Did you know that good talkers have the best chance of becoming good readers and writers? So the Early Years is a crucial time to get chatting.

We are working on becoming a Word Aware nursery.

Word Aware is all about helping children to be the best talkers that they can.

Over the next few weeks you will start to see our word of the week and we will be giving you tips on how to use this at home.

We will be holding a Word Aware session for parents only, on Monday 18^th June, 6.30 – 7.30 pm.  In the meantime, here is some information to get you started.

 

The nursery team and Heather Watkins, Speech and Language Therapist

Information sheet from families  from Word Aware 2 by Stephen parsons & Anna Branagan

How to help your child learn words

Things to remember

1 Words are important.

2 Home support for vocabulary makes a difference.

3 Have fun with words.

4 It is about talking as much as reading and writing.

5 When talking about words, use comments rather than ask questions.

6 Do a little every day.

Everyday things you can do to support vocabulary

You do not need expensive toys or gadgets to develop your child’s vocabulary. You are the best word-learning toy there is!

Reading and talking

Books are an excellent source of interesting vocabulary. Reading to your child from an early age, and continuing to support their reading, is an effective way in which you can support vocabulary development.

Build on this by talking about word meanings.

• Are there any words that are new to your child?

• Are there any interesting words that your child likes?

• Are there good describing or action words?

Find words that sound funny. Find words that mean … By building this into your reading routine, you are developing your child’s vocabulary.

New words from school

The words your child is learning about at school will be displayed somewhere so that you can see them. This might be on the window, door or board as you come in. Ask a staff member if you cannot see them. As your child is still just learning these words, it is best if you use the word in sentences and talk about them, rather than ask ‘What does that mean?’ If you want your child to use a word in a sentence, he or she must hear the word in sentences many times.

Listen, praise and add an extra word

Listen carefully to the words your child is using and look for opportunities to praise and add words. When he or she uses a new word, let them know by commenting on their word choice: ‘What a great word!’ If your child plays it safe and uses the same words repeatedly, give them alternatives. For instance: if the child says, ‘I made a big tower’, the parent says, ‘Let me see your tower. It is big and it is tall.’

Learn a few simple word games

There might be times in the day when you do not have anything to play with, eg on journeys or when waiting. Use this ‘dead time’ to play word games. They will keep little minds occupied as well as being fun.

 

Looking through some nursery archives I found a file about the Commonwealth marathon which the nursery participated in to embed the Daily Mile into our continuous provision.

So, here’s a brief history of where it all start for the children at St Ninians Nursery.

The school  had already established the beginning of The Daily Mile, although the nursery was not included.

With the 2014 Commonwealth Games looming, the whole school decided that they were going to run the equivalent of a marathon by the time the opening ceremony took place in Glasgow. The nursery were tentatively invited to join in, and we grabbed the chance. What follows is a piece of documentation that was written in 2014, outlining what we did.

St Ninians Nursery Commonwealth marathon  23.06.2014

Every child from Nursery to P7 has been involved in running the equivalent of a marathon to celebrate the Glasgow Commonwealth games 2014 over the last 6 weeks.

A marathon consists of 26 miles therefore each child had to walk or run 156 times around the yellow brick road (YBR) which circles the school playing fields. In nursery there were three categories in which children could achieve a gold medal:-

• 156 times around the YBR
• 78 times around the YBR
• 5 laps around the YBR every time you are in nursery

Each day, we used the running theme tune from Rocky to signal the start of our training and children gathered together to do some stretches and warm up before we headed outside.

 

There was a basket of interlocking cubes placed at the end of a lap and the children knew that they took one cube for every lap they completed. This enabled children to :-

• Independently track their own running
• Predict if they needed to stop or run more
• Decide if they wanted to challenge themselves to beat their previous lap numbers
• Practice using one to one correspondence when counting and use mathematical language such as more, less, same as, enough, not enough, too many, how many
• Some children were experimenting with creating colour patterns and comparing their cube towers to each others of staffs and deciding if it was bigger or smaller.

Once we had completed our daily running, the children headed back inside to their groups where they counted how many laps they did and it was recorded on their personal running record. We always had a drink or two of water and learned that we need to hydrate our bodies after exercise.

Each Friday  the children received a certificate to say how many laps they did that week and Mrs Wyllie, Head teacher or Mrs Young, Depute Head teacher would come to nursery and present some children with Head teacher Award stickers. These were not for the fastest runner or who had run the most laps. Instead these were to celebrate different categories such as most consistent runner, most dedicated runner, most improved runner.

 

 

We kept a weekly total of the laps run on the notice board.

 

The children evaluated the marathon through drawings of themselves running and staff scribed their feedback.

Feedback from parents, families and staff was gathered and displayed on the board.

 

Six weeks of running finished at the Summer fun session on Friday 20^th June 2014. Parents and carers were invited to join us as we ran or walked the last few laps of the marathon before gathering in the nursery garden.

The children received a gold certificate with their grand total and then crossed over the “stage” to receive their medal from Mrs Wyllie (morning) or Mrs Young (afternoon).

Everyone  was excited  and proud of their achievements.

We then made a marathon book with all the documentation we had collected over the six weeks and Mrs Wyllie used this to showcase the achievements of the nursery children.