All posts by Miss Mackay

Stick Man

The bairns found a stick in the playground one day a few weeks ago and thought it looked like Stick Man. We listened to the Stick Man Story and decided to make this our transitional story for our pre-schoolers moving up to P1. We have since watched and listened to the story and played with Stick Man in nursery. He was having so much fun with the bairns taking good care of him, they even selected the perfect new arm and fixed him when his arm broke! Since then Stick Man has relaxed a little more in nursery. He disappeared a couple of weeks ago and we received a video message from him the other day and another today. Here we have included the full video for you to see. It shows Stick Man is ready to move on from nursery up to primary 1 and he meets a few people on his adventure to find the primary 1 classroom. All the nursery bairns have really engaged with Stick Man, they have been recalling the story, writing messages for him, drawing maps and looking for footprints. They were delighted to see he finally found his way to primary 1!

 

 

 

Busy Start to Term 4

Where has the first 3 weeks of term 4 gone?!? It was lovely to welcome everyone back to nursery after the Easter break. We have all been soooo busy, so here is a quick catch up of what we have been up to!

On our first day back we went on a walk to find a Spring thing! There was lovely daffodils around nursery and someone wondered if the trees in the forest had turned green with their leaves yet so we headed there for a look. There wasn’t any leaves but there was different kinds of buds that will turn into leaves soon.

We went to check on the tadpoles at the pond and there were so many! We brought buckets and nets so we could catch them and keep them in a tank in nursery to watch the life cycle of a frog. The children have been feeding them fish food along with the pond weed  that we caught. Ruby thinks we caught 100 tadpoles!

We have enjoyed some beautiful days out in the sunshine in the playground with bubbles, bikes and scooters, water fights, potion making, different physical skills, painting the sandpit, some games all together and walks to the playpark and down to the shore! It has been warm enough to have snack on the bus too! With the weather getting better, could parents please remember to put sunscreen on their children before coming to nursery. Thank you!

Inside everybody has been busy planting sunflower seeds! The children wrapped their little sunflower seed in a wet kitchen roll sheet and left it in a greenhouse in the window and within 2 weeks some were ready to be potted! When we took the seedlings out, we looked at the roots in more detail and talked about the germination  process.

One afternoon, some of us planted seeds from more flowers in trays, including Nasturtiums, Marigolds, Violas, Pansy and Petunias. The children were every interested in why we were wearing gloves, what compost was and what was inside it as they found lots of different ‘bits’ in it.  So we had lots of discussion and then we compared the different flower seeds. The children were astonished how tiny the petunia seeds were and how weird the marigold seeds were. “They don’t really look like seeds”  “I don’t think they’ll grow”.   The bairn’s also wondered if the size of the seed will reflect in the size of the flower – big seeds produce big flowers, little seeds little flowers etc.   We discussed what plants need to grow and the best place to put them and everyone agreed to put them in the window because they need sun, warmth and water.   

Inside, everyone has also been very busy at the craft table, making their own lovely creations, flowers for the flower shop, their own stories or making their own PJ mask!

And finally, everyone has loved building, messy play and our vets inside!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Easter!

At the end of last term, everyone thoroughly enjoyed our topic of Easter. We spoke about the Easter story, different signs of spring like flowers and baby animals and made lots of lovely easter crafts. We went on a sensory walk and could hear the birds and wondered what they might be up too at this time of year. The children thought that they might be building nests for their chicks.  We did some research online about different birds and their nests and also the different sounds that they made. A favourite was the eagle call! The children decided they wanted to have their own nest in nursery so they could be birds and chicks too. So we walked up to Mrs Smith’s house as she had lots of big branches and sticks and the children picked the ones that they thought would be good for their nest and helped carry them back to nursery.  They helped place to big sticks around the outside so it made the nest strong and sturdy and the smaller ones on the inside, sometimes doing some weaving as they went along.  When it was finished we made chick hats and enjoyed playing in the little nest we made!  To round off our Easter topic we  had an Easter egg hunt! There was clues all around nursery then we had to follow which lead us to the forest where everyone found and Easter egg to take home!

 

 

 

 

Term 3!

Term 3 started off very different this year with some children learning from home and some at nursery within the hubs. Then we were all reunited in February back at nursery and it was non stop fun until the holidays! Here are a few highlights from term 3.

We had great fun playing outside last term in all sorts of weather.  We went on some lovely walks down to the shore to see the swans and other wildlife and walked all the way to the crofthouse! We visited the pond lots to see the frogs and frogspawn. We spoke about the life cycle of a frog and other animals as Spring was approaching and we thought about how to stay safe around the pond.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water play was very popular this term, we made puddles to splash in, painted the sheds, had water fights, made potions with paint and made rivers with the pipes. We used little boats to have races with.

Trips to the forest have been great fun playing hide and seek and climbing trees! The children have also made houses and cafes which was perfect to hide under when it was raining! We brought out our gardening equipment and de-weeded our planters so we were ready for planting after the holidays.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside we really loved having the soft play, the craft table was always very busy and the sand and rice activities were very popular using the scales and measuring jugs. The children loved packing suitcases so we had a little Airport in nursery, there were holidays to Disneyland and South Africa!  We used the check in tags and stickers we were kindly donated from Sumburgh Airport. The kids also put on a super frozen performance for the teachers to enjoy and on the last day of term we treated ourselves to a pajama and movie day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 8!

Last week we were looking at another super sense… SMELL!

We added lovely scents in our kitchen area on Monday and our chefs cooked and baked up some delicious dishes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have done games and experiments to test our sense of smell.  We had to close our eyes and use our nose to smell what Mrs Meadows was holding infront of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We watched a video about what our noses are for and then did an experiment to show how far our germs can spread if we don’t catch our sneezes with a tissue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have been very busy outside this week despite some poor weather.  There has been trips to the forest to get ingredients for the mud kitchen, hide and seek and lots of water play to name a few.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When it was nice and dry at the start of the week we carried on painting the sand/ mud pit, its looking lovely and bright!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have been to the shore to watch the waves crashing! We spoke about the sea and rockpools, what we could see and smell, listened to the waves and did some road safety.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have also  done lots of building! We made a hot tub out of the bricks and tarpaulin and it needed lots of filling up! Then we made a house to shelter under while it rained using good team work and strength to move the heavy tyres.  It was lots of fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside we have been loving having our climbing frame back! We have been monkeys, kings and queens and made a den. We also had our obstacle course out to practice our balancing which was very poplular. Finally we have been continuing to work on our lovely family trees and they are all looking super!

 

 

Week 5!

We have had a super busy week and are now half way through  term 1 already!

We started off the week by making our family trees. We molded clay for our tree trunks and stuck in twigs from our forest. We left them to dry and will draw our family members on the leaves that we have gathered from the forest to stick to our twigs!

We have been making playdoh for baking in our kitchen and been for walks to the forest and play park. On Thursday we all got our waterproofs on and made a big puddle in our playground to splash in. We then decided to go on a puddle hunt to find a bigger puddle!

We have LOVED having the rice in the tuff tray to measure, pour, weigh, make rice cakes with and so much more!

We have been dancing and exploring to different genres of music, rock and Shetland dance was a firm favourite! We discussed how different types of music makes us feel and what it makes us want to do (run, jump, sleep). We then tried to match it to each of the colour monsters depending on how it made the children feel (happy, sad, calm, angry, love, scared).

On Friday we had the magnets out in our loose parts and watched a video about magnetism and why magnets repel and attract. We discovered lots of things in nursery that were magnetic and also found out that we could move the magnetic balls on the tuff tray with a magnet underneath which was very exciting!

In the afternoon we went to the OOSC garden and forest to play hide and seek and found 2 frogs! The one in the garden was a small frog so we decided to put it back to the pond. But the one in the forest was a big one so we left it in the long grass!

Thursday 2nd May

Easter Week!

We had such a busy week learning all about Easter, making crafts, tasting different eggs and had fun doing an Easter egg hunt!

Trip to the fire station!

We all had a fantastic time visiting the fire station this morning! We got to put the lights and sirens on in the fire engine and use the hose which was great fun!