Learning Zone

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!

Next week, from the 10th to the 14th of September, Williamsburgh Primary school and Williamsburgh Early Learning and Childcare Class will be taking part in the Maths Week Scotland. That means lot of fun activities involving counting, sorting, estimating, measuring and many, many more!

We’ve also prepared a couple of competitions if you would like to join in with your child…

Guess the sweeties in the jar!

There is a jar filled with sweeties in our class! Your task is to guess how many sweets there are! If you’d like to take part, write your name and the amount on a piece of paper and pop it in the bucket! Last entrance for your guess is on Thursday at 3pm and the winner will be announced on Friday! Guess right and you can take the whole jar of sweets home!

Spot the difference!

Everyday on Williamsburgh Primary Facebook and Twitter account you will find two pictures
that look very similar, but… they’re not the same! There will be small difference between
them and your job is to spot them! When you do, get a piece of paper to write your name,
the number of differences and what the differences are and hand it in to one of the nursery
staff. Bring your answer to the nursery the following day by 1pm to be in with a chance of winning a prize! The winners will be announced everyday!

We can’t wait to take part in lots of fun and exciting maths activities! Good luck to all of our participants!

We are super excited to be launching Chatterbox Cards at our nursery! The Chatterbox Cards provide suggestions for games, rhymes and activities which you and your child can do together wherever you choose. Research shows that just starting conversations with your child can help in ensuring the best possible start in their life. Chatterbox Cards focus on developing language skills which will help your child on the road to reading. They don’t take long to do at all, most of them can be done anywhere and they’re all great fun!

Every parent and their child will have an opportunity to choose one of the Chatterbox Cards (it doesn’t need to be in alphabetical order!), which will have a list of activities focused around the chosen letter on the back. Your child will get a sheet, where they will colour in the chosen letter after completing the tasks.

We invite you all to take part in our Chatterbox Challenge. The cards will be available everyday for you to choose – there is no limit on how many cards you can take in a week – just return one and you can take another! When you and your child complete the letter sheet, we would ask you to return it to the key worker to put it in their personal book.

Annemarie, our Learning to Talk champion, will be available to assist starting on Monday the 10th of September. If you have any questions, feel free to speak to Annemarie or any member of staff.

We can’t wait to welcome you on board with our Chatterbox Challenge!