Welcome to our new starts this week. Everyone at Tingwall Nursery have enjoyed meeting, welcoming and settling in the new starts over the last few weeks. The Lego Dinosaurs have been particularly popular and played with.
There has been such a lot of learning again this week. It is a real pleasure to see the creativity and skills being developed as the year progresses. We have seen lots of pictures, designs and experimenting with making marks. We have also started working on the torches for our Up-Helly-Aa procession.
We have worked a lot on our fine and gross motor skills. The peg board beads have been used a lot to create patterns, sort colours and make faces!
The block play area is fantastic resource that can facilitate such a variety of creative play and learning opportunities. The hollow blocks have been used to made paths to escape the “giant”, we were stomping using our “left foot” and “right foot” stomps.
The smaller unit blocks can be transformed into almost anything that springs to mind. This is a shoe shop, with a car park, money and a window to see the customers coming. It was a collaborative effort which was added to by all the children playing together.
All children are enjoying hearing stories either in small groups or as an individual. We have been speaking about the characters, picture detail, and listening carefully to see if we can find any words that rhyme. This is a really helpful skill to develop as it helps with all sorts of work up through the school.
Staff have taken a little bit of time this week to work in smaller groups. The 3 year olds formed one group, and those who are age to go into Primary 1 after summer were in another group. We have been using the hall (gym space) and the more open outdoor areas of the school to have a bit of time to run, jump , spin and let off some steam.
We are having a big focus on using kind words, gentle hands and looking after the resources in the nursery at the moment. All staff take opportunities to discuss acceptable behaviour within the day to day operations of nursery life, throughout the year. However, right now, we would appreciate any help at home to discuss looking after our resources and each other. We are working hard at joining in for the short periods of time, where everyone needs to help tidy up. We are also practicing showing our skills in caring for others. This will be an ongoing class target for the term.
The opportunities that present themselves in play experiences are endless. This week, some pupils been looking at clocks in our environment. We have used language such as “hands”, “face”, “short hand”, “long hand”, “numbers”, “minutes” and “o’clock”.
Up Helly Aa has been a great success this week in nursery. The children have been making their own burning torches in the junk modelling area, and have been so delighted to watch videos about Up-Helly-Aa. There has been some role playing, singing and we will build up to throwing our torches into the galley at the end of our procession!
There has been a lot of counting groups of things, and we are trying to look at ways that we can make counting easier to “see” at a glance. We have been setting things out in an ordered way to help us count.
Next week we will be looking at “5 frames” and “10 frames”, and also working on ways to count at a glance. We will still be working on tidy up time together as a team and being respectful of everyone.
We hope you all have a lovely weekend!
