A great start to the day with everyone having a longer lie than yesterday! (Thanks guys)
Today team C started with a 7 mile walk around the local area for orienteering. There was a massive hill but the view was great! After lunch they spent their time in the woods for ‘Survival’! They made fires and had great fun outdoors!!
Team A and B also had very busy days! They cracked codes during Enigma, used their detective skills to solve a murder in CSI Ford, sharpened up their fencing skills, built fantastic dens in the woods and had a very interesting tour of the castle and grounds learning about the history of Ford Castle!!
We are just about to start our evening activity for tonight, Ford Castle Olympics! The kids are very excited and it will be a great end to the day!
Evening everyone, we’ve had an eventful day today full of activities.
The day started with a hearty breakfast which was needed after an early Rise, especially in Mrs Roy’s dorm!!!!
Today we had 6 daytime activities – initiative, Jacobs ladder, high all aboard, leap of faith, potions and crate stacks.
Records were set, fears were faced and overcome and we all made it safely back for lunch, dinner and tuck.
We decided to treat the kids this afternoon to a water balloon soaking to cool them all down in the glorious sunshine and heat!! The staff won!!!!
Tonight we are doing an eggcellent challenge involving teamwork, smelly shoes, cardboard, chanting and lots more. Then we are heading to the top of the castle to try out our creations!!
Then it’s off to our dorms for some well earned rest and hopefully some sleep!!!
We arrived at lunchtime and were amazed when we first saw our home for the week, a beautiful castle set in the countryside. The sun was splitting the skies and not a cloud to be seen.
We split into our 4 dorms and bagsied our beds for the stay, I think Mr Turner drew the short straw there although Mrs Gardner had a few mishaps too!!!
After a picnic outdoors for lunch we set off in our 3 teams for the afternoon activities – zip wire, assault course and archery. Great fun was had and many fears conquered. We returned for dinner full of laughter and some of us looked rather muddy!! Sorry mums and dads!!
After dinner we had evening entertainment which was the Holy Grail challenge and then got hot chocolate to end the night.
Then we returned to our dorms for some chillaxing and more laughter!! Lights went out and after a while there was quiet in Castle Tower.
We are not looking forward to the 7am wakeup call!!!
More updates to follow tomorrow and photographs once we’ve sorted them all out.
Please find attached an overview of P2s learning for this final term. It has been a quick session so far, packed with amazing opportunities and learning experiences, and term 4 will be no exception.
As part of our Nursery-P1 transition programme, we begin to build children’s awareness of some initial sounds. A ‘sound’ is how we describe learning letters of the alphabet, with a focus on how the sound is made, as opposed to the capital letter name. Over the coming weeks, we will have a fortnightly ‘sound’ focus to expose children to the building blocks of reading and literacy development.
This video, until around 1m 30s, explains ‘phonics’ and gives an insight into how children can be taught to read;
Children show awareness of and interest in sounds and letters from various ages, some children keen to find letters in their name, some begin to form letters when drawing. All children make sounds when they speak, some finding it easier than others. When we speak about ‘sounds’ we are talking about the sound the letter makes; the letter ‘M’ makes the ‘mmmmmmm’ sound, but is called ‘EM’. Some children can name capital letter names, but are unaware of the ‘sound’ a letter makes; we focus on sounds to aid children in the beginning stages of reading.
The below video illustrates the importance of not adding an ‘uh’ to the end of the sounds; although we don’t use this resource to teach phonics, it is interesting to hear how the pure sounds are made…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYx1CyDMZSc
The purpose of our focus on initial sounds in nursery is not to ‘teach’ children about them ,but to offer them exposure to this exciting learning context and allow them to begin to hear and understand the language of literacy learning. Over the coming weeks we will look at the following sounds;
18/04/18 M
02/05/18 C
16/05/18 P
30/05/18 S
The reason we choose these sounds to begin with is that each sound is made with a different part of the mouth. When you make the ‘sound’ you will feel that you use different parts of your mouth, we will begin to show the children that these sounds are made in different ways. Making the sound and hearing the sound in nursery will help to focus children on the formal learning of initial sounds when they enter P1 in August, where these sounds will be recapped in various active learning environments.
How can you support your child at home?
Answer questions they have.. ask a member of the nursery team if you are unsure about anything, we are happy to support in any way we can.
Play games with them.. I Spy is a great one for initial sounds, or even asking the question ‘Can you find something that starts with mmmmmmm?’
Draw, read, talk – expose your child to sounds in the environment, do they know what letters are in their name? Do they know a ‘s’ looks like a snake? Can they make the sounds with the right part of their mouth?
Children all learn at different paces and in different ways, look at where your child is in their acknowledgement and engagement with initial sounds and join them there 🙂
What a busy week we have had at St Ninian’s Nursery this week!
The top area is currently ‘under construction’ as the construction area has been created for the boys and girls to explore and play in. We have been so impressed with their focus, maturity and concentration in this area, especially due to the risks involved. The boys and girls show that they are able to to keep themselves and others safe whilst enjoying the difficult tasks of hammering nails and using screws. We have also been working on building our vocabulary in this area by looking at the names for the different pieces of equipment. Can your child tell you anything about this area?
We have been rehearsing our lovely songs this week in preparation for special person/grandparents day next week! We won’t spoil the surprise but be assured you will be blown away 😉
In addition to our lovely singing we have bee preparing some special gifts for grandparents day too. All of our boys and girls were delighted to be involved in planting sunflowers this week! We learned about what happens to the seed when it is planted in the soil and looked after with water and sunlight – we hope to see them grow into beautiful flowers one day soon!
At our May parents night there will be an ‘Art Gallery’ set up in the infant hall which will showcase the work of none other than our very own boys and girls! We have been working hard this week to get all of our entries finished and ready to be shipped off to be professionally framed. By offering the children free choice painting for this activity it has been lovely to get a feel for their interests and capabilities in art. Well done boys and girls, superstar artists!
The PM group had a whirlwind Wednesday with no less than FOUR birthdays to celebrate! The boys and girls made a cake for their friends to share and they all enjoyed the special time they had to have songs sung for them and big birthday claps done. Our food prep Thursday snack was PIZZA this week! A rip roaring success! To make these we chose healthy options by using a wrap as a base, spreading tomato passata on and adding chees, sweetcorn, mushrooms and tomatoes to taste – the boys and girls continue to love our food prep thursday snack days!
Welly Wednesday this week involved watching traffic from the bridge and takin tally marks on a sheet! We partnered up and split the responsbilities of counting as we looked for cars, buses, bikes and lorries. We were very lucky to have lots of waves, flashing lights and beeping horns as we counted and we practised safe road crossing on our way back to nursery. We look forward to the beginning of brighter weather to increase the time spent outdoors on a welly wednesday 🙂
