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Signalong

This was the last week of the Signalong sessions with the ladies from the Pre School Home Visiting Service.  This week, the ladies took the session outside, as the theme of the week was action words.

The children were using the words in context as they were given a coloured spot, then asked to either run, jump or hop on their spot.

We have loved having the ladies in each Monday to help learn us lots of different words to sign, with a song, a story and a game to help us learn.

Every nursery in Shetland was given the Signalong book to work with, but this extra input has been a great boost to our learning this term.  We are very grateful for all the fun they have brought too.

 

Our Learning in Nursery this Week

Signs of spring has been the main flavour of conversation this week in Tingwall Nursery.  However, there has been such a lot of learning from other areas too.

We have been exploring opportunities to make marks, and use our fine motor skills outside with the lovely weather.

We have been building and creating using lots of different resources and materials.  This has helped us to take turns, communicate with others and collaborate to solve problems.  We have also been working out gross motor skills and muscles very well too!

We have been exploring collecting information.  Using our register information, we are exploring how to use that information to make a “bar graph” for folk to see how many people are in and how many people are out.  It has been working really well alongside our self-registration process.

We have been collecting information from other sources too, such as the outside thermometer and experiencing first hand, what the temperature feels like to us.

We are having lots of fun with our friends and also having time to rest in the quiet space.

We hope you have a super weekend!

 

 

Frogs and Other Life Cycles

There is continued interest in our Tingwall Frogs this week, as we watch the life cycle growth.  The burn is definitely “jumping” with frogs.

The conversation has been also moving towards other life cycles to observe, such as plant life.  We have been trying to paint and draw our own daffodil pictures this week.  This has helped us see close up the parts of the flower, speak about bulbs and spring flowers and practice drawing what we see.  We know that the daffodils come in all shapes and sizes and sometimes plants that look the same, come from the same family.

The boys and girls thought it would be a good idea to put up a height chart in nursery to measure and see our own growth.  It has fueled a lot of discussion already about size, measurements, growing and numbers.  It will be great to see progress over time.

We have been singing “The Little Green Frog” and reading all about “The Tiny Seed” this week in Nursery.

We were very luck to see some baby lamb pictures too, so keep an eye out for more signs of spring!

Our learning journey this week

We were delighted to spot some frog spawn whilst out for a walk in the community this week.  The find sparked a lot of discussion and interest about frogs and learning about the life cycle of frogs.  The bairns had lots of questions and thoughts:

“What do frogs eat?  I think it is grass”

“Those look more like fish to me!”

“That’s not a baby frog, that’s an egg!”

“Da eggs are peerier dan my hoose.”

“The eggs look like watermelons!”

“I wonder how many eggs there are?”

We have started to write down our questions in our floor book, and find out some of the answers.  We have been looking at frog facts on line, and ordering life cycle cards and small world models.  The discussions have also led on to more conversations and questions about other life cycles.

We have been hearing the story of the 3 little pigs this week.  The illustrations have helped us draw our own expressive pictures of the big bad wolf as he tries to blow down the house of bricks.  There is a display of some pictures just inside the nursery front entrance if you want to have a peep.

Looking at books to help us also inspired more copying letters and pictures from books.  Some children were also able to retell the story of the week to our friends.  Very well remembered!

We had some visitors to the nursery this morning.  People who help us in the world were welcomed in and the children were able to have a quick look at their uniforms.

As always, there is a variety of games and resources to play with in nursery.  These help us learn how to take turns, use our working memory and bring about a huge amount of discussion.  We can use our imaginations and create amazing things.  We can use our motor skills and learn how to be kind and helpful to others. We are very lucky to be able to take our time to learn with these helpful games and resources.

We love being outside!  it helps us develop so many skills in our brains and our bodies.  We are so luck to have a variety of different spaces to learn in outside.  This week we have been making marks with chalk on a variety of surfaces.  We have been moving our bodies and learning to use large resources and spaces safely.  We have also been able to meet familiar people in the playground and say hello.