Mrs McNee – Page 3 – Knightsridge Early Years Centre

Big Bedtime Read

We had a fabulous day at our Big Bedtime Read Launch Party. Our playroom was transformed into a gathering of our favourite story characters as we dressed up as Fairytale Princesses, Three Little Pigs, Three Bears, Big Bad Wolves, Hungry Caterpillars, Bad Tempered Ladybirds, Rainbow Fish and Highway Rat’s to name a few. We read books, listened to stories, sang songs drank hot chocolate and finished by leaving with our fabulous Bedtime Story Book Bags.

We can’t wait to read our stories, bring our books back and get a new bag next week!

Our Learning Week Ending 9th February 2017

We have been learning all about time, days of the week, months of the year and seasons. We have been practicing our songs to help us remember each sequence. Please listen.
https://vimeo.com/204218013

Days of the week 1
https://vimeo.com/204218219

Days of the week 2
https://vimeo.com/204218311

Months of the year
https://vimeo.com/204218405

Seasons

If you would like a copy of the words to help your child learn these songs then please help yourself to a copy from our Learning Gallery Wall

PEEP at Knightsridge Early Years Centre

Looking to support your child with their learning in a fun filled PEEP group? Join us on the following days

Tuesday for PEEP 4s at 9.15am and 12.45pm

Wednesdays for PEEP 3s, at 12.45pm

Thursdays for Tweenie PEEP at 10.30am

Contact Mrs Olford and Mrs Marshall for more information.

Worms

When we were digging in our Mud Kitchen we found lots of big juicy worms. Mrs McNee explained that worms are good for the soil as they “break it all up”.

We didn’t understand what she was saying so we invited the Local Authority Waste Management Department to bring their wormery to the nursery to show us. Joanna from Waste Management, explained that a wormery had a kitchen, a livingroom and a bathroom. The kitchen is on the top floor and we added chopped vegetables for the worms to eat. The livingroom is in the middle as this is where they bury themselves in the soil. The bathroom is on the bottom floor and they go there to cool down.

We learned that worms do not like to eat meat, crisps, sweets or animal poo!

We observed and cared for the worms for 1 week and now have a better understanding of how important they are to our soil.

Our Scottish Learning

We have been very busy learning all about the country we live in. We have tasted haggis, neeps and tatties, baked shortbread and finished off with some oatcakes and cheese.

We have been learning about tartan patterns and have created our own tartan kilts using strips of paper at our PEEP classes with our carers. We also looked at patterns created by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and created stained glass windows.

We now know that the Scottish flag is called a Saltire and the Scottish flower is called a Thistle.

We have also shared our learning with our Primary 2 friends by joining in with singing the songs we have learned. They treated us to a rendition of “If You’re a Midgie and You Know It”, whilst we sang “Ye Cannae Shove Yer Grannie Aff a Bus”. We finished off by all joining together to sing “Three Craws Sat Upon A Waa”.

Still Life Paintings of Scottish Thistles

Sensory Learning

We have been using our senses to help us learn and have enjoyed getting messy in the process! We have been having fun playing in our rice pit running the rice through our fingers and watching it bounce and make noises, we thought sounded like rain. It felt cold and smooth as we played with it. We have also been making volcanos with vinegar and bicarbonate soda. We thought that the vinegar smelled yucky but we liked how it fizzed and frothed as it exploded. We have been playing with paint and loved squishing and squeezing it through our fingers and rubbing it up our arms, making hand and arm prints in the process. During the cold weather we froze water and once frozen and hard put it in the water tray and spent a long time playing with it as it melted in our warm hands, it felt very cold and wet. Last week we began to dry slices of fruit to make decorations for our natural sensory Christmas tree. We have also made popcorn which we have threaded together to make garlands. It smelled so nice when we cooked it we just had to eat it! Our tree looks and smells great.

National Galleries of Scotland Competition

This year some of the nursery children took part in National Galleries of Scotland art competition. Over 7000 children from across Scotland entered the competition and we were delighted to be informed that two of our children had won an award in the nursery category. Congratulations go to Owen Davies who won 3rd place and to Katie Ewesor who was awarded a special merit.
As part of Owen’s prize the nursery was given an opportunity to attend the Gallery for a special tour and a practical workshop.
We went on the bus and were welcomed by the staff. We were taken around the Gallery and learned about some of the pictures. We then got messy! We made our own pictures using paint, glue, pens and crayons and produced lovely flowers in vases. We had a great day out. We will display our paintings in our own gallery next week.
Katie and Owen will attend an awards ceremony at the gallery to receive their awards and then their pictures will be displayed in the gallery until October when the full competition exhibition will then travel around various venues in Scotland.
A big well done to Owen and Katie and thank you also to the National Galleries of Scotland for the great opportunity which we all enjoyed.

Nursery Garden

We have been busy weeding and planting in our nursery garden as we work towards gaining our green flag award.
We have also been learning about healthy eating in the nursery so we invited Willie Carruthers the community gardener along to show us how to plant properly and talk to us about different types of fruit and vegetables we can grow in our garden. We have at the moment planted strawberries, peas, potatoes, carrots and cabbage and we are looking after them and eagerly awaiting to see the first signs of growth.
The photographer from the West Lothian Courier came along and took our photograph and our picture appeared in the paper that week.