A most eventful four days in school and nursery.
I have to begin by telling you of my new adventure this week. On Wednesday I had the privilege of accompanying our AM nursery children on their weekly trip to Forest Kindergarten. This was a fabulous experience. I am so incredibly in awe of the organization and commitment of our early years staff.
Mrs MM Murphy (the Forest Guru), Miss MacMullen (her trusty colleague) 10 young nursery pupils and myself all left the lovely warm, cozy nursery to face and embrace the great outdoors. All children and adults were equipped with waterproof outerwear, footwear and rucksacks with all of our resources. This has to be one of the most rewarding learning experiences I have ever witnessed. The children absolutely love their big adventures and what a fabulous way to learn.
The learning focus for last Wednesday was positional language. Using trees, rope and a blindfold the children created a route and then guided each other around it – absolutely brilliant, the language of mathematics resounded around the forest – Forward, Turn, Up, Down, Through, Under, Over…..’Duck!!!” Following lots of tree climbing, bug finding and spider watching – all enhanced with our torches and magnifying glasses – we all enjoyed hot chocolate back at our ‘base camp’.
We had a super forest visit and I can’t wait to return (maybe when it’s not quite so wet).
Huge thanks to Mrs Murphy and the nursery staff who have overtaken every aspect of health and safety and created a truly unique outdoor learning environment right in the heart of Motherwell.
Coming soon….video footage of Forest Kindergarten
WATCH THIS SPACE
Monday of this week was an In-Service Day. Our school hosted an authority wide presentation on Raisin Attainment in North Lanarkshire. All staff from school and nursery attended the training and benefitted from learning about ‘Growth Mindset’. Watch out for an opportunity for you, as parents, to come along to school and learn all about Growth Mindset. (September 2016).
Tuesday evening we hosted another very well attended and successful parent and child sacramental meeting/workshop for our P4 children who are preparing for the Sacrament of First Holy Communion this coming year. Thanks again to Mgr. Millar and Fr. Martin for their invaluable input and dedication to our children’s spiritual journey.
Wednesday of this week P7 pupils enjoyed the benefits of a workshop on substance misuse. Many thanks to Miss green who organized this session, a very valuable lesson for our most senior pupils.
Friday morning was our Primary 4 coffee Morning, always a very exciting morning for our Primary 4 pupils as this is the first time they host such an event in school. Big thanks to everyone who came along and a HUGE thanks to our ever faithful coffee morning ladies without whom we could not host such events. I am indebted to them. We raised an amazing £448.58
If you’d like to come along and help at our next coffee morning it is scheduled for Friday 4th March 2016 – plenty of advance notice!
Coupled with all of the above we continue to offer a wide range of lunchtime and after school clubs which I am delighted to say are always really well attended and enjoyed by all of our children.
Our school and nursery are such vibrant learning hubs, it is fabulous.
Here’s the rest of the gossip from the nursery…….
A short week in nursery but a very busy one. Our Christmas show practice continues.
The show preparation covers the four capacities of the Curriculum for Excellence.
Participating in the show improves confidence and helps our early learners to become (Confident Individuals)
The learning that takes part e.g positional and directional language, round the show helps them to become (Succcessful Learners)
Their contribution to the show from their singing, dancing and overall participation helps them become (Effective Contributors)
The responsibility they have while making their own props and learning the words of the songs helps them to become (Responsible Individuals).
The importance of road safety continues throughout the nursery and the children have continued to role-play the lollipop person and pedestrian over in the construction area.
In Expressive arts the children created the STOP sign and painted the traffic light colours in the correct order. They continued to sequence this using playdough.
Outside the children discussed how to create a dark den, they gathered the resources and helped to make it using the boat. They then explored with a range of torches and glowsticks. They then used the torches to read the story ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’
In literacy the children were finding out facts about nocturnal animals and by the end of the week they had started to learn about all the names for the different parts of a book. E.g spine, blurb etc.
In numeracy they continued to complete the road safety jigsaws and used the animals to match the colours in the traffic lights.
Over in the snack area they made traffic light kebabs sequencing the traffic light colours correctly.
