Category: Nursery

NURSERY – Fun and Learning at Home

Painted Rocks Hidden In East Calder

We have painted and hidden some rocks close to the school in East Calder.  If your out and about for a walk, have a look to see if you can find any (close to infant gate entrance – along the path and on the grass).

If you find any, please take a photo and share on the Home Learning in your child’s Learning Journal.  It would be lovely to leave the rocks where they are or to hide them somewhere close by for other children to enjoy.

 

You might find them around here ……..

          

Good Luck!

EC Nursery Team

 

N-P1 Transition Task – Week 1

Nursery – P1 Transition
Dear Parents/Carers – you should have received an email today with a copy of our N-P1 Transition Timeline, photographs of our P1 staff and details about our Week 1 ‘Transition Task’. Please click on the link below to access our N-P1 Transition Timeline.
 As part of this years transition process we would like to email you a weekly transition task for you and your child to complete. Our Week 1 Transition Task is ‘Getting To Know You’. So we can get to know your child a little bit, we would love if you could email a photograph of your child surrounded by some of their favourite things. It could be a favourite toy, a favourite book etc, they could be wearing their favourite outfit etc.
Please email your photo to laura.donnelly@westlothian.org.uk so I can share it with the P1 teachers and display it on a ‘Welcome Wall’ in the Primary 1 area of the school.
Please click on the link below to meet our P1 staff.
We look forward to seeing the photos of our soon to be Primary 1 pupils surrounded by some of their favourite things  🙂

NURSERY – The adventures of the nursery ladies

Miss Fleming

Miss Fleming has enjoyed staying active by going on daily walks and cycles. She has cycled from Linlithgow to the Falkirk wheel and back. On this adventure, she had to go through the canal tunnel, which is 630 metres long, which is the longest canal tunnel in Scotland.

On her walks Miss Fleming has seen frog spawn, frogs, lambs, a deer and ducks with their ducklings.

Miss Fleming has even enjoyed dressing up! Do you like dressing up, what is your favourite costume and why?

Miss Thomson

Miss Thomson has been exploring the countryside with her son, they have found tadpoles, stickman and climbed trees and big hills. They collected some tadpoles and have put them in a tank so they can look after them at home. What have you seen when out your walks/cycles?

Miss Thomson even gave her dog Dolly a haircut!…poor Dolly 🙁

Mrs Sharkey

Mrs Sharkey has enjoyed baking lots of yummy treats!, This week she made Gingerbread, why don’t you give it a try? Here is the recipe and instructions:

Miss Ritchie

Miss Ritchie has enjoyed walking her dog Mr Smudge in the woodlands next to her house. Have you got any pets?, we would love to see them on your Learners Journal.

Mrs Rafferty

Mrs Rafferty has been busy making this lovely Sensory fairy garden for her granddaughter, it is full of different smelling herbs. Do you think you could make a fairy garden, what herbs will you put in?

Mrs Rafferty has also been giving her children cooking lessons, last night they made spaghetti and meatballs. Here is the recipe if you would like to try and make them.

Miss Campbell

Miss Campbell has been cycling a lot during lock down and has bumped into a few children. If you can spot Miss Campbell out on her bike ride/run, challenge her to something (5 star jumps, a race).

Lothian Autistic Society are taking part in the 2.6 Challenge, this involves taking part in an activity of your choice around the number 2.6 or 26 and donate to support. By taking part in the 2.6 Challenge, whether it be through running 2.6 miles, doing 26 keepy-uppies in a row, creating your own 26 minute quiz or holding a plank for 26 seconds.

Miss Campbell has chosen to do the full 26 miles over a few days to raise funds for Lothian Autistic Society! Well done Miss Campbell!! 🙂

Mrs MacKenzie

Mrs MacKenzie has been enjoying a lot of time outdoors with her family. They have been gardening, walking and cycling and have found some new pathways and routes to explore. On her walks she has seen deer, buzzards, rabbits, hares, robins, some of the animals at Mill Farm and her children and husband saw a Kingfisher – but it was too fast for Mrs MacKenzie!! The family also often walk at dusk and night-time and have seen lots of bats and heard the owls calling to each other.

Indoors Mrs MacKenzie has – camped in a pop up tent in the living room with her son, baked some gluten free treats, enjoyed some of her daughters new recipes, read books (in a den that we built underneath the dining table), painted stones, facetimed family and friends, watched films, played games (Who’s in the Bag? is the favourite), drew, coloured in, wrote letters to friends and family and played very competitive games of Nerf Challenge. Have you got a Nerf gun?, why don’t you set up some targets and try to knock them down?

Mrs Bazely

Mrs Bazely has been spending her time felting. Needle felting is taking some plain old wool and making it into felt, you use a special long needle that’s has lots of barbs on it to roll up, poke the wool over and over again into any shape you want and make it stiffen up into felt, this can take a really long time. Once you’re done and have the shape you can use smaller bits of dyed wool to add colour and details. Have you made anything using a needle?

Mrs Laing

Mrs Laing has been enjoying time with her own children, Cameron and Harris.   They made perfume using flowers and leaves in their garden.  They used big stones to grind petals and leaves, they crushed and cut some petals and added it all to water and mixed it altogether.  They added more petals and leaves until they were happy with the scent!  They called their perfume “Lemon Bee”.  Can you make your own perfume?

Mrs Laing also helped her boys make shadow puppets.  They drew sea creatures and stuck them onto pencils and used torches to create shadows on a wall.  They made the creatures bigger and smaller by moving the torch forwards and backwards.  Cameron and Harris performed a puppet show for Mrs Laing.  There was a very ferocious shark!  We would love to see photos of your puppets or puppet shows.

 

Mrs Shemilt

Mrs Shemilt And her family have been cycling 6 miles most days to deliver her dad his paper. They have also cycled nearly 8 miles at the weekend to Almondell & back!!  They have seen lots of different types of birds, they even spotted a heron. What have you spotted at Almondell?

Indoors they have been doing lots of baking at home & Lucy’s been measuring out all the ingredients and they planted some veg at the start of lockdown & got their first lot of radish at the weekend! Lucy has also been making some monsters from the recycling!!

Out in the garden they have a teepee & have been camping & eating their dinner out there,  although Mrs Shemilt said it was freezing!.
Have you been camping or camped in your garden before, you could share your camping experience on your Learning Journal.

I hope you have enjoyed reading what we have been doing and remember we love to see all the fun you are having as well so please post your adventures/activities on your Learners Journals for us to see and comment on.

EC Nursery Team

NURSERY – Fun and Learning at Home

Good afternoon Everyone

Here are some suggested activities to give a try.

Decorating stones– Decorate stones and hide them in your local community for others to find. L.I I am using my imagination to create art.

Dandelion/daisy chain – Why not try and make a Dandelion/daisy chain, how many can you join together, can you make a chain longer than you? L.I I am developing my fine motor skills and can count using 1-1 correspondence.

Ice – Can you collect natural items in a small tub and freeze them in water. Where will you put the tub to make the water freeze? Once it has frozen hang it up using string and watch the ice melt. How will the ice melt?, how long will it take? L.I I am learning about how water can change forms in different environments.

Bird feeders – Some of the nursery children have been making bird feeders using a toilet roll tube, peanut butter and bird seed. Why don’t you give it a try, they are very simple to make. Step 1: coat your tube in peanut butter, step 2: roll over a plate of seeds to cover the peanut butter, step 3: put out in your garden for the birds to enjoy. L.I I am learning how to look after the wildlife.

Stay safe and have fun

EC Nursery Team

NURSERY – Fun and Learning at Home

Counting and Measuring with Lego

For a simple activity use 20 or more lego duplo blocks in various colours and write the numbers 0-20+ on the sides of them, using a permanent marker. On the opposite side of each draw the corresponding number of dots so that they can be counted to match the correct amount. Lay them out on the floor with the numbers showing and set the challenge to build them into a tall tower in the right order. L.1. I have explored numbers, understanding that they represent quantities, and I can use them to count, create sequences and describe order.

 

Rhyming Pairs Game

Make a simple rhyming activity to help practise rhyming pairs and learn about literacy in a playful, hands-on way! L.1. I explore sounds, letters and words, discovering how they work together, and I can use what I learn to help me as I read and write.

Practise hearing and identifying rhyming words for example, making a collection of rhyming words that all belong in the “-at” family, such as “cat”, “mat”, “bat”, “sat”, “fat” etc.

This makes learning more concrete and playful. Children learn best while touching, moving and doing, rather than looking at a worksheet or set of 2D images.

Playmobile figures or small world toys are ideal for this game. Some suggestions for rhyming words;

goat and boat

man and fan

chair and bear

snake and cake

cat and hat

duck and truck

fox and box

mouse and house

car and star

dog and frog

 

Football Buzz

Football Buzz is running online sessions for children during lockdown. If you are interested in your child participating in the free online sessions you should contact: footballbuzz@hotmail.co.uk  L.1. I am enjoying daily opportunities to participate in different kinds of energetic play, both outdoors and indoors

And remember you can access more play and learning ideas at http://blogs.glowscotland.org,uk/wl/snonursery

 

‘If you see someone without a smile,

give them one of yours’

 

EC Nursery Team

 

NURSERY – Fun and Learning at Home

Good morning everyone

We hope you all had a good weekend.  Some new idea’s to try at home………

 

Playdough

Why not get your child involved in helping to make playdough, it’s a firm favourite at nursery. L.1. Through creative play, I explore different materials and can share my reasoning for selecting materials for different purposes.  For an easy non-cook recipe please click here.

The Benefits of Playdough

Fine motor development:
The properties of play dough make it fun for investigation and exploration as well as secretly building up strength in all the tiny hand muscles and tendons, making them ready for pencil and scissor control later on.

As part of simple, tactile play it can be squashed, squeezed, rolled, flattened, chopped, cut, scored, raked, punctured, poked and shredded! Each one of these different actions aids fine motor development in a different way, not to mention hand-eye co-ordination and general concentration.

Having a wide range of additional extras to use while playing extends the investigation and play possibilities endlessly. Poking in sticks provides a challenge and a new physical skill.

Squeezing through a garlic press leads to wonder and amazement at seeing it change shape, as well as using a gross motor movement to accomplish it.

Sticking in spaghetti requires a delicate hand and can lead to threading and stacking pasta shapes or beads over the top.

Providing boxes and containers with various shaped compartments can lead to cooking play, sorting, matching, ordering and counting, all naturally and without pressure to learn.

By providing objects from nature with a wide range of textures, colours and shapes, children can have multi-sensory experiences and engage with the world around them in a whole new way.

List of additional extras needed to create a play dough free play kit!

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but all of these elements can be used to create plenty of exciting, open-ended play times:

toy creatures
straws
rolling pins, plastic knives, scissors, pizza cutters
cupcake cases in different sizes
coloured and natural feathers
pine cones, sticks, bark, leaves
muffin tins, egg cartons, chocolate boxes,
small cups and shot glasses
alphabet, number and shape cookie cutters
pasta shapes
shells
buttons
glass pebbles
toy vehicles
wooden letters and numbers
fabric, netting and ribbons
match sticks and lolly sticks

Have fun!

NURSERY- LiFT at Home

Hi all 🙂

Here are some activities you can do at home to support the LiFT (Learning is fun together) training we started to introduce in nursery (at stay and play). These are simple listening games which will support your child’s learning as they move into Primary 1, as they help develop their listening and concentration skills.

Please click on the links bellow

Games: Teaching Children to Listen…at Home! (EY)

Pictures:: 

Teaching Children to Listen pictures 2, Teaching Children to Listen pictures 3, Teaching Children to Listen pictures 4 

EC Nursery Team

NURSERY – Fun and Learning at Home

Good Morning, hope you are all well 🙂

Here are some suggested activities to give a try.

Baking/Cooking – Do you prefer savoury or sweet? Well here is an option for both. Click Here for a link to Lucy’s granny’s delicious shortbread, highly recommended by Mrs Laing And Click https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/pizza-puff-pinwheels for a recipe to puff pastry pizza pinwheels.

Alexa Games – Do you have an Alexa in the house? Why not ask her to play some games with you and your family, here are some ideas L.I I can use technology to help me learn new things.

Stickman – Do you like the story Stickman? You could read the story (available on YouTube if you don’t have the book) and then go out a walk and collect sticks to make your own stick family. What size of sticks will you find, long, short, thick, thin, big, small? L.I I can compare size of everyday objects and can use correct mathematical language. L.I I enjoy listening to stories and sharing my thoughts and feelings.

Grow a sunflower – Measure it daily to see how tall it grows and record its progress in a notebook. L.I I am learning how to recognise numerals and use mathematical language in the correct context. L.I I am developing my pencil control.

Have fun and stay safe

EC Nursery Team

The Great Science Share – Week 1

Good Morning everyone!

This term we are going to take part in The Great Science Share for Schools which will hopefully inspire you to think about and talk about science. Each week there will be a new theme to focus on with investigations for you to get involved in, as well as a ‘Question Maker’ to help you think of creative ways to ask great questions. You can print this off or just create your own!

You can then share your scientific questions and investigations with me either through your class Teams page, or by emailing your completed investigation into school. You can create a poster, write about it, draw it, take photos, or anything else you want to do to share your findings.

The theme this week is ‘International Dawn Chorus Day’ where you are encouraged to get up early and listen to the birds singing in the morning. I’ve certainly heard and spotted many more birds around than normal! I also managed to make a homemade bird feeder out of a recycled plastic bottle which you could also try (although my one was quickly destroyed by a squirrel).

You can think about what time of day do you see the most birds? What types of birds can you see near you? Can you identify any the birds you see or hear? Can you see and hear different birds on a walk than you do at home?

Below is a link to the Great Science Share page which gives you some ideas for your investigation (You also get a sneak peek at the themes for the coming weeks ahead – ssshhh)

Have fun bird spotters!

Mrs Beattie

https://www.greatscienceshare.org/getinvolved2020#weekly-themes-20

NURSERY – LEARNING AT HOME IS FUN

Virtual Book Club for Kids is a learning website you can share with your child to read, sing, play, create, have fun and learn. L.1. I enjoy exploring and choosing stories and other texts to watch, read or listen to, and can share my likes and dislikes.

Get ideas for activities, crafts and recipes based on popular themes and featured books with important skills and weekly activity plans for each of the themes. For more information please click here

 

Seeing other people wearing masks is a free printable book which is available at http://drive.google.com/file/d/1B2FEF1DTXomgH8ZL79Vg7E_Bu7ZOkBOA/view

Supporting your child with understanding why people are wearing masks. L.1. I understand that my feelings and reactions can change depending upon what is happening within and around me. This helps me to understand my own behaviour and the way others behave.

 

Some other great indoor activities to try at home

A great way to introduce your child to different materials and their properties L.1. Through creative play, I explore different materials and can share my reasoning for selecting materials for different purposes.

              

 Pavement chalk activities to keep your child active outdoors

The good weather is to last another few days, take the opportunity to take fun learning outdoors, all you need is chalk and a pavement or driveway. L.1.I am enjoying daily opportunities to participate in different kinds of energetic play, both outdoors and indoors. 

      

                    

Remember you can also have a look at West Lothian Early Years Blog for more idea’s by clicking here.

Stay positive and remind your self your doing the best you can and that’s good enough.

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

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