come either in something spotty or in Nursery Rhyme Fancy dress . . do they know the rhyme they are dressed up as a character from? 50p donation to Children in Need.

A fun and busy week ahead!

This week we are looking at fireworks and the children will be using different forms of painting to create firework pictures and using cutting and sticking skills to create a firework to add to the painted background. They will also be discussing their own experiences of fireworks and telling a scribed story to add to their pictures.

We are also working with Polly Cheer, Early Years Partnership Officer, on evaluating the benefits of discussing SHANARRI and the Wellbeing Indicators with children and showing them how they are included in their daily life at nursery and school. We will be discussing the indicators and what they mean, and getting the children’s views and opinions on them and playing a paper game, which parents will be receiving home shortly to also play and discuss with their children and to get to know the wellbeing indicators themselves. We are currently developing a SHANARRI  display in the main corridor which explains and highlights what is expected of the children during the Early stage (ante-preschool to the end of P1) .

We are shortly hoping to start taking very small groups of children out to do some snack shopping every week in Lidl which will involve them making choices and using money in a real life situation.