Today we walked to the shop for our weekly snack shopping.

We got to choose our fruit and vegetables and helped to push the trolley.  Mrs Williamson paid and we walked up the hill back to nursery.

We saw lots of bumblebees and enjoyed watching them buzz between the flowers.

When we got back to nursery we unpacked the shopping and put it away.  We made good healthy choices.

Numeracy is everywhere. This week we’d like to share some of the ways we’ve been developing our numeracy skills and knowledge through our play.

We have been developing our sense of amount in all areas of the setting. This week we have counted playdough balls, “cactuses” in the desert, animals, gingerbread men, buttons and colours, candles on playdough cakes and buzzy bees to name just a few! Counting one object at a time, touching it as we count out loud, is important as this teaches us to recognise that each object is “one”. Playing with meaningful, interesting objects naturally enables us to count using practical materials and to explore counting on and back in preparation for learning about addition and subtraction later on.

Through games on the Smartboard, board games and our own play choices we can link counting to numbers, learning that numbers represent quantities and learning what they look like. During our play we use numbers to count and to create sequences helping us develop a strong understanding of what numbers are for.

Playing with playdough naturally encourages us to split and share amounts between each other which is an important part of early understanding of fractions and division. Sharing water and ingredients between pots, counting equal amounts of scoops into containers and splitting gingerbread men into equal shares have all helped us develop our numeracy skills this week.

Understanding measurement is also an important part of numeracy. As we play we experiment with everyday items as units of measure, such as our fingers, hands and bodies. This week we investigated and compared sizes and lengths of worms, depth of holes and amount of water in holes. We measured how many bodies could fit along our plank of wood, explored what “full”, “empty” and “half full” meant when making playdough and making cups of tea and milkshakes in the water tray.  As we experimented and explored we shared our findings with each other, saying things like “look that wiggly worm is longer and longer than that one!” and “Oh my bottle is full now so you can have some milkshake from it.”

Numeracy and language skills are closely linked. To develop a solid base in numeracy we must learn about positional language, use simple directions and be able to describe and understand positions. Play is an excellent avenue through which we do this.  Outdoors we have built ramps and quarries where we have moved vehicles up, down, around, inside, at the side. We have walked forwards and jumped backwards off planks and have steered our bikes in directions and at different speeds. Indoors we have built train tracks using words like “first” and “next”, “reverse” and “turn around”. Our ferry play has ensured we’ve worked together to place cars “next to”, “in front of” and “behind”.

As you can see numeracy is embedded in our play. We learn so much every day. We look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next week.

The passing of the Queen has raised some questions this week. We joined the whole school for an assembly, led by Mr Spence, this morning. We have discussed the Queen’s long, happy life and that now Prince Charles is King.

The bairns asked what the Queen’s favourite snack was and we found out it was jam sandwiches and chocolate.  We made chocolate playdough and had jam sandwiches  for snack today.

One of the bairns asked to colour in the Queen and some others asked to make crowns. The bairns also got their books from the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee home today, a lovely keepsake.

We are SO pleased to have “junk” back in the setting now that COVID restrictions have eased. We have missed this resource a lot!

Playing with open-ended resources such as boxes, cartons, plastic tubs, wrapping paper and cardboard tubes give us a lot of freedom to think, design and create. This is excellent for developing our imaginations which we need for literacy and numeracy. We have used junk to create many different things this week including boats, rockets, essy-kerts, dinosaurs, crocodiles, diggers, monsters, animals and planes. Junk modelling challenges us to use and develop problem solving skills as we investigate how to bring our ideas to life, often through trial and error as well consider how we might change or improve our models.

As you can see exploring junk modelling helped us to express and develop our creativity and innovation a lot which was also true of our paint mixing experimentation this week. Mrs Williamson brought in some real cacti for us to talk about, learn about and use as inspiration as some of us have shown interest in this plant recently. On Wednesday we used primary colour paint to create our own green cacti.

We developed our scientific thinking and curiosity as we wondered “What colour will happen?” “Can I make yun green like yun cactus?” “Do I need more yellow?” We developed our language skills too as we used lots of descriptive language such as “prickly green”, “desert colours”, “red flower lips” and we learned some facts about cacti such as “some irnoo prickly, like dis one, it’s saft” and “they grow in deserts and hot hot places.”

As you can see we really are a creative and imaginative bunch! Thanks for joining us this week. We look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next week.

This week we’d like to share some of the ways we’ve been enjoying learning outdoors over the past couple of weeks.

The appearance of a big sink proved to be a point of interest for a few days as we tried to connect pipes to it. We problem solved, shared our ideas and learned more about how the water flowed through the sink. Connecting pipes to the sink naturally led us to explore how water flowed in different context and in different ways. As we explored we took turns, shared, cooperated and negotiated. These are very important skills to learn for life! Water play helped us to develop our scientific knowledge as we experimented and discovered. We learned more about floating and sinking, how water moves and how the water always flowed downhill.

Mother nature provided us with A LOT of water last week too. Some of us were eager to get out in the heavy rain and to watch how puddles and streams naturally formed. Playing outdoors in weather like this can be emotionally therapeutic and help us to relax as well as develop our sensory awareness. We watched the water bounce repetitively, noticed how the puddles formed and listened to the sound of the rain hitting our hoods, roofs and other surfaces. We couldn’t resist experimenting with puddle jumping and puddle sitting to see how deep they were!

Blowing bubbles can also be a very relaxing activity. Blowing bubbles teaches us how to breathe out. Breathing out is a relaxing thing to do and is a strategy that we can learn to use to make ourselves calm throughout our lives.

We also used buckets and containers to combine water and sand. Scooping, pouring and squeezing allows us to build our fine and gross motor skills. As we play like this we begin to develop natural grip movements which grow more refined with time and repetition.

Some of us explored how to build very big sandcastles. Some sandcastles had windsocks on top to investigate how hard the wind was blowing and in what direction. Using sand, buckets and natural resources in this way develops our hand and eye coordination and stimulates our curiosity. When we carry heavy containers we develop large muscle groups and gross motor skills which we need for sitting still, listening and writing in the future.  As we fill different sized buckets we naturally learn about measurement, capacity and mathematical language such as “full”, “top”, “too much” and “heavy/heavier”.

Our creativity and mathematical learning has not just been confined to playing with sand and water. We have also learned a lot through role play outdoors. We’ve steered various vehicles around roundabouts, stopped at traffic lights and zebra crossings, bounced over cattle grids, followed directions and negotiated space as part of our play. Using our wheeled toys outdoors also helps us develop awareness of speed, forces and direction as well as supports us to take turns, share space and co-operate. As we play we develop crucial skills that are needed for relationships in the future.

Other role play has included having picnics and mowing and strimming grass.  As we play together we discover and build new vocabulary such as “mower”, “strimmer”, “engine”, “ear defenders”.  As we play in pairs or groups we get opportunities to practice saying words out loud and string sentences together. This helps us to be able to structure more complicated sentences. As we become more competent in socialising during play our listening and talking skills improve and develop.

We have had to use our listening and talking skills and turn taking and sharing skills when using climbing and balancing equipment outdoors too. Jumping, climbing and balancing using big movements and big resources is great for building our core strength and stamina which we need for formal learning later in life. Using open ended natural resources like tyres and planks helps us to feel unrestricted, stimulates our imaginations and gives everyone an opportunity to feel successful whether it’s jumping high or far, balancing on a tyre or a plank or sliding down a chute in a different way.

As you can see our outdoor classroom is a very important place where much learning happens! We look forward to sharing more with you next week.

This week we’d like to share some of the ways we’ve been developing our literacy skills and knowledge this week. At this age our engagement with talking, listening, reading and writing is called “emergent literacy”. We need to acquire emergent literacy before we can learn formal literacy and the best way we can do this is through play.

As this iceberg shows there is A LOT for us to learn before we are ready to formally read and write. One of the first, and most important things, that we need to develop is our spoken language. This includes being able to listen carefully and respond to what we hear as well as having opportunities to hear words, use these and practise talking in a range of situations.

Neaum,S. (2017).

As we play we learn to listen. It is important for us to be given time and space to listen to our friends, and to the adults around us, as this helps us to absorb language and respond to what we hear. As we play we  learn to talk. Role play is a great way for us to talk together as we take on different characters and require each other’s attention in order for a game to proceed.

Listening and talking through our play in these ways develops our cognitive flexibility which we need for learning and for life. Having cognitive flexibility means we can switch between changing priorities and demands and can keep up with games as rules and scenarios change.

Here are some of the ways we have been developing these skills this week.

Learning to read happens alongside listening and talking development. We must be able to hear differences in sounds before we can read. We must be able to understand and to use words verbally. In order to read we must develop good working memory which means we can hold information in our minds and use it. We learn this through play. All of the photos shared above show us developing reading readiness through play but here are some extras!

There is a link between physical movement and becoming literate. We learn and develop through being active in the world around us. We explore, investigate, observe, and experience our world through all of our senses. To become physical writers we need good sensory awareness and fine/gross motor control so we can control a pencil and know how much pressure to exert. We learn this through messy play and play that requires us to cross our midlines and use our fingers, thumbs, hands, arms and shoulders. In order to write formally we need good balance and proprioception. We learn this by moving and by getting a sense of our bodies in space, gaining control over them. If we do not have good balance it makes it very hard for us to concentrate and focus. We learn balance through physical play.

Here are some of the ways this week that we have been using our bodies in ways that will help us become writers of the future.

Thanks for taking the time to see how we have been developing our love for literacy this week. We look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next week.

Snack planner – Copy (1)

Wow it’s wonderful to be back at nursery! What a lot of happy faces we’ve seen this week 🙂

This week we have settled back into the routines, the environment and the spaces around us through exploring, building, creating, sharing, listening and talking.

Some of us used big blocks to build boats, recalling previous learning from last year and re-visiting some themes while others created hotels which recreated some real life experiences from our recent holidays. Many of us were very engaged in creating pictures by drawing, mark making, gluing, sticking, snipping and cutting this week too. Some of us shared what our pictures were about and told short stories about them while some of us engaged quietly in the creative process. It is important for us to have time and space to both talk and listen and to also silently absorb and engage.

There was much mark making outdoors too as we used chunky chalk to create shapes, letters, fish, car tracks and imaginative designs. We used natural resources to build a circle obstacle course and we found many interesting natural treasures as we dug in the sand. Some of us cleaned sand off the objects and used them symbolically in our play.  As we played together we developed our listening skills and awareness of others around us. Vehicle drivers and pedestrians followed rules about stopping, looking and listening at the zebra crossing. Playing together like this is very important for us as talking and listening are the basis of much of our learning, in particular becoming literate.

It was absolutely amazing to welcome Kate Hookham to the setting on Wednesday. Kate is a specialist in Forest Schools and Outdoor Learning and we were very lucky to have her input and expertise for the day. It was brilliant to learn about different ways to use outdoor resources safely in our play. We learned how to make fire and were excellent at following and understanding the safety rules. We were also eager to get involved in using hammers, wood and cloth to create some beautiful nature pictures. We’ll be taking forwards a lot of what we learned about fire, den building and outdoor play and look forward to sharing this with you all!