Tag Archives: Science

Week 5!

September 17, 2020 Miss Mackay 1 Comment

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!

Valentine’s and Outdoor play

February 26, 2020 Mrs Smith 1 Comment

We love role play in Nursery and like to pretend we are Elsa and Anna from Frozen, who can freeze things. We froze hearts and explored different ways to melt or break them to find what was inside…..

………Some of us preferred using warm water in syringes and droppers to melt holes in the hearts.

….some of us preferred using tools to break the ice instead

But when the ice melted – it was even more fun!……

….floating petals to make patterns

….sucking and squirting water with syringes.

…..making perfume and love potions

Squirting water made everything wet inside, so there was nothing for it but to go outside for a WATER FIGHT! Which was EVEN MORE FUN!……

It was a good job we had waterproofs on. We drew pictures with the water – it was hard to control it sometimes. We did lots of target practice and the bairns drew their own targets to practice on when we were all too wet. Some bairns squirted water to wash the windows. Mrs Bishop said we could wash her car if we wanted…….SO WE DID……………….

We must have done a good job as Mrs Bishop sent us a Thank You card for all our hard work!

Our Learning in Term 1

November 5, 2019 Mrs Smith 1 Comment

Hello everyone, apologies for our lack of posts for a while, there was a blip with our blog, but hopefully it’s all sorted now.

Here is a snapshot of our learning fun last term!……

…..Da bairns were really interested in exploring different materials, their properties and uses. They experimented to see if the material waterproof, strong, heavy, light, could float or sink.

……Then they explored their uses. Could they build with it, could it stack, could it hold it’s shape…….

…..They took their learning outside to explore further where they experimented with forces and how things move…..

….Some bairns were very interested in magnetic forces, push and pull and others really enjoyed exploring mark making in the sand using different tools and materials.

….Magnus explored forces of push and pull using his body and feet – he even made his own ski’s!

We had lots of fun outside as always………

…building, climbing…

…..Jumping, sunbathing….

…..flying kites, experimenting with sound, pony jumps and building….

….Bikes and scooters pedalling with a passenger and negotiating corners with an extra wide bike!

…..Pony cuddles, walks to the shore,

…..and of course jumping in muddy puddles!

….And finally…..

…..baking, tea parties, painting with pineapples and pineapple play doh…..

….cosy stories, colour sorting and lemon tasing…..

…….music making, instrument skills, rhythm….

We were kindly donated an amazing castle! The bairns carefully followed the instructions to build the castle themselves and some went on to make their own castles using all their knowledge of building and material properties they had already learned in their experiments….

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…..

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.