Monthly Archives: March 2024

Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Literacy, Mathematics, Outdoor Play

In Early Years this week..

Leave a comment

Children’s imaginative conversations throughout their play this week: 

“Would you like to buy a ticket for center parks and go on trampolines?” – “It costs sixty pounds”.

“Will I mix it fast or slow?”

“I’m cooking pancakes”.

“Can we have the train track?”

“If you fill out your details on this form it will take you to where you want to go”.

“I’m making a fire, fire is orange”.

“We need to make sure we stay away from the fire”.

“I’m drawing a boat and a fire, that’s the propeller- It spins around and it makes the boat go really fast”.

“You just add a little bit of yellow to orange to make it lighter, or some white”.

“Can you help me write I love you Mam, you are the best ever?”.

We created a variety of patterns with beads and thread, sequencing colours, we then measured the length using rulers and measuring sticks.

We baked some healthy banana pancakes for a 4th Birthday. We said “I can crack three eggs by myself” and did great measuring, pouring and mixing.

Following on from The Children’s interests of reptiles last week we added a variety outdoors. We said “Snakes and lizards are reptiles” and “Snakes are my most favourite thing in the planet.

We used the wood outdoors to stack and balance on then we problem solved which lengths were the same and could balance to create ramps for once another to walk on.

We practiced our cutting skills using magazines and then wanted to stick the pieces on our blackboard.

We were speaking about ‘Fairies’ so decided we would create some  ‘Fairy finders’ to help us find some outdoors, the sparkles led us to find some, we said it was “Magical”.

We’ve had various things in the sand this week which have been set up by the Children- We’ve had a ‘Tea party’, ‘Zoo’ and then ‘Treasure’. This then led on to having the Pirate Ship out and we created our own Pirate treasure maps to follow, we even stained them with teabags to make them look more realistic.

We asked for a hairdressers to be set up, We’ve had some great ‘hairdressers’ and ‘make up artists’ styling our head models (And teachers).

We discovered we now have six frogs in our pond and they’ve laid some frog spawn, we even heard them croaking this week, We thought they were ‘speaking’ to one another.

By the trees we found sticks and baby pinecones to add to the small house, we said we were “Making a bird nest” and then added some grass to “Make it comfy for them”.

We had a great time digging for mud to ‘cook’ with. We said we were making ‘Mint pies’, ‘Chocolate cupcakes’, ‘Tattie wedges’ and ‘Porridge because we’re camping’. We used great imagination with the loose parts whilst ‘cooking’.

We all wore red for Red Nose Day & planted ‘The red nose that grows’ which was kindly donated by a parent, we hope over the next few weeks it’ll blossom into lovely flowers.

I am very grateful to everyone for making my last day in Whiteness so special and will miss you all very much, thanks so much for all your kind words and gifts.

Miss Hay x

Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Literacy, Mathematics, Outdoor Play, Sciences

In Early Years this week..

Leave a comment

 

After seeing some real frog spawn we created our own using chai seeds, water and food colouring, we said-

“It’s all gloopy”.

“It’s like a sticky pool”.

“It’s gooey”

“My fog spawn is giant”.

“They’re moving around, wiggling”.

We found a slater and a blue bottle in Nursery this week, we spoke about what features they both had, where they live and what they might like to eat.

We used some pegs and cotton wool to paint with this week, discovering they made circles. There has been lots more fantastic junk modelling this week along with practicing our cutting skills by cutting out pictures for crafts.

We got messy painting our hands to make special cards for those that are special to us for Mothers Day.

We worked together to create ramps for the cars to flow down, we discovered if we put the pipe at the bottom of the wood it would catch the cars.

We risk took outdoors to climb then reach up high to clean the black board because it was “Very messy”. We then went on to clean our boat as it was “All dirty”.

We said we “Opened a zoo” with the reptiles, we used soapy water to ‘bath them’. There was some great imagination used and the reptiles got well look after. We said-

“The zoo is closed now”

“What time does it close at?” –

“1 o clock”.

We then went on to create a house for them with the blocks indoors, we usedloose parts as ‘blankets’, we named them “Firey”, “Greeney” and “Spikey” and said it took “116 blocks to build their house”.

We celebrated World Book Day so have read lots of different books this week including- ‘The Smartest Giant in town’, Various ‘Saper Tato’ books, ‘The Smeds and the Smoo’s’ & ‘The Gruffalo’ & ‘The Tiger who came to tea’ & ‘Shark in the park’. There were some brilliant costumes on the day, even the teachers dressed up as ‘Super Tato’, ‘Evil pea’ and ‘Stickman’.

We had a visit from a parent who is a Surgical nurse, she spoke to us about her job role and showed us some equipment she uses, she even let us have a shot of some of it.

We’ve continued to ‘Fix things’ in the ‘Garage’ and around the nursery using the tools like a ‘mechanic’ would, we discussed what the different tools would do and parts of the cars.

We’re still liking mixing our own colours so we got to independently do this using pumps to add to our pots.

We did lots of mark making in the polytunnel after visiting our pond where we discovered there was now four frogs in there.

We finished the week with a picnic in the polytunnel, we even read a Super Tato story in there. We then used the parachute, speaking about the movements in it with the wind, the colours we could see and following instructions well as to how to hold and move it.

We’ve had a few parents send in  photos for our achievement wall in Nursery, we’d love to add some more so if you’d like us to put them up please email-

lindsey.hay2@shetland.gov.uk

Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing, Literacy, Mathematics, Outdoor Play

What we’ve been up to this week

Leave a comment

Children’s voice from activities this week:

“Foxes eat mice”.

“I’ve made a garage, I’m going to park all the cars inside”.

“We were playing witches and making potions”.

“I’m making soup”.

“I liked playing in the pretend car”.

“I’m dropping off and picking up”.

“I’m going to the hairdressers”.

Some of us had an interest in foxes this week so have learnt some facts about them and other nocturnal animals, we created some forest pictures inspired by some of the books we read. We then created our own owls out of kitchen roll tubes and loose parts, we said “Their eyes glow”, “They go twit twoo twit twoo” and “They’re at the forest at night”.

We seen some signs of spring on the trees, some buds were appearing. We discovered another tree that was broken, we thought it might have been because of the strong winds.

We still interest in cars so have set up a ‘Garage’ in Early Years this week, there were lots of cars needing repaired to ensure they were safe to drive, we repaired them then took them for ‘test drives’. This then led on to having a ‘bus’ and an ‘plane’ where they role played boarding the bus and plane using ‘tickets’ and spoke about how the travel safely.

A block garage was created for all of the small cars, we had to create a sign so the cleaner didn’t knock it down as it was still ‘Under construction’.

We went for a walk in Strom Road and discovered some frog spawn, there was lots & we thought it would feel “sticky” and “slimy”.  We then went on to discuss the lifecycle of a frog and the process from frog spawn to frog. We then seen two frogs in our pond and thought we could call one of them “Neil”, We looked closely at their features discovering they had spots on their back, two long legs and thought their feet looked like “flippers”.

We got a delivery of new helmets for our bikes so decided to paint the box, add pieces of junk and loose parts and use it as “A Car”.

We got a new box for ‘Wonderful things’ so asked the children What kind of things they’d like to add to the box and they had some great ideas-

“Flowers”.

“Seaglass”.

“Some books”.

We then looked at some treasures Miss Hay & Mrs Gilfillan had found whilst they’d been at the beach, recognizing the shapes of the different pebbles, shells and seaglass.

We decided to practice our counting skills by playing ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf’ outdoors, we held up how many fingers each time for each other to follow the instructions of what time it was and how many steps to take forward.

We measured our plant and discovered it had grown more and it now measures 24.5cm.

We found lots of different sized sticks outdoors and decided to take them back to Nursery. We then did some problem solving to put them in size order from the longest to the shortest.

A Shanarri superstar award was given for being respectful, helpful and showing good listening skills all week, well done! 🙂