All posts by Mrs Smith

Stay and Play

June 23, 2019 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

What a glorious day it was for our last Stay and Play day this term!

We were all very busy painting, sanding, watering and building while the sun shone, but the highlight was most definitely building our Fire Pit at the end of the day to toast marshmallows and eating “shmores”!

Painting!………..

Making trampolines……..

Sanding, ready to build……..

”We look like scientists!” (Maximus)

Gardening and making planters……

Making fire, toasting marshmallows…..yum!….

The Fire Pit was a big hit with staff, bairns and parents. Providing children such experiences with real tools and fire allow our children to directly experience and gain knowledge about the nature these things and of open flames within a safe and controlled environment. They develop a respect for fire and the skills to keep themselves safe, which they can apply throughout their lives.

We all had a fabulous afternoon in the sunshine. Big thanks to John the Janny and all the parents who donated items and came along to help. Some even managed a sneaky marshmallow or two!

Stay and Play Gardening Day

April 17, 2019 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

We had so much fun with parents, friends and family on our last Stay and Play day that we decided to have an outdoor Stay and Play day too.

The bairns have been really interested in developing their outdoor play environments and had some great ideas, so we thought it would be great to get parents involved in our journey to creating more outdoor play areas. We were also very grateful of all the gardening and joinery skills that the parents brought with them!

We are so excited to start growing things in our new planter, which allows us to watch the roots grow and the worms play. Sydney and his Dad and Anri and her sister, helped us to fill it up.

Wow – we’ve been busy. So many seeds planted to decorate our playground. The bairns also chose to grow some lettuce, rocket and herbs for us to try at snack time and share with the rest of the school.

“I wonder which herb will be the best?” (Maximus)

“You have to water the seeds or they’ll not grow.” (Owen)

We’re glad we had big sisters to help us…..

….and little brothers

Johanne and Anri were very intrigued at the different sizes of seeds. “They’re actually much smaller than I thought.” (Johanne)

“They’re tiny!” (Anri)

“If we plant some lettuce seeds we could have a salad for snack.” (Maximus)

After exploring the signs they found in the forest, the bairns thought we should have signs for other play areas too. They even suggested we make signs to show directions on how to get to the forest and pond. We had lots of great discussion about the different directions and instructions we would need to give to get to the right place and got to work on making some signs, with the help of Sydney’s Dad.

We really loved getting to work with our hammers and nails to create the signs. We hammered the nails in to spell out the letters and words we wanted.

We used string and elastic bands to twist around the nails to make the letters stand out. It was quite testing on our fine motor skills twisting in and out the nails.

Even more exciting was getting to hammer in the nails and NO ONE HIT THEIR FINGERS, YEAY!!!!

Alec brought his own hammer from home and kindly showed others how to use it.

It was great to have so many parents and Grandparents helping to spell out the words we needed.

We were finding it difficult to make our way through the forest as the trees grow bigger, so we pruned some trees to make paths around the forest. Mrs Colvin used the cuttings to weave a Tee-Pee den! We look forward to making more over the next term.

After all our busy work, the bairns were inspired to change their ice cream shop into a garden centre and shop and got to work creating an amazing indoor gardening space too.

Well done to all involved, we had such a busy, fun day with you all. We look forward to lots more fun days to come!

Special thanks to Alans of Gillock for supplying the wood and nails for the signs and to Jolene for the seeds and gardening skills!

Outdoor Play and Forest Fun!

April 16, 2019 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

We love going to our forest to play. There are so many things to discover in the forest and we find something new to do each time we go. It’s our favourite outdoor classroom!

We hold hands with a partner and practise crossing the carpark safely on our way to the forest.

The boys and girls in Nursery have been particularly interested lately in the signs they have found in the forest. They have been using their sounds and letter skills that they have been learning in Nursery, to try to read the signs and discover what they say.

These barrels and trees make great shelters for animals and creatures in the forest, but they also provide great climbing and balancing fun. Risky play really helps to develop our gross motor skills and allows our children to test and affirm their capabilities, as well as problem solve every day activities.

There are lots of exciting places to explore and hide, but some children have already begun to ponder……

” What will happen when the leaves grow? (Rory)”

“How will we get through the forest? (Owen)”

We found some more signs and worked together to find out what they said. Anri and Maximus wondered why there were no signs to show us how to get to the forest and thought about ideas of what signs we might need and what they would say.

There are lots of amazing things to discover and find in the forest. “What is this? Where did it come from?” Lottie-Mae wanted to take what she had found back to Nursery to look at it a little more closely.

MUD…glorious mud!!!

We were having too much fun to leave the forest so we stopped for a quick picnic snack.

“Look what I found! Is it a pine cone? It’s very small. (Archie)”

Look at us climb!

“I’m the highest! (Johanne).”

“I’m like a monkey. (Anri).”

“I got up! This tree must be very strong. (Lucille)”

Peek-a-boo!

“You have to put your head down low to get through. I nearly got stuck. (Elsie).”

We loooove a muddy puddle….

1….2….3…juuuummmmppp!

“Squelch”……”splat”….”sticky”…

We visited our nature pond to see if the Frog spawn has hatched yet. We hope to take some tadpoles to Nursery to look at more closely and see how they change into frogs.

Who will be first to spot a frog?

We found lots of frog spawn but still no tadpoles….

It’s hard work to walk through long grass and heather. Sometimes we find it tricky and fall over but we are getting better at it and our legs are getting stronger.

Yay – we caught a frog! It was great to take a closer look at the frogs. They look tiny but when the frog was trying to jump out of the bucket, we saw it had really really long back legs.

“That’s so they can jump high” (Maximus).

“I can see another frog!” (Honor)

We also took a closer look at some frog spawn. Some had black dots in the middle but some were beginning to uncurl into tiny tadpoles, getting ready to hatch.

Owen found a tiny caterpillar on the ground. He carefully and kindly picked it up so as everyone cold have a closer look.

We love getting outdoors to play. Even better when the sun is shining!

The bairns are really enjoying building their own obstacle courses. It is fantastic to see them working together to build the obstacles and helping each other as they build their confidence with balancing.

“If you put your arms out like this, it helps you balance.” (Anri)

“I’m rocking!” (Anri)

“It looks like you’re surfing.” (Maximus)

“If we both go on we can do it like a see-saw.” (Lucille)

“Let’s see if we can all balance on it.” (Lucille)

A-hoy!!!

Learning without stabilisers…..

Sandpit fun…..

Mark making with chalk…..

Drawing around each other and our shadows. Who is the biggest?

Building a house…..

Cardboard box creativity

March 30, 2019 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

What fun we’ve had exploring our creativity with these cardboard boxes. Open-ended and free exploration plays a really important role in our Nursery, allowing the children to create, fail, reassess and engage problem solving to help them make sense of the world around them.

We had such fun with the boxes inside, we decided to take them outside. The children were very mindful of the environment and then animals and living things within the environment. They engaged in some great discussions as to how to look after their environment and use the boxes and equipment safely and appropriately.

Ice-cream Shop

March 29, 2019 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

We’ve been learning about the letter “i” in nursery . The bairns wanted to make an ice-cream shop. We’ve had such fun learning in our shop making cones and ice-cream to sell, playing different roles in our shop as customers, ice-cream makers and shop workers. Everyone loved operating the till and counting money.

We experimented with different shapes of paper to find which shape made the best ice cream cones.

“I used a semi-circle” (Johanne) “ I used a circle” (Anri)

Roll up roll up, come and buy your ice cream .

We thought about the different colours and flavours of our favourite ice creams. We made different coloured play doh to represent our favourite icea creams and added different ingredients to make the play doh smell like real ice cream.

Adding coco powder to the brown play doh to make chocolate ice cream was definitely our favourite!

Ollie added mint essence to the green play doh ….

Lauren added candy floss essence to the pink play doh….

Lottie-Mae added vanilla essence to the yellow play doh…..

Mmmmmmm yummy sprinkles …..

We made decorations and bunting to decorate our ice cream shop.

Then we made our own ice cream for a Friday treat!

We mixed milk and sugar together and added our favourite flavours to the mixture and sealed in a bag. Then we added our bag of mixture to a large bag of ice and salt. We needed to use lots of muscles and hard work to shake our mixture in the ice until it magically turned into ice cream…….delicious.

Johanne added mint and chocolate chips. Anri added vanilla and chocolate chips.

Sophie added caramel essence

We we each had a taste and liked the vanilla the best.

Playpark

March 8, 2019 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

We even managed to squeeze in a quick play at the play park before the Jarl squad came to visit. What a beautiful day for the play park.

Big thanks to all our parent helpers today for helping to make our celebrations a success

Three cheers for SMUHA!

March 8, 2019 Mrs Smith 1 Comment

The sun was shining on SMUHA this morning and what a fantastic day we’ve had!

The Nursery were in great singing voice today as they marched in our school procession to the galley burning.

We threw our torches in…..

Our school Jarl did a fab job and we loved his galley!

Snack time.

It was great to see so many people come and join us.

Way-hey!!!!

Adventures in the forest

March 7, 2019 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

We had an adventure to the forest today. We played hide and seek, climbed trees and found an old birds nest.

Rory brought his purple magnifying glass in today for p week. He used it to identify what the nest was made from.

”There is grass, mud and sheeps’s wool”.

Rory let his friends have a look too.

”I can see string and paper too!”

We had a closer look when we got back to nursery and used the computer to identify which bird made the nest. We think it was a black bird.

Some children drew pictures of the nest and some made their own nests.

Sydney made a nest for his chick using feathers and straw.

The chick tried out the birds nest from the forest but Sydney thought it was too small for the chick.

STAY AND PLAY – IT’S PANCAKE DAY!

March 7, 2019 Mrs Smith Leave a comment

We just had to have pancakes on Pancake Day and who better to share them with than our Mums, Dads friends and siblings!

We couldn’t have done it without our chief pancake maker – John the Janny and his secret pancake recipe!

What a feast we had, choosing toppings, spreading, chopping, licking.

We all had a go in messy play…cracking, mixing, whisking, pouring, measuring, weighing – what a fun way to learn.

Messy play is so much fun! Especially when it’s with your friends.

Pouring, mixing, weighing, cracking, whisking…..so much fun.

Eeeeek….our pancake mixture feels so funny. “It’s cold”, “It’s lumpy”, “It’s cool”, “It’s gooey”.

Decisions decisions….which toppings should we have?….

Nursery’s chief pancake maker! John the Janny is so much more than a Janny!

And of course, pancake wouldn’t be complete without a friendly pancake flipping competition. Drewie found using whole body motor skills was the way to go….