Drag, Drop, SWAY!
We had new additions to our Knightsridge Early Years Centre family in April. Check out our fabulous learning experience.
Tag: Literacy
Keeping Safe at Knightsridge Early Years Centre
Drag, Drop, SWAY! Check out our learning and how independent we are at Keeping Safe.
Our Learning Week Ending 7th September 2018
The children have enjoyed many healthy learning experiences this week including exploring our healthy Greengrocers. Whilst taking on the role of shop keeper and customer, the children had the opportunity to name and explore a variety of fruit and vegetables as well as sort them into categories of type, size, shape and colour.
Our potatoes came from the nursery garden and before they were transported to the shop the children were set the challenge of ordering the potatoes by size from biggest to smallest.
The children then helped to prepare the potatoes for a snack. This included using our fine motor skills of washing, peeling and chopping the potatoes.
The children enjoyed tasting the yummy boiled potatoes that they had helped to prepare.
Our creative children then used the loose parts materials, the vegetables from the shop and the Box Clever Kitchen Utensils to work together to make their very own ‘Vegetable Soup’ in the water tray.
We were counting the number of ladles and spoons of soup we needed to fill and empty our pots, pans and cups.
Next week we are going to find other ways to count and improve our maths and numeracy skills whilst playing during Maths Week Scotland.
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 3rd November 2017
This week we have continued our learning about Autumn. Following on from the interest in the book “Pumpkin Soup” by Helen Cooper last week we chose to make our very own pumpkin soup . This gave us the opportunity to investigate pumpkins in more detail . We have discovered that pumpkins have skin, flesh and seeds. We chopped the flesh to use in our soup which we all had the opportunity of tasting at group time. Although some of us were reluctant to taste our soup, with some encouragement, many of us enjoyed it so much we asked for a second helping !
We enjoyed the sensory experience of putting our hands into the pumpkins and pulling the seeds out . We used descriptive words when engaging in this activity including “slimy, wet and cold”. When asked what could be done with the seeds Ava suggested planting them to make more pumpkins and Aaron thought we could use them to make pictures at the glue table. Mrs Olford suggested toasting them so we could eat them. There was a mixture of opinions on whether the children liked the toasted seeds or not. Some voted with a thumbs up to indicate they enjoyed them, some with horizontal thumbs to indicate they thought they were ok, and some thumbs downs as they didn’t enjoy them.
We have been learning about autumn festivals this week starting with Halloween. Some of us chose to dress up in scary costumes while others chose favorite story and film characters.
We explored goo and slime. Some of us were reluctant to use our hands, instead using tweezers to lift spiders and insects out of the containers.
We used our mark making and fine motor skills to draw pumpkins in trays of semolina.
We dooked for apples in our groups using several techniques including putting our faces in to the water and biting the apples.
We continued with Autumn festivals by observing fireworks on the smart board to link with Guy Fawkes. We also listened to government publication “Frances the Firefly” to help introduce us to the dangers of fire.
Next week we will be learning more about fire safety and if it doesn’t rain we hope to have a practical experience out in the garden.
Our Learning week ending 27th October 2017
This week we have continued with our learning about Autumn. A display of pumpkins and squashes was created alongside the book “Pumpkin Soup” by Helen Cooper. This stimulated the childrens interest which resulted in a sensory exploration of the different pumpkins. The children noticed the similarities and differences and this led to lots of discussion about size, weight, colour and texture. Lucy, Alexandra and Millie worked together ordering the pumpkins from “the tiny one” to the “huge peachy coloured one”.
The Pumpkin Soup story was a popular choice by all and was read by an adult in small group as as well as looked at independtly by the children. Many discussions were held about the characters, analysing their friendship and in particular what makes a good friend.
Recalling learning from last year Darcey rememberd tasting the pumpkin pie that we made last Autumn. However Ethan stated ” I like pumpkin soup” so after much discussion it has been decided that we will be making our own pumpkin soup in Nursery next week.
Alexandra brought in felt bat shapes from home that her mummy had made. She decided that she wanted to decorate the den with them. Alexandra wanted them to fly and after collaborative discussion it was decided that the bats needed to be attached to wool. After counting the bats to work out how many pieces of wool would be needed a Alexandra and her friends worked together to measure and cut the wool to an appropriate length before hanging the in the den.
We added numbers 1-5 onto bats to create a number line. The children have been identifying and ordering the numerals and are using them as props for the”5 little bats” number rhyme.
Copies of the number rhyme are available on our Learning Gallery wall in the cloakroom.
Our Learning Week Ending 27th January 2017
Wit ‘a guid week we’ve had!
We’ve read a selection of Scottish themed stories and used our recall and sequencing skills to retell the story “There was a Wee Lassie who swallowed a Midgie”. Some of our favourites also included The Grouse and the Mouse and Can’t-Dance-Cameron.
We increased our vocabulary learning lots of new words such as semmit, breeks, saltire, thistles, tartan, and kilts and used our observational skills to create artisitc examples of Saltires and Thistles.
On Wednesday we celebrated with a Burns Supper. We all tried the new foods and thoroughly enjoyed the social setting of eating together. Some of us enjoyed the haggis, neeps and tatties followed by shortbread however some of us just enjoyed the shortbread!
We listened to the bagpipes and drums and danced to traditional scottish ceildh music.
We finished our week of celebrating with a Scottish Sing-A-Long with our parents and carers.
Thank you to all who came along.
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.
Fairtrade Fortnight
We have been learning about Fairtrade and Foncho the Fairtrade Banana Farmer and can now recognise Fairtrade products by the symbol on them.
We ate Bananas all week at snack. Banana Smoothies, Banana Sandwiches and homemade Banana Cake it was delicious.
We decided to have a Fairtrade Coffee Morning and made our own posters to advertise our event.
On the day we helped to serve our parents and carers tea, coffee and cake and retold them the story of Foncho.
We celebrated our learning at the primary school assembly last Friday morning by telling the boys and girls of Foncho the Banana Farmer.
January
Last month our learning focused on developing our story telling and rhyme reciting skills during our Story, Rhyme and Song time. We have been listening to traditional tales such as The 3 Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the 3 Bears and The Gingerbread Man and have participated in retelling the story using role-play costumes and puppets. We have been learning and reciting different nursery rhymes and songs including Old MacDonald, Hey Diddle Diddle and the Row, Row, Row your Boat.
During our Scottish Week focus we learned many different Scottish words to describe our clothing, including our semmit, breeks and bunnet and used our art and craft skills to design our own tartan kilts. We held our very own Burns Supper where we tasted Haggis, Neeps and Tatties and entertained our parents and carers with an impromptu Scottish Singalong with songs including Wee Willie Winkie, Yi Cannae Shove Yir Grannie, and the children’s favourite, The Midge.
Home-Link activity sheets and booklets supporting the children’s learning in Nursery Rhymes, Traditional Tales and Scottish Songs are available in the cloakroom.
Group Time activities take place at 9.30am and 1pm where the children engage in key learning opportunities to develop their listening and talking skills through sound matching and rhythm games or activities such as cutting, drawing, throwing and catching to develop their gross and fine motor skills.
A small snack is served mid-session. We have introduced an opportunity for the children to practice their fine motor skills using a knife and fork as well as offering tasting sessions for the children to try different foods.
We have also been learning to cook and have really enjoyed making our own Krispie cakes.
