Learning Zone

We have had lots and lots of fantastic ideas for our large group activities this week! On one of the days, we couldn’t quite decide what game to play with everybody, but… Do not fear! One of the children had a brilliant idea to make a voting station! We decided to use two different colours of buttons and voting tubes, WOW! Every day we had a choice of two different stories, games, songs, physical activities, even Twiggle made an appearence! There was something different everyday and something fun for everybody!

While casting a vote, the boys and girls were using fabuluous mathematical language! We were talking about which tube has got more buttons and which tower is taller before counting the votes to find out what activity won that particular day! The boys and girls have had so much fun, they’ve been asking to “make a vote” everyday they come in to the nursery! One of the children even suggested that maybe next week we could have FOUR options to vote from… Now, we think that is a fantastic idea!

R: “What did you vote for?”
B: “Which story did you choose?”
A: “Can I count the buttons?”
G: “We need to count the buttons to see which one has got more inside!”
R: “I think the blue one is taller than red.”
S: “The blue one has got less buttons.”
I: “I can’t wait to have four games to choose from!”

Just a wee reminder about warm clothes in our cold Scottish weather.  As the boys and girls have continuous access to our outdoor area on a daily basis, we are kindly asking that children come to nursery with appropriate warm clothing, ie warm jackets, gloves, scarves and hats, if possible.

Your co-operation is greatly appreciated, thank you!

We would like to thank everyone for joining in in our October Stay and Play sessions, where you had an opportunity to see how exciting and fun our everyday learning is. The feedback we got from you is very positive and greatly appreciated. Please click on the picture below to view gathered information about our Stay and Play.

We would also like to thank you for taking the time to have a look at some of our Policies.

Remember, we have got an Open Door policy – you can pop in anytime, just let us know! We can’t wait to see you again!

This week has been a fun week for all of us – our mums, dads, brothers, sisters and other members of our family were invited to stay at our nursery! We were very excited to show them all of the toys that we like to play with and explore! Some of the mums and dads helped us build towers, paint pictures and read our favourite stories. It was a great opportunity for our families to see us in our early years environment and share the learning with us too! We all agreed that we would love to have our families back again to play and learn with us.

We would like to thank you all for taking your time to visit your children at nursery. We received a lot of positive feedback, which we greatly appreciate.

“Lovely seeing S play and learn in nursery.”
“Fun to see what J does at nursery everyday.”
“Great seeing how R played and the things she could do. Staff were very helpful with my baby, thank you very much.”
“Thank you for providing this opportunity. Loved seeing O in the nursery environment. It gave me the chance to read the information on the walls also, all of which was very useful.”

The boys and girls have been talking about different tropical fruit including a coconut and a pineapple! The conversations led us to a story called “Handa’s Surprise”. Together we watched the story on a smartboard and listened to the story read by Alison before we acted it out! We learned new names for animals and fruit that come from Africa. We even looked for Africa on our big map!

Some of the boys and girls have heard this story before and were fantastic at recalling the characters and events from the book – for example, that at the end of the story, the basket was full of oranges!

D: “Zebra is taking the orange!”
SB: “There are three fruit in the basket now.”
C: “The giraffe likes pineapple.”
I: “The parrot liked the passion fruit.”
G: “There are no fruit in the basket now!”
J: “That’s “Handa’s Surprise”! She’s got a basket of fruit on her head!”
A: “Monkey took the banana, look!”
J: “Handa stays in a hot country, because we don’t have elephants here.”

Some of the boys and girls said they have never tried or seen some of the fruits from the story, so we decided to go on a trip to Tesco. We bought a few different kinds of tropical fruit and tasted them in the nursery, what a fantastic idea!

G: “There’s juice in the coconut, I can hear it!”
J: “I think there is milk inside this shell.”
G: “My daddy tried to open a coconut with a knife but he couldn’t because it was too hard!”
C: “I like the watermelon the most.”
E: “The pineapple is jaggy.”
R: “Watermelon is heavier than the pineapple.”

Some boys and girls had a brilliant idea…

O: “I can put a basket with fruit on my head too!”

Well… I think it would be great if we could try this next week! We are looking forward to seeing how far we can go with a basket of fruit balancing on our heads!

If you would like to hear “Handa’s Story” at home with your wee ones, click on the picture below:

The week beginning on Monday the 8th of October is our week for Stay and Play sessions. This is a great opportunity for you – parents and families, to visit your child in the nursery to see what we’ve been learning about and what we’ve been exploring! We are in the process of changing the layout of both of our rooms and adding new resources, so it’s a great chance for you all to see what is different!

These are the dates for the parents and families to visit our nursery:

Monday 8th of October – Orange group and Green group
Tuesday the 9th of October – Red group
Wednesday the 10th of October – Blue group and Purple group
Thursday the 11th of October – Yellow group
Friday the 12th of October – Green group and Orange group

Check out our screen for further information.

We are looking forward to spending some time with you! See you then!

Well.. Why don’t we make it in the nursery? That’s a great idea! But… How do we make shortbread?

G: “I think you need eggs and milk to bake them.”
K: “We need to go to Tesco.”
J: “I’ve never made shortbread but I like it.”

We used our iPad to find a recipe for shortbread online. We found out that we only need 3 ingredients!

G: “Sugar, flour.”
J: “Butter too!”

Super, now that we know what to do, let’s get baking! We prepared all of our ingredients, washed our hands and put our baking aprons on. We then added sugar, flour and butter into a bowl and started mixing it all together!

L: “We need to mix it with our hands.”
L: “It feels squishy and soft.”
J: “Butter is going into flour!”
G: “It smells like cake!”
O: “Can we roll it out?”

Now that our mixture is ready, we put it on the table and started rolling it out. The boys and girls noticed that the dough is getting bigger and bigger! When we were happy with the size of our dough, we used cookie cutters to make different shapes. We then popped it into the oven and 20 mins later… voilà, we’ve made very tasty shortbread!

Baking experiences are not only lots of fun but also help boys and girls with estimating and measuring too! We had to carefully think how much of each ingredient we will need to make enough shortbread for everyone involved!

J: “We need to make two for me cause I want to take one for my sister.”
G: “I want to take same to my cousin’s birthday party so I will need five shortbread.”
O: “We need more sugar than that!”
I: “That’s enough flour I think.”

Twiggle the turtle has finally came back to say hello to our nursery boys and girls! He also brought his friends with him! Some of the boys and girls remembered what they are called – wow! What a great memory you’ve got!

S: “Henrietta the Hedhehog.”
K: “There is also Duke the Dog!”
J: “Daphne the Duck.”

We started our PAThS lessons by introducing our circle rules. We remembered that they are very important because they keep us safe and make learning fun! Some of the children were super good at remembering the rules from last year!

SB: “Put your hand up if you want to say something.”
C: “Gentle hands.”
K: “Good listening so you can hear your friends.”
G: “You need to keep your legs in a basket.”

We then read a story about our feelings – Twiggle told us that if we feel sad, happy or angry, we can come to him to talk about our emotions! We’ve learned that we have a lot of different feelings and that it is important to talk about them with our friends, nursery ladies and our families. Twiggle reassured us that it’s ok to feel sad sometimes and that he’s always there to give us a big suqeezy cuddle!

We also heard a story about friends! We all agreed that friends make us very happy! But what else are friends for…?

B: “You share with friends.”
G: “You play with friends too!”
K: “Friends always help you!”
G: “I don’t have any brother or sisters yet but I’ve got lots of friends at nursery!”

Fantastic, boys and girls! I think we were all very happy and excited to see Twiggle and his friends again! Some boys and girls even made their own Twiggles and friends! WOW, super job!