Nursery – Page 16 – St Ninian's Primary School

Nursery News

What a great health week we have had in nursery. We enjoyed all sorts of activities and had healthy snacks.

We started off the week with trips to the park and learning some football skills. On Tuesday morning our AM children had their visit to Almondell country park where they went on a Gruffalo walk, listened for sounds of nature, made pictures from natural resources and enjoyed the park. Both sessions loved expressing themselves in the dancing and yoga activities. On Thursday the children were encouraged to bring their scooter to nursery and had great fun ‘zooming’ up and down the playground . It was great to see so many parents and carers join us for the daily mile and also the Fun run. A big thank you to Mr McCurdy for arranging such a brilliant week and also to the parents and carers who helped us on our trip and activities. We couldn’t have managed these without your support. All the children had super fun as did the nursery staff.

Transition events continued this week with the preschoolers joining the Primary 1 pupils for the daily mile and a measuring activity.

PEEP classes with Mrs Beattie have started again with both groups learning sign language for the hello and goodbye song and being introduced to “The old woman who swallowed a fly.” Group 1 were also counting bubbles and trying to see how fast they could pop them. Group 2 were asked to draw round their hand and their parent/career’s hand and find words about their feelings.

Transition next week will be the Moving up mornings on Tuesday 6th and Wednesday 7th. Arrangements for both these days have been outlined in a letter given out on Thursday / Friday. If you have not received your letter please see a member of the nursery team.

There will also be menu options available on Monday for the preschoolers to choose what they would like to eat the following week at the lunchtime experience. Please note the choices depend on which particular day your child is going. These details were also included in the same letter. If you have any questions about any of these events please ask any member of the nursery team who will be happy to help you. We would also like to ask if anyone has the talking book at home as we are unable to locate it and some children have still to get the opportunity to take this home.

Our AM children will share their favourite Health week highlights this week.

Lucy” I liked the bus”

Christopher ” I liked the fun run”

Anna ” I liked the healthy food”

Celine” I like running the best”

Isabelle” I like the dancing”

Blake” I liked being outside with my friends”

Annabelle” I liked dancing n the playground”

We would also like to invite parents and carers to a drop in session on Wednesday 7th at 11.15 am to discuss ways in which we as a nursery can improve to make your children’s learning experiences better. This will be held in the P7 classroom and you will get the opportunity to chat to staff and other parents over a cup of tea. Children who come along will be able to watch Trolls on the smartboard! We would love as many as possible to come along.

Just a little heads up on some dates. Nursery sports day will be held on Wednesday 14th June at 10.00 am and 2 pm weather permitting. Nursery graduations for preschoolers only will be on Thursday 29th June at 10.00 am and 3.15pm.

For more photographs of our Health week please check out our Nursery parents Facebook page.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery team.

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 🙂

Nursery News

Another week has flown by in nursery. First of all we welcomed another member to our St Ninian’ s family. Khyla has joined the AM session. We hope you enjoy your time with us. On a sad note we said goodbye to Liam in our PM session who has gone to another nursery nearer his new house. We wish him well and will miss him.

The transition programme for our children going into Primary 1 continues with the nursery children working together with the children in both Primary 1 classes on Numeracy and Literacy carousels . This gave the nursery children an opportunity to see how they will be working when they come to big school. They were all excited and again were a credit to us. Well done everyone. In nursery we also listened to a song about the letter ‘m’ and we tried to think of things that began with this sound. As a home link activity we would love it if the children could bring something in beginning with this sound and also if you are out and about have a look and see what you can find that begins with ‘m’. Next week the nursery children will be going out for a short playtime with both their buddies and the Primary 1 pupils. This will be in the nursery outdoor area and the following week it will be in the school playground. If they wish the nursery boys and girls can bring a snack and drink with them which they can have at this time. It is only 15 minutes so something small to eat will be great. As they will be outside we would ask that the children come in appropriate clothing and shoes. Thank you for your support in this.

The children also received a lesson on personal safety this week when we had a fire drill. Both sessions had to stop what they were doing and leave nursery quickly and safely. All the children were amazing and we were very proud of them.

Outdoor learning has been very busy this week with lots of exciting adventures in their learning. The children have been using their skills of curiosity and inquiry when using our natural open ended resources. They have been on the bikes, making lots of yummy recipes in our mud kitchen, sitting in the sand pit and role playing at schools! We hope the sun keeps shining for us next week. A wee reminder that children should come to nursery with suntan cream already applied and proper clothing for the sunshine. Please check out our Nursery Parents Facebook page for some photographs of our outdoor learning.

Mrs Beattie’s PEEP classes continue on a Friday and this is what they will be doing this week. The first group will be working together choosing different size balls and finding ways of rolling , bouncing and throwing them to each other while singing songs. They will then enjoy snack and a story together. The second group after nearly being blown far far away on top of their large parachute quite literally and having so much fun doing so have decided to go outside again! Hopefully they will find other ways that they can use and play with the parachute together and also use stop watches to time themselves going over the school assault course which they had tried last week for the first time. Another exciting PEEP session ahead!

It is the turn of the PM children to share their learning with us.

On Primary 1 transition.

Liam ” I made a snake ” ( this was linked to our shared topic of The Gruffalo)

Riley ” It was good”

There was lots of chat at the snack table.

Martin” I like to have this at home” ( yoghurt)

Emilie M ” I ‘m tidying up ”

Outdoor learning

Scott ” I like to play with the train”

A little reminder that there is a information meeting on Monday 15th May at 6 o’ clock in the school for new Primary 1 parents.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team.

Nursery News

Its been a very short week in Nursery but we still packed in lots of learning experiences. Transition continued this week with both nursery sessions joining the Primary 1 classes to take part in either a numeracy or literacy carousel. The children got the opportunity to join in with a reading carousel listening to a story on the smartboard then moving onto working with a Primary 1 friend on a literacy app on the iPads . They also got a chance to make a Gruffalo story wheel which we will use to retell the story. In the numeracy carousel the children learned about time and made their own watches. All the nursery children showed a great attitude towards learning and were little superstars. Next week the children will be joining in with more carousels.

The children have continued to enjoy The Gruffalo topic and they got the chance to make their own Gruffalo masks. We will continue with this topic next week as the children have came up with lots of super ideas which are written in our talking books. Please feel free to have a little read when you are in nursery.

In P.E. with Mr McCurdy we have been concentrating on athletics. We enjoyed improving our running and jumping skills and next week we will be working on our throwing skills.

PEEP classes continue with group 1 learning about stopping, getting ready to think and go. They then got to take red, amber and green plates to take home to reinforce this learning. Group 2 have been working on their numeracy skills. They have had fun making their own skittles and using different sized balls to knock over huge tins and working with each other in order to listen and take turns. What fantastic fun they are having!

It is the turn of our AM children to share their learning experiences with us this week.

Dylan” I like being outside at Nursery.”

Carter” I played with the bricks and made a tower with my brother.”

Liam ” I was playing with the bricks and the magnets and I made a rocket. It was easy!”

Sophie” I played with the wee girl Celine.”

Micha ” I liked playing the bricks with my friend Oliver.”

Roma” I played with my friend Lucy”

Blake ” My favourite was playing outside with my friends.”

Just a little reminder that as the children are outside every day and hopefully the sun may shine can we please ask that suntan cream be applied before coming to nursery and that appropriate clothing is worn eg sun hat, long sleeve top. Thank you for your support with this.

For parents of preschool children a letter has been given out detailing parent meetings to provide you with important information before your child starts St Ninians. Please let any of the team know if you have not been given one of these letters.

Snack money is now due either £1 per week or £11 till the end of this term. This can be paid by iPad impact. If you are unsure of your payments please ask any of the team and this can be checked for you.

For more photographs please check our Nursery parents Facebook page.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery team.

Nursery News

This week our learning has centred on our shared transition topic with Primary 1 ‘The Gruffalo’

The children discussed what they would like to learn and do within this topic and their ideas were written and drawn in our talking books. We drew our own gruffalos and made some mice. These are on the wall and they look amazing. We have also started to put up the childrens’ ideas on our learning wall. We will continue with this topic next week taking forward the other learning adventures that the children have come up with. Please feel free to have a look in our talking books and at our learning wall and any other ideas you have we would be delighted for you to add these.

In outdoor learning the children went bug hunting and were very independent at making their own resources for this. We have also seen great cooperative play. As outdoor learning is every day we would appreciate it if the children could come to nursery suitably dressed for the outdoors.

On Monday we had our monthly visit to the library and Mrs Campbell read us a story about robbers trying to steal a prize cow. We enjoyed making the animal noises and after that we all did a funny dance! It was great fun.

Transition events continued this week with our pre schoolers visiting the Primary 1 classes where they all sat at the smartboard in a circle with their Primary 1 friends and Mrs Roy and Miss Meechan showed them the talking book. This book is full of pictures of all the experiences the children will encounter when they come to school and has audio telling them all about the picture. Each pre school child will be given an opportunity to take this book home for one night to give them a chance to discuss it with their parents. The nursery children were all excellent and ready for this next exciting adventure in their learning. The transition activity next week will be the nursery children joining in with a Numeracy and Literacy carousel with the Primary 1 classes. We would like to say a huge thank you to Mrs Roy, Miss Meechan and all our Primary 1 friends for inviting us to visit them.

The PEEP classes with Mrs Beattie are now up and running. We are in week 2 of a 5 week block. Group 1 are focusing on Health and Wellbeing and Group 2 are engaging in fun numeracy activities which can be then be followed up at home. All the children and the adults are having great fun in these sessions.

A little reminder that Monday 1st May is a holiday and Thursday 4th May is an In service day for staff , the children do not attend nursery on this day.

Have a lovely holiday weekend. See you all on Tuesday.

The Nursery team.

Nursery News

Although a shorter week it was just as busy for Nursery! First of all we welcomed new members to our St Ninian’s family. Joining our staff team is Mrs Brogan Conway who has replaced Mrs Craig as our other Nursery teacher. She will be in Nursery on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday with Mrs Caskie in Nursery on a Monday and a Tuesday. Also joining us in the AM session is Mrs Carol Martinek an Early Years Practioner who will be the key worker for our new yellow group. We are looking forward to working with our new team members.

We also welcomed Abhay and Ameya who have joined the yellow group in our AM session. We have a further four children joining this group in the coming weeks. In our PM session we welcomed Martin and look forward to Harry joining us on Monday we hope you all enjoy your time with us at nursery.

We had to say goodbye to some friends at the beginning of the week as our caterpillars had turned into butterflies during the holidays. The children got the opportunity to have a look at the cocoons and observe the butterflies eating and drinking before we released them. They were not too keen to come out of their nets so Mrs Mushet and Mrs MacDonald had to lift them out, some flew away but others were placed gently amongst our flowers. We will be keeping an eye out for them in the coming weeks.

As part of Outdoor week and also our transition programme we went on a Gruffalo woodland walk along with our Primary 1 friends. No Gruffalo was found but we all had a super time exploring the woods. The Gruffalo will be a joint topic along with the two Primary 1 classes. We will be getting the childrens’ ideas next week in order to take this topic forward and put them on our learning wall as well as anything else that arises from the childrens’ interests. Our transition programme continues next week with the Nursery children visiting the Primary 1 classes along with their buddies to have a look at the talking books. These books are put together by the children in Primary 1 and show all the experiences that will take place when the nursery children come into school. Each pre school child will get the opportunity to bring this book home so that you can discuss this with them. It is going to be a very busy but exciting term!

On our Nursery Facebook page there are photographs of both the butterflies being released and our woodland walk.

Today Mrs Beattie one of our AM Early Years Practioner started another block of her PEEP classes. We will be putting a weekly update on our Blog of all the exciting activities they get up to.

On Monday we will walking to the library for our monthly visit to hear a story. We all love going along!

A small reminder that Monday 1st May is a holiday and Thursday 4th May is an inservice day.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team.

Nursery News

Its hard to believe this is the last blog entry for this term! Another busy week in Nursery has ended.

On Monday we visited the library and Mrs Campbell the librarian read us a story called ” My granny is a pirate ” This fitted in really well with us having Grandparents Day on Thursday. She also taught us a song called 5 little speckled frogs. We sang it really well and it helped us with our numeracy skills by counting to 5.

We were all very busy this week too making Easter cakes, baskets and pictures to give as presents to our special people who were coming on Thursday.

Although we had loved playing in our shop we decided it was time to put out some different resources for our learning adventures. The children voted for some babies for the house corner and some dressing up clothes with a mirror for them to have a look at their reflection. We were all super excited to see how big our caterpillars have become and we noticed that they are preparing to go into their cocoons. As we were going on holiday for two weeks we were all worried that there would be no one at Nursery to look after them. Mrs MacDonald kindly offered to take them home and she has promised to take photographs and videos of them as they grow. You never know she may bring them back as butterflies!

We were all so excited on Thursday to welcome our grandparents and special people to our nursery. The nursery team were very proud of all our fantastic children as they confidently showed all their families round inside and outside the nursery and joined in with all their learning experiences. They then demonstrated their brilliant singing skills when they sang for all the visitors in the hall. The nursery team would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came along to this event it was fantastic to see so many and we hope you enjoyed your time with us. Thank you also for your generous contributions which will go into our nursery funds. Here are some pictures of the day there are lots more to see on our nursery parents Facebook page.

At our Achievement assembly today Dylan received the certificate for a super first term at nursery. Well done Dylan.

We finished our week though on a sad note as we said goodbye to one of our nursery teachers Mrs Craig who is leaving to have her second baby. We will all really miss her as she has been a fantastic teacher to all the children and a very special colleague and friend to all the nursery team. On behalf of the whole nursery team I would like to thank her for her commitment, enthusiasm and friendship. We wish her every happiness in the future.

As we are planning a walk in the woods the first week back could you please return your EE2 form on our return after the holidays. Thank you.

The nursery team would like to wish you all a Happy Easter and a lovely holiday and we look forward to welcoming the children back on Tuesday 18th April.

Nursery News

It’s been another jam packed week of adventures at nursery!

We welcomed some more of our parents for Come Back and Play, we hope you found this experience useful! Thank you to all the parents who wrote such positive comments in our talking books, we really appreciate it! 😃

Don’t forget that next week is Grandparent’s Day!

THURSDAY 30th MARCH

AM CLASS 10:00am

PM CLASS 2:00pm

Please let us know the number of adult guests attending for catering purposes. We would also welcome donations of cakes/biscuits on the day. Thank you! 😃

We we have been practising making cakes for Grandparents day too! We ended up eating them all because they were so yummy!! Oh well, we have plenty of time to make more! 😃👍👌

This week it is the turn of the AM Class to share what they have learned-

Abu Bakr- “I have been making transformers with the stickle bricks”

Connor- “I have been painting with Anna and Liam”

Micha- “I played mums and dads with Oliver”

Isabelle- “The house corner is my favourite”

Liam. J- “I played Lion and Tigers with Blake”

Yasmin- “I like the Tigers the best!”

Annabelle- “The caterpillars are growing!”

We we have continued to think about Spring and have definitely noticed some signs of Spring towards the end of this week!! Look what we spotted in our nursery garden-

We cannot believe how big our nursery caterpillars are getting and we are really enjoying watching them grow and change-

We have loved listening to stories about caterpillars too! We are visiting the library on Monday so maybe we will find some more books about Caterpillars!

Please click on the link below to hear the story of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”

Have a lovely weekend everyone 😃

Nursery News

This week was Stay and Play at Nursery. The boys and girls were very excited to share their learning adventures with their families. They were so confident at showing them round all the areas of the nursery and were then able to join in with their learning. We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came along to these sessions and hope that you all enjoyed your time with us. We look forward to welcoming some more visitors to our Come back and Play sessions which are next week.

We have been discussing and looking for signs of Spring in our learning and to help us with this we had some new additions to our nursery family. It was some caterpillars! We talked about how they grow and we noticed their special food in their tubs. We learned the special name for the home they make for themselves before they turn into butterflies. We also read the story of The very hungry caterpillar. We now have our caterpillars on display with an information board which explains how they grow. We are all super excited to watch the changes over the next few weeks and be able to talk about them. Please have a little look at them the next time you are in the nursery.

We have also been very busy this week making invitations for our Grandparents day which is on Thursday 30th March at 10am and 2pm. These will be making their way home next week. We would appreciate it if you could give us an idea of how many will be coming along to this event for catering purposes and also would be grateful for any donations of cakes or biscuits nearer the time.

Our numeracy and literacy skills have been developing too this week as at small group time we have been counting up to 10 and recognising our names. This has been developed further by the children having the opportunity to find their name at the gluing table and putting it on their work and also at the drawing/ writing table where they can try and find their name and practise writing it. What super workers we have.

Our pre school children were given a letter this week with our transition calendar. We will also be issuing a transition booklet soon which further explains some of our planned activities. This is an exciting time for the children who are getting ready to go to school in August . If you have any questions about any of the activities please ask any member of the nursery team who will be more than happy to help you.

We are trying to move towards a cashless nursery and in order to achieve this we would encourage you to pay your child’s snack money on the online payment of iPay impact. This will also be of benefit when your child goes to school as this system is also used there.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery team.