On Wednesday we celebrated our ELC 4 children finishing their time in ELC and moving on to Primary 1. The sun was shining and the children really rose to the occasion, with lots of smiles, cheering and a fun time together. We were delighted that families could join us on this special day and it was lovely to see how much the children loved seeing everybody cheering them on. The children have been given official Graduation photos, but below are a selection of some that were taken on the day.

As this is our final blog before the summer holidays, we would like to thank all our families for their support this year and to wish you all a very happy summer holiday.

At last the sun was shining today and so we could enjoy a  sunny Sports Day. It was  lovely to  have so many families supporting the children and cheering them on.  The children were terrific and had a go at everything, with lots of smiles and cheers along the way. A big ‘Thank You’ to our helpers from P6 and P7/6 who were great with the children and so helpful setting up and tidying everything away. We even had some special Beltane visitors to school today and they were great fun joining in with our Sports Day. See if you can spot them in the photos!

We have had a busy two weeks and the warmer weather last week inspired the installation of the ELC’s hot tub last Tuesday. The children took turns to jump in, switch on the bubbles and relax. The children were using detailed expressive language to share their thoughts and develop their play cooperatively with drinks added,  slides into and out of the tub, changing rooms for socks and shoes and life guards to take charge. The children  revisited and developed their hot tub role-play each day last week with a “disco in the tub” on Wednesday and real water added on Thursday for all to have a cooling off paddle.

The children have enjoyed making crawling caterpillars, some longer than others. They have expressed their understanding of symmetry through butterfly creations, developing their gluing and printing skills.

The parachute has been used to support the children’s representations (through their body movements) of the lifecycle of the butterfly from tiny eggs to caterpillars, chrysalis and finally a butterfly with beautiful wings.

ELC have joined in the other classes’ fitness routine of running or walking around the school for the Daily Mile with ALL of the children completing a lap on Wednesday….and staff too! This helps to support  their understanding of wellbeing through being active daily.

The children have also set up an ice-cream shop in the garden with an extensive menu board, which they have enjoyed using for role play. They have also been investigating which bugs are living in the Bug Hotel.

Miss Thomson has taken part in a Play on Pedals training day this week and some of the older children were able to take part in a short practice session. We are excited that all the ELC children next year will be able to experience Play on Pedals sessions regularly.

Finally, we are very much looking forward to welcoming all our parents in to ELC during our Back in the Building open mornings   which will be on Friday 27th May from 9.10am-10.10am and Thursday 2nd June from 8.45am-10.10am.  This will be an opportunity for you to spend time in ELC with your child and to speak to all the ELC staff team.

Sustainability in Action

A new compost bin has been put in place with some of the children helping Mrs Stewart to begin the compost making process. Together they found the ingredients for a good compost including, paper, cardboard, fruit and veg left overs and tea bags – staff do get an occasional cuppa! The final ingredient was water before a good stir and popping the lid on and leaving nature to do the rest. All the children have begun to put any fruit and veg waste into a designated collection bucket after their snack and during the week some will have the responsibility of adding it to the compost.

Nurturing Nature

With the warmer weather many of the children have been noticing wildlife in the garden. A creature found in the digging area prompted much discussion as, whilst initially they thought it was a worm, it moved like a caterpillar. The children decided it needed a vacation and promptly booked it into the bug hotel!

Taking a Closer Look

Indoors the children have had the opportunity to take a closer look at themselves and many have gone on to choose to create self-portraits of themselves.

Developing Fine Motor Skills

Staff have been supporting children to develop their scissor skills and challenging those that are ready to cut around pictures. Many children have been developing their early writing skills labelling their pictures, paintings and creations with their names.

Keep the Heid and Read

Children in Nursery enjoyed listening to a story in line with the school’s 6 minute pause on Wednesday for the Keep the Heid and Read initiative.

It has been a short week in ELC this week following the May holiday weekend, but we have been busy nurturing our plants and we can see that they are starting to grow. The children have made a mini greenhouse from recycled plastic  to protect the vegetables from frost. This will also help protect the strawberries from the birds.  The children also thought about using string, sticks and tin foil to scare away the birds.

We are supporting the children to understand which foods are healthy and which are not as healthy through our snack and lunch choices and our discussions about different foods and what makes them a healthy choice. The children have also been sorting foods into groupings and working together to plan healthy snacks for ELC.

We have also been busy planning the transitions for our ELC 4 children moving on to Primary 1 and there will be more information about this soon in our May newsletter, on our noticeboard and by direct contact to the ELC 4 parents.

Our new ELC August starts will also be contacted with further information about their transition very soon.

This week we have been refreshing our dressing up resources and the children were keen to use the materials and costumes to be knights and princesses. They made a fabulous castle in the garden and showed great creativity in making and decorating crowns, shields and bows and arrows. They practised their fine motor skills through mark making, cutting and sticking. They also problem solved to develop their bows and arrows and tested them to see how they could improve them.

The children have also continued to develop their mathematical vocabulary by comparing the sizes of objects and putting them into order. The children  enjoyed marking their heights on the window and seeing how they are all different. They also compared the sizes of their hands and feet. We now have a shoe shop and the children are enjoying practising measuring each others feet, fitting shoes carefully and buying and selling the shoes to each other. They also developed a game in the garden to compare how far the cars travelled by making a ramp and using  piping for the cars to travel down. The children marked the distance each car travelled and compared these to see which cars travelled the furthest. They also used different size bowls and spoons in the water and sand trays and talked about which sizes were best for different activities.

The daily tooth brushing is going very well and the children are continuing to practise cleaning their teeth carefully and talking about why this is important. They are very good at making sure they match the picture on their brush to the one in the toothbrush holder, so that they only use their own toothbrush. Hopefully, the Childsmile people will be back for another visit soon and we can show them how good we are at cleaning our teeth.

Finally, we hope you all have a lovely Bank Holiday weekend and we look forward to welcoming you back on Wednesday 4th May.

Our first week back after the holiday has been a lovely sunny week and the children have been very busy in the  garden. They have been weeding, adding compost to the beds and planters and preparing the soil to grow plants and vegetables. They have also been moving some of the plants and they have learned how to be gentle with the roots of the plants because they are delicate and the plant needs them to grow. The children have  learned how to make channels in the raised beds to plant seeds and how to space the seeds out, so the plants have room to grow. They also used stones as markers and wrote the names of the plants on the stones. They have been very carefully looking after the plants and have watered them so that they don’t dry out in the sunshine.

Some of the children wanted to try using different materials around the garden to make cars. They showed great imagination and even experimented with different ways to add wheels and a steering wheel. Another group wanted to make a den to help them stay cool outside, so they used a tarpaulin and worked together to create a lovely shady den.

We have also been comparing sizes this week. We looked at flowers, dinosaurs and different toys to compare and order their sizes. The children enjoyed comparing the shadows of the dinosaurs by chalking them on the path in the garden. We also experimented with different size tubes to roll a ball down and talked about how long the ball took to roll through each tube.

Looking after our teeth has been a key focus this week. We have been talking about foods and drinks that are good for our teeth and how to clean our teeth carefully at least twice every day. We are now able to start toothbrushing in nursery again and we will continue to support the children to understand the importance of toothbrushing and to practise cleaning their teeth every day.

We have had lots of visitors in our nursery this week.

Some very helpful P6 children came to help us check our jigsaws and puzzles, to see if there were any missing pieces. Everyone had fun completing them and it was lovely to see all the children playing together,  talking about their ideas and working together to problem solve.

We also had visitors from Child Smile, including Doogen the Dog. He was talking to the children about how important it is that they brush their teeth carefully and try to drink water instead of juice, to help look after their teeth.

Mrs Martin, who retired in December, also came to see us this week and she very kindly brought us flowers donated by Tesco. She gave them to the children and they asked if they could use them to make perfume, so they collected water in tubs and started mixing in the petals. Mrs Martin had a lovely welcome from the children and before she left they all played’ Lava’, which they always used to play with her.

The children created a Snakes and Ladders game outside using chalks. They practised turn taking and following the rules together, which was lots of fun. They were very creative and even started to add in extra areas to extend their game.

We have also enjoyed all the different types of weather this week, from beautiful sunshine to hail and snow. Everyone had fun making snow angels and sledging today.

We hope you all have a lovely Easter holiday and look forward to welcoming everyone back to nursery on Monday 18th April.

The children have been making the most of the lovely weather this week and have especially loved playing their favourite games outside, such as ‘The Farmer’s in His Den’. They have been practising taking turns and making sure that everyone is included in the games. The children also decided to bring the climbing frame into the garden and enjoyed experimenting by extending it and creating balancing walkways. The water trays were also in the garden this week. The children have been practising filling jugs, carrying them carefully and then pouring, trying not to spill. They have also been problem solving how to transport water from one tray to another using pipes.

PE is now in the PE Hall again, which the children are really enjoying. They have been developing skills such as walking on tiptoes, running, throwing, catching and bouncing balls. The PE equipment was also used for the children to experiment with different ways to move under, over and around.

We now have a new  information board for families at the ELC entrance, along with an ipad showing pictures of what the children have been doing in nursery each day. We hope this helps families to be able to see more of their child’s experience in nursery until we can have families coming in more and for our Stay and Play sessions. The information board will also tell you about your child’s day and share any updates and planned events. Please feel free to leave a comment on the back of the board or to give feedback to a member of staff.

This week the children have started their Recycling project and have been preparing the recycling tubs to sort  items into. Everyone has been helping to sort through our toys and games to see what we can keep and what needs to be recycled. The children also brought home battery boxes, so that old batteries can be brought in to be recycled. These activities are helping the children to understand how we can all think carefully about why we recycle and how we can do this at home and in nursery.

It has been another busy week in the nursery garden with the children preparing the containers and beds ready for planting flowers and vegetables. They have enjoyed using the new gardening tools to  dig the weeds out and turn the soil to prepare the ground.

We have already started planting inside and this week the children planted Sunflower seeds. The children all decorated their own greenhouses, then added soil and a seed to them. They are now on our windowsills where they will get lots of sun and the children can watch them grow as they care for them. The children have also been making Sunflowers this week which they have displayed by the nursery entrance, so that all the families can see them at drop off and pick up. They also learned that the Sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine.

Some of the children have been investigating how to build a bridge this week.  They have been using their problem-solving skills and team work to use the blocks to make a long bridge., which was much admired by everyone. When it accidentally fell down they had fun  singing ‘London Bridge is falling down’.

We are continuing to encourage the children to develop their independence through our nursery routines, such as our self-service snack routine. Some of the children are  also enjoying helping to prepare the snack and lay the table.

For Red Nose Day today the children enjoyed listening to and joining in with ‘have a laugh stories’. There were lots of giggles and funny ideas they all shared together.