active learning – Page 2 – St Ninian's Primary School

Nursery News

Welcome back after the October break!! I hope you’re all noticing the changes to the lay out of the nursery room. We are focusing on our Froebelian approach to learning in Early Years by providing breadth and challenge through discovery and independence in each individual child’s interests. Natural resources foster the child’s imagination. Open ended resources create opportunity for multi purpose scenarios in learning e.g. a block can be numerous things from a phone to a plate, all according to the child’s imagination.

What a week it has been too! On Monday we launched our ‘Word Boost’ Initiative, each week the children will be read a book in nursery with a focus on some new words to learn. This week the words were; Ashtonished, Creep, Brave and Creatures.

Welly Wednesday started back with a great adventure to the local woods to investigate and explore Autumn and it signs in our local community. This area will be used every week so the children can experience seasonal changes and become familiar in their surroundings to be able to investigate and risk assess on their own.

Next weeks Welly Wednesday is Witchy Welly Wednesday, our first fundraiser of the year, the children will go to the woods on a Halloween hunt and have a Halloween story.

NEXT WEEK

MONDAY –

TUESDAY – Halloween activities in the nursery, the children can come in fancy dress, but no masks or face paint please. We will be dookin for apples and donut catching.

WEDNESDAY – Today is our Sponsored Witchy Welly Wednesday, children will be going to the woods so will need to be in appropriate outdoor clothing. We will be having a Halloween hunt and a Halloween story in the woods.

THURSDAY – P.E. 10.25 today and no P.E. in the afternoon.

FRIDAY – PEEP sessions start back with Mrs Beattie.

Please also see in the pictures the new snack menu for the next term beginning on Monday with week 1.

Have a great weekend everyone !! From the nursery team xx

Nursery News

What a busy week!!

This month we have been learning about keeping our self ‘safe’, children take our register to the office each day. They wear high vis vests and keep themselves safe on the journey through the school.

We all wrote invitations this week for our McMilllan coffee morning next Thursday 27th of September. It is in the morning at 10.30 and the afternoon at 3.15. Donations of baking would be most welcome. A monetary donation box will be in the hall on the day for McMillan. Please come along and support such a great cause with a cup of coffee and a cake with your child.

Over the weeks the children have embraced the open ended resources. They take items and make their own toys or experiences in learning from them for example, in the picture you can see children working together to build a tower with the crates. They used their problem solving skills to try to figure out how to reach the top. Working together they were able to risk assess for themselves and reach their end goal.

Apples from a tree were brought in from a garden. We had a great learning experience investigating where these came from and what was inside. Children want to plant the seeds to see if we can grow ‘ a new apple tree’.

NEXT WEEK IN NURSERY

MONDAY– GROUP PHOTOS AM and PM

TUESDAY– LIBRARY VISIT 9.30 am and 1.30pm.

WEDNESDAY– EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES.

THURSDAY– McMILLAN COFFEE MORNING 10.30 am and 3.15 pm.

FRIDAY – PHEW 🙂

HAVE A FABBY FUN FILLED WEEKEND LOTS OF LOVE FROM THE NURSERY TEAM !!!!

Nursery News

Welcome to our first Blog post of this session!! We have had such a busy first two weeks with new children starting and new friendships being built. What a joy to witness. The children have enjoyed investigating and choosing from our new resources around the room and have had great fun outdoors in the garden. We started off the week on Monday with new children in the morning and the afternoon. Tuesday we has Chloe’s birthday celebration in the morning, we had more new children on Wednesday and Thursday was our P.E day with Mr McCurdy and Eva’s birthday too!!. Friday saw us out most of the session making friends and investigating all the garden had to offer.

NEXT WEEK:

GIRFEC – SAFE

Monday- 3 new children PM

Tuesday –

Wednesday – New Parent Helper’s meeting 9am in school.

Thursday – P.E.

Friday –

Have a lovely weekend from the Nursery team x

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

How the weeks are flying by in Nursery! Our transition programme concluded this week with the children getting the opportunity to try school lunches in the dinner hall. They were all amazing and they seemed to enjoy eating the lunches! We hope that you have found our transition programme helpful and it has prepared the children for their new exciting move into Primary 1.

On Wednesday we had our Sports day and we were lucky with the weather. The children were all excellent and learned how to participate in a sports day, be part of a team and encourage their fellow team members to do their best. Thank you to all the adults who came along to support the children. Well done to everyone who joined in with the races.

Also in our learning adventures this week the children got the opportunity to use real tools ( under close supervision! ) They all showed great maturity and used their curiosity and imaginative skills to measure , hammer and build exciting models.

Next week we will be making and discussing what we would like at our Grufdalo tea party. This idea came from the children and is an exciting way to round off all our learning within this topic.

In PEEP this week with Mrs Beattie Group 1 are playing memory games to help with their concentration skills and Group 2 are joining in with new parachute games to improve their listening skills.

Our PM children are sharing their favourite learning experiences this week.

Rojin” The bean bag race was the best.”

Harry” I liked Sports day.”

Mark” What was good was that I got a medal and a lolly.”

Luke” The best bit was running.”

Elena” running”

Scott” Scott goes fast!”

Just a wee reminder that graduation for our preschool children will take place on Thursday 29th June in the school hall at 10am and 3.15pm. All families of our preschool children are invited along to these. Our anti pre children will remain in the nursery during the graduations where they will get a little treat.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery team.

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.

P2/3 Weekly News

What have we been learning in P2/3 this week? Here are some of the children’s highlights.

Carly, Annayah and Dominic – I liked planting seeds. I had to follow instructions and think about what plants need to grow.

Alishba – I liked making salad and it was yummy!

Harry and Calvin – I liked PE when we did the high jump. I jumped really high.

Rachel – I liked designing my own fidget spinner. It had to be symmetrical!

Matthew – I liked doing symmetry in maths when we designed symmetrical fidget spinners.

Michelle – I liked rounding numbers to the nearest ten in maths.

Chloe and Brooke – I liked making the salad because I got to learn different holds for cutting and it tasted good!

Kuba – I liked the Achievements Assembly. I was proud of James and Harry when they had to stand up because they brought in their new belts and certificates for Kicking Kids.

Zuzanna – I liked writing to Mrs Purdie because we could write about what we like at St Ninians.

Maya – I liked slicing the food when we made salad.

Pawel – I liked teaching my friends the Polish words for our salad ingredients.

Levente – I taught everyone how to say salad ingredients in Hungarian.

Hasan – I liked doing the CEM test.

Andrew – I liked eating the salad we made!

James – I liked the Achievements Assembly because I was an achiever!

Oma – I liked doing PE because we did the high jump and I could jump really high.

Angel – I liked rounding numbers to the nearest ten in maths. It was quite hard at first but I kept trying and it got easier.

Maeve – I liked doing number talks because they were quite tricky but they got easier when we shared our strategies.

We have also been thinking about Global Goal No. 3 and talking about what it means. Look out for our posters!

If you would like to try making our layered salad at home, here is the recipe http://www.foodafactoflife.org.uk/attachments/eb941dd0-5377-4c95a2df64fd.pdf

Symmetry has been a big focus for us in maths this week. This is one of our favourite websites to improve our skills https://www.topmarks.co.uk/symmetry/symmetry-sorting

We’ve also been working hard on our Spanish conversation skills. Our phrase of the week has been ¿Cómo estás? Try and ask us this question and find out how we are feeling!

We hope that you all have a lovely long weekend.

from P2/3, Mrs Howley and Mrs Keegan

Awesome P3

Another week full of learning in Primary 3!

RE – NO POVERTY PRAYER

Following on from our activity last week to help understand what it might be like to not have the things we need, we discussed what that might mean. We talked about how it could mean not having a bed to sleep in or a warm house in the winter time or proper clothes to wear. The children were very receptive and each wrote their own prayer to Jesus which we have displayed in our classroom.

TALK IDEA – WHY DID THE COW JUMP OVER THE MOON?

Thanks so much for having this discussion with your child this week – here are some of the questions P3 came up with and their answers!

Jack – Why did he do it? For fun! – Kate

Richard – Was the moon big? Yes – enormous, gigantic! – Alexis, Huda

Ola – How did you actually manage to jump over the moon? Maybe he had jumping hooves ! Sophie YM

Emily – Did you feel big compared to the moon? Yes – I felt massive!

Emma – How did you survive going through the moon’s atmosphere?

Michael – Did you see stars? What did it feel like?

Sophie R – Did you see aliens?

Alexis, Seamus – Did you see rockets?

Sophie D, Sophie YM – Was the moon made out of cheese?

Robbie, Bartosz – If the moon was made of cheese, did you eat it?

Daniel – Did you see lots of planets up there?

Cameron – How did you breathe up there?

This is our talk question to discuss next week – we would love to see some of your responses on our blog and/or your comments on this as a task?

***************************************************************

Hickory dickory dock, The mouse ran up the clock.

The clock struck one, The mouse ran down,
Hickory dickory dock.

Why was the mouse running up the clock? What could he see?

**************************************************************

MATHS

VOLUME – We wanted to see what 27 litres of water looked like because Jess the RHET farmer told us that a cow gives 27 litres of milk every day.

Sophie R – Each person filled a jug with water and poured it in to a plastic box.

Kate – We used jugs that measured up to 1 litre and then we filled them ourselves up to the line.

Ava – It looked a lot! Orla – that’s a lot of milk from a cow in one day!

DATA HANDLING & TECHNOLOGY – We worked in groups to measure our heights and decide whether we were more than 1 metre, about 1 metre or less than 1 metre. If we were doing this task again we would challenge ourselves by recording our actual heights in metres and centimetres though! We showed this information on a tally chart then used it to make our own Bar Chart using technology. We used this online activity to make them https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/graphing/classic/bar_pie_data.asp?ChartType=bar

INTERDISCIPLINARY LEARNING

Cameron – we got to look at Dedridge on Google Maps.

Jack – we had to look for places that we knew.

Sophie D, Maliha, Emily, Sophie YM, Sophie R, Jack, Cameron, Richard, Michael & Niamh – we found Lizzie Brice roundabout and Asda.

EXTRA CHALLENGE:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ and key in Saint Ninian’s Primary School, Douglas Rise, Livingston

How long does it take to get to school by walking/by car/by bus?

Click on directions then key in home address to find out!

Why don’t you post what you find out on the blog next week!

To reinforce their recent learning on what a noun is, Primary 3 had to read a passage about Lizzie Brice then spot all the nouns. Super work Primary 3!

WRITING

Richard – We wrote a thank you letter to Jess from RHET to thank her for coming in to visit us and telling us all about her farm. Mrs Scott was very impressed at how neat our handwriting was and our layout of a letter!

Have a lovely weekend from Mrs Scott and Primary 3!

P2/3 Weekly Update

In Primary 2/3 this week we have been really busy in lots of areas. Thank you for all the pictures that the children have sent in of their cress plants. Their growing skills are very impressive!

We’ve continued our learning about Food and Farming and had some super discussion in pairs in Science about the parts of a plant and what plants need to grow.

Read on for some of our highlights.

Harry – I liked changing tables because I’m a Whizz Kid now and it will be my last table in P2/3 before I move to P3.

Hasan – I liked painting a butterfly. Mine looked good and I learned symmetry.

Oma – I liked doing learning about the month of Mary in RE. We used paint to decorate the word ‘Mary’.

Maeve – I liked sorting living things into different categories.

Levente – I liked playing the symmetry game on the smartboard. I played it at home too.

(In Maths we have been exploring symmetry. Try this activity at home to help reinforce learning https://www.topmarks.co.uk/symmetry/symmetry-matching)

Alishba – I liked writing to Farmer Jess to thank her for coming to visit us.

Brooke – I liked being outside for PE and playing jacks and boules.

Rachel – I liked learning about empathy and learning challenges in class dojo.

Kuba and Andrew – I liked PE because we were jumping over the hurdles. I was good at the hurdles.

James – I liked running fast in the Daily Mile.

Annayah – I liked praying the ten rosaries.

Aaron – I liked designing pictures of Mary.

Matthew – my cress is growing really fast at home.

Michelle – I liked maths because I learned loads about symmetry.

Carly – I liked the literacy carousel because I made my words in playdough.

Maya – I liked when we were painting symmetrical butterflies and I liked learning lots of new things to say in Spanish. I liked High Five Spanish.

In Spanish this term, the children have planned their learning to develop their skills in asking questions and answers. Do ask your child what’s hey learned in Spanish this week. There are lots of great activities on the BBC languages website to help wth these skills.

Sneak preview! Next week in writing we’re writing to Mrs Purdie to tell her about all the things we like best at St Ninian’s. Have a chat with your child about this and they can share their ideas in Big Writing on Thursday.

Have a lovely weekend.

From Primary 2/3, Mrs Howley and Mrs Keegan

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.