Author: Miss Robertson

What a fantastic day celebrating International Play Day! We were incredibly lucky to have the sun shining for us, allowing bairns and their families to enjoy a wonderful Stay and Play session flowing freely between our indoor nursery and our garden.

Play is how young children make sense of the world around them. While International Play Day was full of laughter and fun, it was also packed with learning opportunities. Here’s a little peek behind the scenes at some of the skills and knowledge your bairns were developing through play:

• The mud kitchen (outdoors) and sand (indoors) were incredibly busy. While it might just look like getting messy, this type of sensory play is packed with learning. As the pupils mix, pour, measure, and estimate the sand and water, they are acting as young scientists and mathematicians – exploring early concepts of volume and capacity. They may also be investigating exactly how textures, colours, and consistencies can change when different materials are combined; mud + water + flowers can create all sorts of exciting discoveries!

• There were children zooming around outside on the balance and pedal bikes- demonstrating their responsibility as they remembered to put on helmets and look around for the traffic and flow of others. Energetic play and big movements are absolutely essential for building strong bodies and healthy hearts. Whether they are pedalling a bike or balancing on a scooter, they are developing vital gross motor skills, stamina, and spatial awareness.

• Bairns explored loose parts play, working together to invent, design, problem solve and test their ideas. Alongside this, we had some beautiful mark making happening- a crucial first step into a child’s early literacy journey, supporting the development of the fine motor skills needed for writing and teaching them that their marks can communicate their thoughts and ideas.

• We also saw some bairns focus on small world play to bustling imaginative role play- the nursery was alive with children’s story telling through play. It might look like simple fun, but imaginative play is some of the most important work children do. Providing safe spaces for children to process their real world thoughts, feelings and experiences, develop deep empathy, and practice their talking, listening, and cooperation skills with their peers and families.

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A huge thank you to everyone who came along. When families join us in play, it helps strengthen children’s sense of security, belonging and connection between home and nursery.  We value your partnership!

Throughout this term, the bairns have been having a fun time practising their skills for our upcoming Sports Day!

Taking part in Sports Day is a lovely opportunity for the bairns to enjoy participating in energetic physical activities and sport.

We are delighted to invite all parents and carers to come along and cheers the bairns on. We would love to have you join in the celebrate their achievements with us.

Please join us on the 15th of June – fingers crossed the weather holds up for us!

What an incredible fun we had yesterday. Our much-anticipated “Nursery Gladiators” obstacle course came to life! It was a fantastic collaboration between child-led inspiration and supportive adult planning.

The idea was sparked when one of our pupils shared: “I have an idea, why don’t we do, nursery gladiators?”.

This pupil stepped up as our course designer! Realising the Ambition reminds us that some of the most effective learning is a co-operative process between children and adults, where the lead passes back and forth. By taking the pupil’s initial spark and using our adult input to help them plan, build, and extend the ideas, we created a rich learning experience that supports everyone to grow emotionally, socially, physically and cognitively.

Warm-Up

Before tackling the main event, the children joined in with a great warm up, which was inspired and designed by one of our pupils.

They split into two teams to practice throwing and catching balls of different shapes and sizes – a brilliant way to develop hand-eye coordination. This was followed by a highly energetic game of ‘Traffic Lights’. Not only was this incredibly fun, but running forwards and backwards and stopping quickly on the ‘red light’ is actually a key developmental milestone for agility and spatial awareness!

Gladiators in Action

Then it was time for the main event. It was great to see the children navigate the physically challenges we had mapped out, practicing a variety of gross motor skills:

• Balance and Landing: Pupils started by balancing along the bench, choose to either step off or challenge themselves by jumping off the end to practice landing safely on two feet.

• Crab Scuttling: They then practiced their balancing by using the painted court lines to ‘scuttle lik’ a crab’, before skipping carefully over different footprints.

• Soft Play Climbing & Tunnels: Moving on, wir Gladiators climbed the steps, crawled carefully over the bridge, and went down the slight. Next, it was time to crouch, crawl and slide their way through the tunnel.

• Personal Challenge: Pupils ran across to the hurdles, and showed great independence by choosing which height of hurdle they wanted to be challenged by before jumping or stepping over them.

• The Gymnastics Horse: The grand finale involved coming over to the shorted gymnastics horse and jumping off onto the crash mat.

When pupils reached the gynmastics horse, they were supported and encouraged by staff to conduct their own peerie risk assessments; making sure they were taking individual turns to climb up and jump safely onto the crash mat. This could be a bit tricky sometimes, but with teamwork and patience, we did it. Involving children in assessing the risks and benefits of their play is a vital part of teaching them how to take responsibility for their own safety.

Finally, they hopped and tip-toed their way through a path of hoops.

A huge well done to all of our Nursery Gladiators (and our brilliant pupil designer) for their teamwork, resilience, and boundless energy yesterday morning!

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?”