Author: Ania Brown

We have had so much fun over past few days! We have been celebrating Christmas by having Christmas Family Fun Day, Christmas parties and lots and lots of exciting Christmas activities! From making Elf slime, Christmas baubles, mince pies to toasting marshmallows and having Christmas sing-alongs and dance offs! Ahh what a busy few days before we finally kick our shoes off and chill out over the festive period!

And of course… SANTA CAME TO SEE US! We were so excited to have a cuddle or a high-five with our special Visitor! We even got a wee present, what a great day!

E: “This is the best party ever!”
B: “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer is my favourite song!”
J: “Where is Santa’s sleigh?!”
C: “I’m going to see Santa.”
E: “Do you know that I am on a good list this year? My Elfie told me!”

Thank you to all of the parents and families for visiting us during our Festive Family Fun Day – it was so lovely to see you all getting stuck into the activities with the boys and girls.

As we say goodbye to our Coco the Elf and all of the Christmas decorations for another year, we would like to  wish you all a very Merry Christmas and all the best in the New Year. Have a safe and fun holiday everyone and we will see you in 2020!

Dear all,

You are all invited to our Festive Family Fun Day on Wednesday the 18th of December! There are three time slots you are able to choose from:

9am – 10am
10.30am – 11.30am
12.30am – 1.30pm

We have got a lot of Christmas activities and Christmas stations planned for you all to join in, so prepare to be busy! We can’t wait to share the festivities with everybody! See you then!

 

On Thursday the 19th of December we are going to celebrate by having a Christmas party! Sessions are running as normal. 🙂 Party time for boys and girls, we can’t wait!

Friday the 21st is our last day before we stop for Christmas break. The school and Early Learning and Childcare Class will close at 2.30pm that day. The door will be open for pick-up at 2.15 that afternoon.

Thank you!

Well! Our Christmas preparations are fully underway! We decided to bring our Christmas tree and Christmas decorations down and get to work! The boys and girls chose the colours of baubles and tinsel for our tree this year. Everybody worked together showing fantastic sharing and turn taking – WOW, Santa will be super proud and happy!

P: “I want to put my Christmas tree up at my home but it’s too early.”
J: “I’ve got my tree up! It’s green with red decorations.”
C: “The gold baubles!”
A: “It’s Christmas time!”

We also have a very special Christmas visitor in our Early Learning and Childcare class…

The Elf came to stay with us until Christmas! On the first day of his stay he was a little bit cheeky and he coloured our milk! It was very funny drinking pink and green milk for snack!

After some discussion, we decided to have a vote for the Elf’s name. The options chosen by the boys and girls were:
– Chippy
– Spike
– Speedy
– Coco
– Elfie.

After some great voting and counting the ticks, the winning name was… COCO!

Welcome to our Early Learning and Childcare Class, Coco! We are so excited to have you here! We wonder where we will find you next…

 

The boys and girls have shown a great interest in maps and countries around the World. We decided to have a closer look at a globe and different maps. We have learned that a lot of boys and girls in the nursery come from different countries or have visited different parts of the World on holiday.

O: “I’m from Albania and Greece.”
P: “I’ve been to Portugal before, I went there on an airplane.”
L: “Do you come from Poland?”
L: “My Nonna and Nonno are from Italy and I go there every year for summer.”
J: “My friend is from Bulgaria!”
A: “Did you know that the Seven Dwarfs are from Germany?!”

We decided to find all of those places on our big map! We talked about different ways of getting to those countries: buses, airplanes, boats.. We even decided that some places look so close on the map, that we could walk there! But after a closer investigation, we thought that although the distance between countries looks small, it really is huge! It would take us ageeeeees to walk there!

We kindly asked some of our friends and families from abroad if they could send us a letter or a postcard from where they are in the World – and some of them have already arrived! Together we marked our map to show where the postcards are from and our collection is growing! If you have any friends or family living or visiting other countries, we would really appreciate it if they could contribute to our postcard collection!

We were so excited to receive postcards from different places in the World that we decided to send one, too! We wrote a message, decorated the postcard and off we went to the Post Office to send it to… Poland! We’re going to count how many days it takes the letter to get there!

Our Early Learning and Childcare Class recently had an unannounced visit from the Care Inspectorate. The inspector focused their observations on Care and Support and on Staffing. We are very happy and proud to announce that we scored ‘5 – Very Good’ for both.

A copy is on display within the ELCC for reference. Additional copies are available in the entrance porch for parents/carers to uplift.

We love autumn time! We have discussed the leaves changing colours, the weather getting colder, the days not being so long and of course… seasonal vegetables! The boys and girls have been busy “cooking” and “making dinners” in the house corner using vegetables associated with autumn – the most popular one was a pumpkin! So we decided to buy some more big pumpkins to explore!

M: “Buy new pumpkins. 5 pumpkins.”
J: “They’re so heavy!”
A: “It’s big and round and orange.”

We placed the pumpkins in the middle of the room and decided that we need to take the top of the pumpkin off. Ania helped us do it as we had to use a sharp knife to do so. We then started taking all the insides out!

L: “It feels gooey!”
E: “I can smell it, I think it smells sweet. I don’t like it.”
M: “Can I use a spoon? It’s too slimey.”
O: “It’s like slime!”

We were then wondering what we could do with the insides out the pumpkins…

L: “I know! We could make a pumpkin soup!” – what a fantastic idea! We’re going to make it next, for our snack!

While exploring the outside and inside of the pumpkin, M did some good thinking. He stood up and brought a basket of golf tees to us. He started pushing the golf tees into the pumpkin – it was hard as the skin of the pumpkin was tough! M then decided that…

M: “We need a hammer!” – so off we went looking for hammers!

When we found some, we had so much fun! The boys and girls did fantastic sharing of golf tees and hammers between each other and we used our strong muscles to hammer the golf tees into the pumpkin. It proved hard as the pumkin was moving in all directions – L said “It’s because it’s round.” Great thinking! The boys and girls spent most of the morning and afternoon exploring the pumpkins and trying to cover them with all of the golf tees!

A: “It’s hard!”
V: “You need to watch your fingers with the hammers!”
R: “I can do it by myself now!”
O: “Look at all of the holes it’s making!”
P: “I can see the nails inside!”

 

Dear parents and families! We would like to thank you for contributing to our learning by selecting the topics you would like us to cover in our Early Learning and Childcare Class. We really appreciate your input to what we are exploring and learning about.

Please see the photos below to see the most popular topics:

Thank you for your participation. The topics chosen by you will be explored throughout the session in our Early Learning and Childcare Class.

 

The boys and girls have been enjoying the story about Harry and his bucketful of dinosaurs – we have been learning different names of dinosaurs, where they came from and what they like to eat!

E: “Some of the dinosaurs only eat plants.”
A: “This is a Triceratops!”
O: “Pterodactyl can fly and T-Rexes are my favourite.”

Well! On Wednesday we had a special visitor to our Early Learning and Childcare Class! Kevin, the DinoMan came to see us and he brought his friends with him – two dinosaurs! One of them was a Triceratops named Tracy and another one, Gary, was a T-Rex. We found out that Tracy likes to eat plants and trees and T-Rex likes to eat other animals and bones! We even got a chance to have a little cuddle with the dinosaurs, they were super friendly!

But that wasn’t all! Kevin also brought Fluffy the snake! We learned that Fluffy uses his sense of smell to follow directions and to make sure he’s got his dinner ready! Kevin invited us to give Fluffy a little gentle pat, too!

B: “He feels cold!”
C: “I’ve never touched a snake before!”
J: “His skin feels hard!”

Kevin told us a story about digging for dinosaurs bones in America – he even brought one with him! WOW, it was ginormous! He also brought a dinosaur egg for us to see – it was very big and heavy. Kevin was so super kind and he let us dig in the sand for more bones and eggs to find!

A: “The bones were in the desert.”
L: “This bone is so old, I think it’s a million years old!”
B: “When I grow up, I’m going to dig for dinosaurs bones, too.”
M: “Are Tracy and Gary real dinosaurs?”

We would like to thank the DinoMan for such a fantastic experience – we loved meeting Tracy, Gary and Fluffy! We hope to see you back soon!