The morning children enjoying being outside in our new garden.
Afternoon children enjoying the new nursery layout
The afternoon children have settled in well to our new building and are enjoying some of their old favourites and some new activities.
Julia Donaldson
Our learning context this term is Julia Donaldson. She has written many books that a lot of people are familiar with, for example, The Gruffalo, What the Ladybird Heard, Room on a Broom, Tiddler, Stick Man . . . . . and many books that people are not so familiar with, Goat goes to Playgroup, Cave Baby, Paper Dolls . . . .
Prior to our move we were using the illustrations of these stories to act as a link between the old and new building and the children were selecting illustrations and recreating these in a large frieze format to decorate the walls of Lady Cathcart whilst familiarising themselves with the characters and story content. These stories are such fun due to their rhyming passages, quirky characters and child friendly storylines so we are going to be looking at the children being able to retell and sequence main events from these stories, link certain free flow play activities with the stories, and use these stories as a means for discussion, along with a variety of other activities linked to individual books.
Lady Cathcart
More photos of the morning children enjoying themselves in the new nursery layout at Lady Cathcart. Some of the children’s activities this week are to find out what they think of this nursery and if there is anything they would like to do, or if there are any toys that they would like to see out. It is very important to us that the children feel happy and settled in their new environment!
Lady Cathcart
The morning children enjoying themselves at Lady Cathcart, finding all their old favourites . . . . .and some new activities! All in all, a successful move. The children are getting used to the building and some new routines.
Making Soup
As part of our “Healthy Me!” And Grow Well Choices Learning Context, the children made soup for snack. They prepared the vegetables and then enjoyed a delicious bowl of vegetable soup!
Action for Children Messy Play sessions (continued)
A really fun session was had by all, and more ideas like these can be found in the Play @ Home book which is available to all parents of preschool children.
Action for Children Messy Play sessions
Before the holidays the afternoon children were lucky to be involved with Lydia Simpson from Action for Children who came to deliver 2 Messy Play sessions.
The sessions were based on the children listening to a story and then follow up activities.
Parents were invited to the second session and this was well attended.
Aswell as being a fun session to spend with the children and parents, it was also a chance to demonstrate that these activities can be easily done at home using normal material you might have around the house, and being able to take a fun idea from any story. The Play@ Home book was also reintroduced to parents.
In the first session the children had a treasure hunt and made butterflies and in the second session the children made fishing rods and fish.
More photos to follow.
Buckie Library Bookbug session
The children will be visiting Buckie library on Wednesday 20th May for a Bookbug session held by library staff. Our visits to the library are always really enjoyed by our children and we are looking forward to seeing what is on offer for the children during this session. As always parent help is requested and much appreciated to assist us with accompanying our children safely to the library and back to nursery.
Nursery Move to Lady Cathcart
As you will hopefully be aware by now, the Nursery is moving down the road to the Lady Cathcart building during the refurbishment works. We are going to be using the large hall as our main area and setting it up into play areas just like we have in our current building. We also have the sole use of Room 1 which will be our snack room with our kitchen and a room for us to do some group work. The long corridor that is outside this room is where the children’s coat pegs are. This corridor can only be accessed through a security door with a key pad which will need to be opened by either Millbank staff or Teddy Bear Developmental Playgroup staff to let in parents or visitors. There is a buzzer situated outside this door. The children’s toilets are also being refurbished to make them more fit for purpose for our children, child height sinks for washing hands are being installed in the main hall and a child height worktop for baking and food preparation has been included in the snack room.
We plan to take the children down to visit the building on Friday morning and afternoon to have snack and play some games in the hall and talk with the children about where we can set up certain areas.
If you still have any concerns please come along to the meetings to be held in the school on Wednesday 13th about the refurbishement in general and find out what has been done so far to improve the building for our use over the next 2 years.
