Whalsay Early Years 2025-2026

Today wir pupils enjoyed exploring the snowy school grounds, starting at the peerie tar to investigate their footprints. This was a great opportunity to spark curiosity and inquiry about the marks we make in our natural world. We also played responsive games like “Ready, steady… go!”, which are excellent for practising listening skills and self-regulation.

Later, sledging down the peerie hill brought plenty of excitement! Navigating the ‘slidey’ and ‘slippery’ slope required real physical skill, helping the children develop their balance, coordination, and resilience as they worked hard to climb back up for another go.

We hope you all have had a joyful christmas and we wish you and your families the best in this new year.

We are looking forward to getting going with this new term, 2026.

Some of our pupils have made the most of being outside this morning, and are surely feeling the Christmas spirit.

They have been planning and serving up a delicious Christmas dinner in the outdoor kitchen for their friends. They have been busy counting how many people would be coming for their dinner, and making sure they had the correct amount of plates! This included 1-1 counting, and some subitising. When they realised another pupil had come into the garden to play, they were quick to make sure they had another plate, turning their party of 3 into a party of 4.

 

The boys made some “sizzling stuffing”, gravy, tatties, sausages and turkey. Another pupil made a lovely pudding to share.

Very importantly, one of our pupils pointed out that “wir sausages hae to be peerie”!

This was a lovely opportunity to explore numeracy skills by counting and subitising while naturally practicing social inclusion as they welcome their friends into their game.

Outdoor play encourages them to use their own voices and build their creative confident needed to solve problems and share ideas together.

Some of our pupils enjoyed a delicious christmas dinner prepared by our wonderful canteen staff! They sat really well, and seemed to enjoy seeing the pupils all the way from primary one up to S4.

We enjoyed sharing the festive spirit across the whole school.

Thank you to all for coming to see our nursery concert, the bairns have been working hard practicing their singing and actions over the last few weeks.

The pupils were involved in choosing the songs they wanted to perform, which were: When Santa Got Stuck Up the Chimney, Away in a Manger, Jingle Bells and Golden for their finale dance.

We are very proud of the effort the pupils have put into their concert this year.

Thank you for your donations, and for purchasing wir fudge, Christmas tree decorations and reindeer food, so far we have raised a total of £237.10.

Some of our pupils have been in the primary this morning selling some reindeer food that our ‘Friday Fun’ primary pupils have been making for the nursery enterprise.

We hope to keep selling our reindeer food next week, and again at our nursery concert for only £2.00 a cone. The pupils were very confident shouting “Roll up, roll up and buy our reindeer food!” and were keen asking the buyers “how much do you want?”

Today some of our pupils helped to make a homemade pasta sauce for snack, wir recipe included:

• 1 red pepper
• a punnet of peerie tomatoes
• a punnet of mushrooms
• 5 carrot sticks

Our pupils were good at remembering to wash their hands first before they carefully and independently prepared the sauce, using our new safety knives to cut up the vegetables.

“This is lik’ the master chef.”

“Just da masterchef at nursery.”

 

Our pupils were able to assess and manage the risk of cutting up their vegetables which were sometimes “slippery”, and chose the best cutting tool depending on the vegetable they were cutting up.

One pupil had tried to use a chopping tool that you needed to hold with two hands, but then realised he might need a spare hand to keep his tomatoes still and then decided to use a knife saying “Actually, I’ll use dis ein.”

We then roasted the vegetables before blending them. The pupils scooped the roast vegetables from the baking tray and then put them in the blender. They thought the blender was “very lood”.

The pupils then were able to sit down for their snack, and enjoy some fresh sauce with their pasta. The children who decided to give it a try described it as “very good” and “delicious”.

If you can think of any tasty and health snack recipes at home, please feel free to email them in!

Today the pupils learned a little about Guy Fawkes, and the story behind why we have bonfire night. The pupils also listened to the famous rhyme, and recited some of it back to their teachers.

“Remember, remember, the 5th of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason
why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.” – John Milton

The celebrate Guy Fawkes night, we had a peerie “bonfire” of our own in the nursery garden. The boys and girls got involved in discussing, judging and managing the risk having a fire in the garden, and helped to make clear rules and boundaries for pupils and staff to follow to keep us all safe. What a responsible bunch of pupils we have here at nursery!

The pupils all sat behind the barrier very safely, and all seemed to enjoy wir peerie bonfire.