The sun was shining down on us for today’s Highland Games. The children all took part in the three events, Toss the Wellie, Hurl the Haggis and the Tattie and Spoon race. We cheered on our friends and enjoyed getting active out in the sunshine. We all received a certificate to take home so a big well done to everyone who took part and tried their best today… Ya done awfy weel.

This week has had a very Scottish feel as we have been preparing for Burns day and our Burns Supper today. We have been creating our own tartan and painting Hairy Haggis’. The children have enjoyed dressing up in their tartan and we all sat down to our Burns Supper together for snack today. We were lucky to have one of our parents in to pipe in our Haggis and Mrs Drummond beautifully read out the Selkirk Grace before we tucked into our supper of haggis, neeps and tatties, followed by some shortbread. After our feast we continued the Scottish celebrations with spot of ceilidh dancing .

It’s been a braw wee day and we’re looking forward to continuing the Scottish celebrations with our Bathgate West Highland Games tomorrow.

It’s that time of year already when we need to start preparations for our theme and costumes for the Bathgate Procession. Our suggestion board is now up and waiting for all of your ideas! We will then ask the children to vote for their favourite theme.

Please add your suggestions using the post it notes.

Thanks.

stay-and-play-jan-2017

Check out the Sway below to see how we are developing our planning and learning within the nursery using our new consultative planning approach. We will be continually adding to and updating the Sway so please keep checking to see how our learning is progressing. As always we love to hear what you think, so please feel free to leave a comment on our Blog.

With Winter in full swing our learning in nursery has been led by the changing weather over the past couple of weeks. Our planning and learning will continue to be developed in response to this.

So our new Try at Home task is a Winter Hunt Checklist. Please help yourself to a checklist and use it to record some of the things you are likely to see in the Winter time, you could talk about what you find and bring in any objects, photos or drawings to share with us at nursery, we would love to see them.

The Try at Home tasks can be found at the front door (or you can download and print from here t-t-4836-winter-hunt-checklist), so if you want a challenge at home please take one on your way home…and don’t forget to share you learning with us back at nursery!

We were feeling very ‘Zen’ like this morning at Bathgate West after a little Yoga Bugs activity. The children enjoyed trying the different positions and following the Ocean Story. Yoga helped us with our breathing and we felt quiet and calm afterwards (well for a little while anyway!).

I would like to introduce Adventure Ted to you all.

We have 12 Adventure Ted’s in the nursery and they would like to come and spend the weekend with your child.  Starting soon every child will have the opportunity, during group time activities, to take Adventure Ted home with them, on a rota basis, on a Thursday and return them to the nursery on Monday.

During group time on Monday your child will share their adventure with the rest of their group. The aim of this activity is to promote listening and talking within the curricular area of Literacy and English and also to develop confidence and self-esteem as part of their Health and Wellbeing.

Adventure Ted loves all sorts of activities ranging from shopping at Tesco to going to watch their nursery friend at the swimming pool (Ted doesn’t like the water!) to playing games with the family, to visiting Granny for the afternoon to going to the zoo.

Whatever you do with your child over the weekend we would like Ted to be part of.

Inside each bag there is a prompt card telling you how to use Ted along with a postcard for your child to complete and return to nursery on Mondays.

 Enjoy your adventures with Ted!

Following on from our nursery natter with the children last term we put the same question to the parents and carers of Bathgate West…. “What makes nursery special?”. Thank you for the feedback, here are just a few of the comments we received…

Happy New year and a warm welcome back to all of our families. We have enjoyed hearing about all of your adventures over Christmas, it sounds as though Santa was good to you all. We will continue to settle back into life at nursery this week and next week we will start up group time once again.

Welcome back and we look forward to all the learning and discovery that will be taking place over the coming term.