Inveralmond Early Years Centre

This week the children moving on to Harrysmuir Primary School in August got the chance to meet their new buddy. We went over to the school to join them for a picnic in the Primary 1 playground. The children enjoyed some time chatting and playing with their new buddies.

We have been exploring signs of summer for our topic over the past few weeks. We have been applying sun cream to the children when necessary and children have been talking about holidays and where they go and how they get there. We enhanced our technology skills by navigating the ipad to use the live tracker to track the planes that take off on the nurseries flight path. This brought us on to exploring time as a few children described how long the flight takes for their holiday.

To support the children’s transition to school, most of the pre school children participated in our sports day at Harrysmuir Primary School. Well done all!!

This year we decided to have an opportunity for parents/carers to stay and play with their child that is moving on to Primary 1. I would like to say thank you to everyone that came along. It was such a lovely experience for the children and we had lots of lovely feedback from you and the children!

This week the children have been making the most of the lovely warmer weather, exploring the outdoor area. We have been planting seeds and watering the plants in the garden and have been developing our gross motor abilities using the bikes, building structures and exploring the soft play/ mats.

This week we have began our transitions to primary 1. The children that are going to Harrysmuir Primary will be getting a turn to visit the primary 1 classroom where they will join in for a story and have the opportunity to play and explore the classroom.

Some of the children went out on a walk into the local community this morning. We displayed some great gross motor skills at the park and we also saw some more signs of spring!

Over the past couple of weeks we have been celebrating Easter. The children have been very creative, making their own Easter crafts and baking. We also had a little visitor that left the children a little Easter treat!

We have been exploring different signs of spring in nursery and some of the children used their fine motor abilities to create daffodils from our yellow playdough.

The children have been making full use of our mud kitchen in the garden! We been exploring our creativity and imagination making lots of different positions/food.  The children have displayed some great literacy and communication skills whilst talking and discussing with each other throughout their play.

Happy pancake day!

To celebrate pancake day at nursery we watched the story of ‘The runaway pancake’ and then had the opportunity to try some yummy pancakes!

This week we have been learning all about Chinese New Year. The children have been given the opportunities to make their own Chinese lanterns, using a variety of materials to decorate and have been practicing some Chinese writing. To further develop the children’s knowledge and understanding of different festivals and cultures we used our IT skills on the laptop to watch some of the dragon dances that are performed to celebrate Chinese New Year which led us to create our own dragon for nursery! We enjoyed performing to some music! We have also given the children the opportunity to try some Chinese noodles and prawn crackers using some chopsticks at snack time.

Ladywell nursery joined us for a walk in the local community. We had lots of fun displaying our gross motor skills, climbing over logs and exploring the local park.

This week the children have been interested in the planets in our solar system. We have been using our imaginations to build and create rockets and developing our fine motor abilities to draw and paint pictures of the planets we know. Some of the children used the playdough to make the different planets, rolling small and large pieces to show their knowledge and understanding of the sizes of some of planets. Exploring our mathematical abilities some of the children engaged in making rocket ships using the numicon resources.

The children have been engaged in playing a variety of board games with a small group of their peers. We have observed some great turn taking and listening skills throughout the children’s play!

This week we have been continuing to explore light, dark and time. We have been using the torches in the garden to create light when it’s dark and have been fact finding to see what time the sun sets and rises in Scotland.

Some of the children have noticed the change in the cold weather and have been curious to use our senses to touch and feel the ice that has formed in the garden. We had a discussion about what ice is before it freezes and why it freezes.

This week the children have been very excited talking about Santa and the Elf’s coming soon. We have been promoting our mark making and writing skills by writing our letters to Santa and posting them in our post box.

This week to celebrate Halloween, we had the opportunity to take part in a variety of Halloween themed activities throughout the nursery. Some of the children took a walk to our lock Aldi to buy some pumpkins for our nursery. We used our senses to explore different textures to make spells with gluck and we displayed great fine motor skills using the hammer and nails on the pumpkins. We had some Halloween dancing to move our bodies and stay active, apple dooking and we had the opportunity to cut and scoop out our pumpkins.

It was great to see all children’s costumes that dressed up throughout the week!

Happy Halloween!