Tag Archives: literacy

Fun this week and a sad farewell to Mrs Fraser

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Some of our learning in week 2 looked like this….

Team work and tall towers!
Building at height
Creating complex structures
Off we go in our boat!


BLOCK PLAY
How many different ways can a block be used?

“Lets make a campfire”
Cooking on the campfire

 

“Can I go inside?”

S A N D

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

W A T E R

 

Mrs Fraser donated a trampoline to Nursery!

 

Bonfire and fireworks

Messy, messaging, mark making and…

M A P S!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following our interest last term of treasure hunting and maps some of us decided to make our own treasure maps! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We followed them to see if we could find X marks the spot…

T R E A S U R E !

 

Treasure!

 

Exploring the early concepts of coding

 

 

 

 

 

We are very sad to say goodbye to Mrs Fraser!

We wish her all the best in her new post. The bairns gave her a good send off…

 

Queen for the day!

They made her a crown and declared her Queen for the day!

She chose to listen to country music which everyone loved dancing too, we had cake for snack, played with bubbles and the bairns helped her follow clues on her treasure hunt in the afternoon.

 

A Lovely relaxing hand massage to finish off the day!

 

Thank you Mrs Fraser, we will miss you!

Week 6 and 7!

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WOW – how can we be on week 7 already?!  Here’s a peerie look at what we’ve been up to the last 2 weeks……

Inspired by the different genres of music we’ve been learning about, we extended our music into learning about our Super Powers – SENSES!.  We have been exploring our sense of sight and hearing and loved using these music bells to make our own music as well as copt patterns and rhythms of other music.

We made glasses and played games where we had to use only our eyes or only our ears to play the game.  “Winky” was our favourite where we all had to choose someone to wink or blink at and swap places without anyone seeing.

As always we’ve had great fun outside with a mixed bag of weather.  We’ve been painting, exploring the forest while being mindful of what we could see and hear each time.  We loved the sound of the rustling leaves in the wind and the crunching leaves under our feet.  We took leaves back to Nursery and enjoyed, leaf printing, making our family trees and a big thank you tree for Paul, who helped us care for our forest.  We even used the leaves to make our Christmas cards!

Our forest gives us great opportunities to talk about Autumn and see the leaves changing.  We looked for different animals that might live in our forest and thought about the hedgehogs who may be looking for somewhere to hibernate.  We even made our own Autumn tree in the playground.

We’ve enjoyed sunshine at the playpark and rainy days for puddle splashing.  We went fishing in the puddles for fish and sea creatures.  We made homes and aquariums for each sea creature which developed into a fun “sinking and floating” experiment.

We worked together to make a water fall and use the water to move objects down the pipes and what better way to end the day, than with a water fight!!  Lots of fun was had by all.

Lots of fun in the mud kitchen and mark making…..

 

Mark making……

We’ve been busy learning about road safety on our walks and recreating these in the playground with trips on our “bus”, road works and bikes and scooters, whilst building roads and ramps inside with different materials.

Looking forward to see what next week brings………

Busy Bees

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Wow, we can’t believe we’re half way through this Term already! Here’s a snap shot of some of the fun we’ve had with learning so far this Term…….

…….Letters, sounds, Bookbug, baking and messy play…

…..sand pit and mark making…..Drewie and Callum wrote a Wishlist of Bruder toys and posted it.  Much to their excitement a reply came in the post with some goodies!

…..Outdoor play and hall time.  Bringing our learning outside.  Building galley’s, viking torches, puddle splashing and recycling…..

…..Celebrating Chinese New Year, and Robert Burns.  We made tartan, thistles and had our own Chinese Great Race!…..

….Roleplay, snack shopping and sharing Learning Journals kept us busy and of course, DA OORICKS!  Indie shared her learning from a new Nursery with us, all about the Ooricks.  We read the story and Indie told us how to make an Oorick.  Everyone loved it, made Ooricks then went to the forest to look for Ooricks.  We found lots of clues that they had been there; hats, beds, homes, look-outs, their own garden and much much more!

 

Christmas Carol Concert

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Wir bairns were absolute stars at their Christmas Concert!  What an amazing achievement to stand on stage and perform in front of such a big audience.

The bairns chose their own words to the tune of “Ten Little Elves”, to create their own version of a Christmas song.  They thoroughly enjoyed the process and the confidence gained from having ownership of their own song, was clear to be seen from the amazing participation, singing and happy faces with which they performed ….and of course the fact that they are all still singing it a week later!

We are all so proud of every one of them. Here’s a snap shot of their performances…..

  

I’ll huff and I’ll puff…….

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The bairns have been really interested in building this term.  This week we read the story of The Three Little Pigs and experimented with building houses for each pig out of straw, sticks and bricks…..

It was really hard to build a house from the straw.  “It didn’t stay up.” (Elsie)

 

“I huffed and I puffed and I could knock da sticks down.” (Honor)

“The best one was when we used all the stuff to build da house.  It was da biggest and da strongest.”

 

 

 

 

 

We had lots of fun exploring the story with roleplay and exploring, strength, materials, size, weight, position, forces, problem solving to decide on the best material and how to test them.

The bairns decided the bricks were easier to build with because they could stack but they still fell over, so we explored different types of brick….foam….wood….stone….and built a wall.

Exploring Ice

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What amazing weather we’ve had for playing outdoors.  The bairns have really embraced all weathers an have been excited to be out to experience all weather types.

We had lots of fun collecting haily puckles…..who caught the most?….who caught the least? ……who had the best container for catching hail?……then they decided to gather their hail altogether and touch, feel, eat and play with it.

We had lots of mark making in the frost, using ice scrapers, sticks and spoons to make roads, draw, patterns, handprints and much more.

And of course smashing the ice was the most fun.  Our polar bears froze in the ice and we had to smash them out.  Some polar bears left a perfect pattern in the ice and we talked about fossils, felt the imprints with our fingers and discussed floating icebergs as the ice began to melt in the water.

The bairns were excited to tell us they could not find a circle shape amongst all the smashed frozen ice.  “It’s sharp”,  “it’s pointy”, “It’s like glass”, “it’s a triangle”, “mine has more points than a triangle”,  “mines is slidy”, “mine is smooth”, “it makes my hands sore”, “I don’t like it”, “I want to eat it”……….

Outdoor Play and Forest Fun!

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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…..

Ice-cream Shop

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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!

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.