Mrs Conway

Nursery News

It’s been a spoooooooky week this week at St Ninian’s Nursery!

The boys and girls had so much fun at the Halloween party on Tuesday! Dooking for apples, biting donuts off a string and decorating biscuits to name but a few – we have loved having the nursery decorated this week to add to the eerie atmosphere!

There have been many many wonderful additions to our water tray this week! We have had shaving foam, jelly and spaghetti to get our hands on – this has led to wonderful discussions about how it ‘feels’ in the water tray with super words like sticky, squishy, squashy and ‘like gummy bears’ 🙂 we love to hear our boys and girls using interesting vocabulary! Be sure to check the weekly Box Clever words on the weekly update to help your child expand their vocabulary at home!

We have also had lots of interesting conversations about Autumn, hibernation and nocturnal animals! Does your child know what hibernation means? It was one of our box clever words last week and there are lots of lovely stories out there about bears going to sleep for the winter! We read Mr Bear Snores On in the hut this week and a few boys and girls were able to tell us that he was hibernating!

The writing table was covered in black on Thursday like the night sky as we talked about and drew fireworks in preparation for Guy Fawkes this weekend! The PM group also collaged some lovely sparkly rockets to add to this – we wonder if anyone will have a story about fireworks night on Monday at nursery??

Mrs Beattie is looking forward to having PEEP start back next Friday! The five week block begins 10/11. Classes are now full but keep an eye out for new sign up sheets for PEEP into the new year!

We have our termly Parental Coffee Morning on Wednesday 8th November from 11.20-12. AM children and parents are encouraged to stay on at the end of the session with PM parents encouraged to come along early with a packed lunch for their child. Children will be able to watch a movie in the nursery while parents enjoy a cuppa in the hall. We value your views and have acted on all points raised at last terms coffee morning in order to make our kids experience of nursery the best that we can!

Please keep an eye on your email inbox for the nursery weekly update – usually sent on a Sunday night. It has a plan for the week and important information to share!

A gentle reminder that parents are asked not to take any photos or videos in the nursery environment.

Thank you for your continued support!

Nursery News

What a busy week – and a great return after the October holiday!

Halloween has been on everyone’s lips this week! We have had lots of fun talking all things spooky – our talking tree has lots of lovely ideas from the boys and girls about what we could learn about around Halloween! Have a wee read – and check our learning wall for some of our fantastic work! Freya brought in some apples from her garden – after we had made apple crumble, we cut these in half and used them to print pumpkins with orange paint!

The staff team were so proud to see how much effort our boys and girls have been putting in with adding detail to their paintings – so much so that Paul received a head teachers award at assembly today for super effort! He was joined by Carter who received an achievement wristband as a well done for his achievement of going a whole mile! Novembers well being focus is ACHIEVING – based on the feedback from our coffee morning, we are looking to create an achievement area to celebrate all the fantastic things our children do! Keep a look out when in and around the nursery 👀

It was lovely to hear about the autumn adventures our boys and girls had! We shared these with our friends and will finish off next week! If anyone has one at home please return on Monday 🙂

Lots going on next week – make sure you check your email for the nursery update on Monday to keep you in the loop 😊 Can’t wait for Tuesdays Halloween party! Fancy dress encouraged!

Nursery News – Term 1 Round Up

What a term it has been!

Highlights of this term include;

*Welcoming our new children and their families following the successful introduction of home visit/one to one enrolments!

*Outdoor learning – Welly Wednesdays! Learning opportunities in our local envirnment, supported by parent helpers on a weekly basis.

*Big Bedtime Read📚Our PEF initiative set up by Mrs Caskie, aiming to have our nursery children having a bed time story on four or more nights of the week!

*The return of PEEP! Fridays at PEEP are a great start to the weekend, keep an eye out for the next block starting next week!

We have been busy! We continue to be blown away by the progress of our children, we can’t wait to see what next term has in store!

Some things to look forward to include;

*Halloween! Parties will be during sessions on Tuesday 31st Oct.

*Children in Need fundraising!

*Road Safety Week – our next opportunity for stay and play/come back and play sessions!

*All things Christmas! Nativity, Parties and Panto!

We have a lovely new display at the nursery doorway – leave us some feedback on a welly! Let us know if there’s something you’ve enjoyed or if there’s anything you would like us to look into/change!

Have a lovely, restful holiday! See you all back on TUESDAY 24th OCTOBER!

Nursery News

What a wonderful MATHS week we have had in St Ninian’s Nursery!

The boys and girls have explored many wonderful areas of maths, including; numbers, counting, bigger/smaller, shape, pattern….. and many more!

We have been tweeting from our new twitter account @StNinsNursery giving an insight into what maths week looks like in our nursery.

We have welcomed parents/guardians/family/friends along this week for stay and Play sessions, and come back and play sessions. These have been very popular and we have had great verbal feedback from those who made it along 🙂 please take time to pop a few words on a post it to tell us what you thought of the sessions – how can we improve?

Mrs Beattie has been drumming up support for new PEEP classes which start on Friday 22nd September! There will be two classes running and although they are full for this block, if you would like to attend the next block please let a member of staff know so they can pop your name on Mrs Beatties list 🙂

Our Facebook page has a poll to come up with a catchy name for our outdoor learning Wednesdays – go on to vote for your favourite! We will be asking the children to vote next week too, let’s see what the winner is next Friday!

*NO NURSERY MONDAY OR TUESDAY*

It is the September holiday weekend – we will see you all back on Wednesday!

Nursery News!

This week has seen the beginning of our Outdoor Learning days! What a day it was 🙂 the AM and PM groups enjoyed a woodland walk to the Mid Calder woods, across the bridge. We discussed many things before, during and after our walk. Some of these included safety when out and about; we seen broken glass and dogs mess and discussed how to keep ourselves safe from these hazards. We talked about when it is ok to run and when we need to stop (when Mrs Conway, or another adult, shouts STOP!). When we got to the woods we learned about ‘jaggy’ nettles and dock leaves – we even had two ‘nurses’ on the PM walk who took charge of the magic leaves incase anyone needed them. We all collected some interesting things and brought them back to nursery, including sticks, stones, leaves and acorns.

We are looking for a catchy name for our outdoor learning days – feel free to add one to our facebook post, or tell the nursery staff any ideas you have!

Mrs Caskie has been busy this week setting up our ‘Big Bedtime Read’ initiative. We are hoping to increase parental engagement and give children great literacy experiences through this initiative, where each child will receive a book pack with five stories each week. As part of our Pupil Equity Funding we hope to achieve 80% of our children to be sharing bedtime stories with their families on four nights of the week or more. You will see our lovely ‘bedtime’ area created in the nursery – letters went out today to outline the plans for this and we look forward to launching it at the beginning of October.

Next week is ‘MATHS WEEK SCOTLAND’ – the boys and girls have enjoyed exploring the talking tub which was full of interesting maths resources, their views and ideas have been taken into account and will be used to plan learning for next week. Please come along to stay and play, or come back and play next week – sign up sheets in the nursery!

PEEP classes begin on 22nd September – Mrs Beattie is hoping to meet some of our PM parents this week to encourage their attendance at these classes 🙂 a fantastic way for kids and parents to bond!

Ninian’s Natter is on Thursday 6-7pm – please do come along! Nursery staff will be on hand to chat all things nursery and have you joining in with maths week activities 🙂 kids and parents welcome!

Nursery News

What a wonderful week we have had at nursery! All of our August starts have joined us and we have been very proud of how involved they have become in the activities in our nursery.

We have got almost all of our EE2 forms back from parents – please return these asap as our outdoor learning days depend on them 🙂 in our nursery Welcome area we have all sorts of sign up sheets next week! Take a minute when dropping off or picking up to read over them and sign where suits..

PEEP Sign up

Outdoor Learning Parent Helper Sign Up

Stay and Play/Come Back and Play Sign Up

We value our parents, carers and families very much and thank you for your continued support.

The boys and girls have learned so much this week! We are exploring our changed nursery environment and learning about independent, collaborative and imaginative play across all areas. We have been really interested in the old cameras and have used these in both the morning and the afternoon. Mrs Macdonald has got some photo albums and we hope that parents/carers will bring in some photos from home to help us fill these 🙂 we will also look to get the photos printed that the children take in the nursery.

The Travelling Teddies are back out and about on adventures this weekend! We can’t wait to see what they have been up to 🙂

Mrs Conway was blown away this week by the fantastic skills the boys and girls are developing around the snack table. Last week the AM group used pictures of food and a weekly timetable to choose snack for the week ahead. This week was the turn of the PM group. Once we chose, we then wrote shopping lists to include everything we needed to buy. Some children helped order the food online to be delivered the the nursery. At the snack area we have chopped cucumber, carrots, strawberries and bananas in preparation for snack time. The boys and girls also spread butter on their own crackers this week – which provides them with a wonderful opportunity to build up skills in food and health education. We would love to see some photos of the boys and girls helping to prepare food at home!

A wonderful week and we can’t wait for the next

Nursery News

Another week flies by at St Ninian’s nursery! This week has been super exciting as we prepare for our final week of the 2016/17 session next week 🙂

Planning for the Gruffalo Tea Party is well under way! The boys and girls have given us so many fantastic ideas and we have done our best to put them into action for them 🙂 we are hopeful for nice weather so we can celebrate in our nursery garden with games, dancing and a lovely tea party. Our P1 friends will join us at the beginning of our celebration to share all the learning that has been shared across the transition period. We have invited our P6 buddies to join us for the final part of our tea party to share a small snack and look forward to our adventures next session!

We have also been chatting to our pre-school children this year who have given us some great ideas for their ‘Graduation’ ceremony! The staff have been having some lovely discussions about how much the children have changed during their time at St Ninian’s nursery – and this fed in to our enrolment induction meetings this week as we welcomed our new children and families into the St Ninian’s nursery community.

Although the rain has been threatening to ruin our outdoor fun, we have managed to have a great time in the nursery garden! The boys and girls have been helping the staff ‘clear out’ our ‘bunker’ in the garden by testing out the ride on toys and sorting through our old resources – the cars and tractors have been a BIG hit! We have also had our balance bikes and helmets out – we will look at managing these resources effectively in the new session 🙂

Mrs Beattie said farewell to her PEEP groups today – with a lovely spread and some lovely words. She is very proud of all the children and families who have joined in with the PEEP classes this term and has enjoyed seeing children grow in their confidence and interactions with their parents/carers, and with each other. We are delighted to confirm that PEEP will continue into next session – keep your eye out for our sign up sheets in the cloakroom area!

Next week brings our Gruffalo Tea Party on Tuesday – just throughout the nursery session as normal. We also welcome the parents/carers of our preschool children to our graduation ceremonies at 10am for the AM group and 3.15pm for the PM group – siblings also encouraged to attend 🙂

A reminder that the last day of term is Friday 30th June. Pupils will return on Tuesday 22nd August.

Nursery News!

We have had a busy week at St Ninian’s nursery this week.

In transition the boys and girls have had their ‘moving up mornings’ and enjoyed getting to know their new teachers – Miss Meechan and Miss Boyes. They were missed in the nursery in the AM group where we were depleted in numbers, in the PM group we were very impressed with how well they joined in after a busy morning at school! Next week in transition we will have our ‘lunch hall experience’ in groups.

Red Group – Monday

Blue Group – Tuesday

Green Group – Thursday

Children and parents should report to the school office at 11.45am. The children will go to the dinner hall and the parents will get the opportunity to chat to Miss Boyes and Miss Meechan in the hub. The kitchen staff have all the chosen options for lunches but will also provide the children with a wee ‘taster’ of the other trays so they can see how a school dinner is served and the kinds of food it has 🙂

We are fast approaching the end of term and as such life in the school and nursery is very busy!

This week in addition to the transition lunches we also have NURSERY SPORTS DAY! Please send your child in a tshirt/jumper the same colour as their group on sports day 🙂 it will be weather dependent but we are hopeful for some sun to come and shine through for us! Parents and families are invited to come and watch (and cheer us on!) – 10 – 11am for morning group and 2 – 3pm for afternoon group. Get running around this weekend so you have built up your fitness!

We have been chatting lots about summer this week and have changed our seasons display from Spring to Summer. There have been some lovely summer pictures drawn and great discussions had. The AM floorbook has some ideas from the boys and girls about summer which we will use to plan learning over the next week 🙂

School has been a big talking point this week and the addition of school uniform to the dress up area has been very popular! The ties have been like gold dust – we are thinking that the boys and girls might like to make some of their own next week so that everyone can have one 🙂

We had a good turn out at our parents coffee moring – all feedback is recorded in the talking books. We are looking to enhance our outdoor learning provision next session and would value very much your views on this 🙂 there was some great discussion between staff and parents on Wednesday which will help us in our planning of these developments for next session!

Have a lovely weekend everyone – see you next week!

Nursery News

The sun has got his hat on – hip hip hip hooray… The sun has got his hat on and he’s coming out to play!

We have been blessed with beautiful weather this week and we have made the most of it in the nursery!

The PM group had their second, and final, trip to Almondell on Tuesday – have a look in our talking book for all the wonderful pictures that were created whilst we were there with Kirsty the ranger! The AM group are very excited about their forthcoming trip on Tuesday of next week. Thank you for the prompt return of permission slips – we have a few payments outstanding, please ensure you have paid £1.50 by Tuesday.

Transition was fantastic this week as we had a playtime, with our buddies, in the school playground! The boys and girls got the opportunity to join the P1 classes in the school playground and learned all about what happens at playtime at school. They have to get used to eating a snack as they play with their friends – and of course, putting their rubbish in the bin. We listened for the sound of the school bell and the whistle used by Mrs Smith so that we know when to come back and line up in our classes. Next week our transition will be in joining P1 for some health week activities.

Next week is HEALTH WEEK! We have a busy timetable, thanks to Mr McCurdy and the nursery staff for finding lots of fun activities to promote a healthy lifestyle 🙂 some of us had super ideas about being healthy and drew some lovely pictures in our talking books – have a look and see what we know and what we want to learn! The timetable for health week will be displayed in the nursery and will be on the weekly update. Please note that THURSDAY will be a ‘bring your scooter to nursery’ day – we have a selection of bikes and scooters for anyone who doesn’t have one. And we will welcome parents/carers/friends from 10.30-11 and 2.30-3 as we walk the daily mile together.

We are offering a parent/carer drop in session on WEDNESDAY 7th JUNE from 11.15am – 11.50am. We will have Trolls on the SmartBoard for the boys and girls to enjoy, and tea/coffeee/biscuits for the adults. We are looking for YOUR views before we tackle our nursery action plan for Session 17/18. Parents, carers, grandparents, friends – your views matter to us and will help us move forward positively for our children next session.

Have a great weekend!

Nursery News

Another busy week in St Ninian’s nursery! This week we sent the pre-school reports home on Thursday PM and Friday AM – theses are for the boys and girls who will be going to school in August and will form the basis of the discussions at Parents Night. If you haven’t got your report yet please make sure you get it on Tuesday 🙂

It is parent consultations on Wednesday and Thursday night – please make sure you have your appointment time – we have the times in nursery and can remind anyone who has forgotten!

This week in Nursery-P1 transition we had a ‘play time’ with our P1 friends in the nursery garden. Some buddies were able to join us for this. The boys and girls enjoyed having their snack or ‘play piece’ whilst playing – it will be hard for them to get out of the habit of sitting at the table having snack! It was a joy to see them playing so nicely with the P1 group in the nursery garden and we are confident this will prepare them well for their playtime in the ‘big’ playground this coming week (Tuesday AND Thursday). All the boys and girls going into P1 will take part and are asked to bring along a *small* snack – a bag of crisps, banana, small block of cheese etc. This is plenty for them to eat as they want to enjoy as much time playing as possible 🙂 thank you to everyone who brought in something for our letter ‘m’ display! We ended up with a lovely wee box of treasures 🙂

A VERY exciting week for outdoor learning this week! Mrs Mushet found……….. A FROG!!! In the nursery garden – in the wendy house. The boys and girls thought it might be scared so we popped it in a wee box to keep it safe and brought in some water and sticks from our garden ‘pond’ for it to climb on and hide under. As you can imagine this caused MUCH excitement and the boys and girls were very keen to show their parents and carers our discovery. We agreed that the PM boys and girls would love to meet our frog too so we kept it safe for them to see 🙂 Mrs Hogg then filled the water in the nursery pond a little bit more and brave Mrs McDonald lifted the frog from the box and put it gently down into the grass. He quickly hid away in the long grass and we wonder if he has a family here?

The AM group then went along to the duck pond to see if they could see any more of Freddy’s family – we didn’t find any frogs (they are super good at hiding though..) but we did see the new baby signets!

Yasmin – they are cute

Isla – they were silver and (swans) white

Freya – daddy swan is an angry man… (as he wants to keep his babies safe!)

Liam J – we shouldn’t go near to the edge or we could fall in…

In addition to all this excitement the PM group also had the first of their Almondell Trips this week! Kirsty (a forest ranger) very cleverly tied our visit into our coverage of the gruffalo – we looked for the animal characters, talked about their homes and where we might find them! We discovered there aren’t any snakes in Almondell – that we know of! The boys and girls created lovely art work by gathering bits of ‘nature’ and sticking them down 🙂

PEEP this week has been the last classes in the block of five – a new five week block will begin Friday 2nd June. Mrs Beattie is so impressed with how the children have grown, learned and laughed together 🙂

In group one this week they were having fun with bats, balloons and happy faces.

In group two the boys, girls and adults talked about what they liked during this block and spent time making adult and child hands and feet to stick on their sheets.

Can we just remind adults to take into account the safety of all our boys and girls when opening and closing gates and doors around the nursery 🙂 sometimes we are so eager to see our loved ones we inadvertently make a break for it!

Many thanks for your continued support 🙂