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

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

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.

A busy week in Primary 2/3

It has been another busy week in Primary 2/3 with lots and lots of learning going on! Some of our highlights are:

Andrew – I liked designing a coffin for a mummy. We had to do lots of research first.

Michelle- I liked using the new Heinemann textbooks because I’m getting better at numbers.

Matthew – I liked taking away numbers this week. I used a number square to help me.

Carly – I liked doing our spelling test because it helps me learn words. We keep learning from our mistakes.

Brooke – I liked doing chimney sums in maths. We’re getting really good at them!

Jakub, Annayah, Pawel, Levente, James and Harry – I liked Big Writing when we wrote book reviews for the Killer Cat

Rachel – I liked today’s assembly because pupils from St Margaret’s came to talk to us about SCIAF.

Alishba – I liked when we were doing music with Mrs Steele. We got to dance!

Dominic – I liked doing Sumdog and I’m excited about the West Lothian contest.

Chloe and Maeve – I liked doing art when we made pictures of camels and pyramids.

Maya – I liked working in pairs on Heinemann Active Maths. Its fun working in pairs and it helps you learn.

Zuzanna and Kasia – I liked PE because we were learning tennis skills.

Oma – I liked investigating mummies in Ancient Egypt.

Calvin – I liked working in teams to make posters showing a healthy school in health and well-being.

Have a great weekend!

from Primary 2/3, Mrs Howley and Mrs Keegan

Nursery News

How the weeks are flying by in Nursery! On Tuesday we celebrated Pancake Day. We discussed what ingredients we needed to make pancakes and then the best part we got to eat them😊

The children decided that they would like to change our shop into a pet shop so we now have lots of pet food, toys and pets for sale. The children are really engaged in this learning experience using real money and trying to recognise the coins. Some are also extending this learning at home and even visiting Pets at Home to collect leaflets which is fantastic.

The children have also been enjoying outside learning with lots of cooperative play in all areas. We have had delicious food made in the mud kitchen and lots of imaginative play in our shed using lots of open ended natural resources. We were worried about the birds eating in the cold weather so we made more bird cakes we think they will be eaten very quickly. As it was windy we decided to make wind socks from cartons and material and we also used CDs to hang in the trees and we noticed that the sunlight caught these and made some lovely colours. Great work!

We celebrated World Book Day on Thursday with the children and the staff dressing up as their favourite book characters. Everyone looked fantastic! The children had the opportunity to talk about their favourite book at small group time and we talked about authors and illustrators. We also learned some new vocabulary. The children had even made their own Nursery story book and picked their favourite page in their books which we put out on our display. A very special visitor came to visit us too. It was gangster granny!! Luckily she didn’t get a chance to steal any of our Nursery toys and resources👍 Another special visitor was Szymon’s mum who very kindly read us a story in Polish. Thank you Mrs Dudek😀 We were also lucky enough to be invited to the Primary 1 classes to share a story time. We really loved going into school and getting to sit in a classroom. All the Nursery children were excellent at listening and even put their hands up to answer questions. We were all really proud of them. Thank you to Primary 1M and 1R for asking us😍

It is the turn of our PM children to share their learning this week.

Emilie M ” I like cooking in the kitchen of the house corner.”

Liam ” The Pet shop is my favourite as I love dogs.”

Rojin” I like making things at the play dough table.”

Robert ” I loved making the bird cakes.”

Mark ” We made wind socks and it showed us the direction of the wind.”

As part of our topic on shops we are planning a trip to Pets at Home for both sessions. Please let any member of the team know if your child has any allergies to pets or if for any reason you would prefer them not to take part in this trip. Thank you.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team😊

Nursery News

Although a short week we still had a very busy one! We returned after the holiday to discover that the birds had eaten all our bird cakes!! They must have been very hungry. We had used our identification sheets to tick off the different types of birds that we had spotted in our garden. We would like to make some more bird cakes as we are sure the birds are still hungry.

Some children came in on Wednesday and were keen to make some valentines so they made lovely heart shaped flowers and talked about their families and friends that they loved.

The children have taken their learning towards the topic of shops so it was decided that we would have our own shop in the Nursery. Our AM children wanted a toy shop last week and our PM children decided on a food shop this week so we have incorporated both. We have been developing our numeracy skills by counting and recognising real coins. Some children have been writing their own shopping lists and taking turns at being both the customer and the shopkeeper. We have all been very good at sharing all the resources. We also discussed the different types of shops that we have and what we could buy in these. We continued this theme at the gluing table by making our own bank cads to use in the shop and also price tickets. If you or your child have any ideas that can be taken forward within this topic we would love you to post them on our visible learning wall. You can also extend this learning at home by discussing with your child about the various different types of shops and what products can be bought in them. Also looking at real coins and helping them to read the numbers on them and look at the shapes. If you are out and about at the shops with your child you can also point out the cashier, tills and scanners. We would welcome any photographs or pictures that you might have or take too.

A little reminder that both sessions will visit the library on Monday. We seemed to have misplaced a library book called ” The monster in the woods” We would appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind having a little look at home just in case it has been borrowed by someone. Thank you in advance.

It is the turn of our PM children to share their learning this week.

Kayla” I love playing in the shop.”

Emilie B and Liam” We made a spaceship with the big blocks”

Mark ” I made some good things at the gluing table”

Milena” I like drawing”

Shea” I love to paint pictures”

Lucas” The sand was my favourite”

Jiya” I did lots of jigsaws”

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team😊

Nursery News

In Nursery this week we had lots of Chinese New Year celebrations! On Tuesday Miss Pan a Mandarin teacher from the Confucius Hub in James Young High school visited both sessions. She told us all about China and taught us some Chinese phrases and explained about the twelve special animals in Chinese culture. We found out that this is the year of the Rooster, red is the colour of good fortune and giving a mandarin orange is a symbol of a strong friendship. We were lucky enough to get a chocolate coin in a special red envelope and an orange to take home.

We also listened to traditional Chinese music and joined in by dancing using ribbons and musical instruments. In our creative area we made huge Chinese dragons which we were able to carry round the Nursery and use percussion instruments to create our own dragon dance. We also had the opportunity to make dancing dragons.

For snack we were given the chance to try Chinese noodles with soy or spicy chilli sauce which we tried to eat with chopsticks.

Our bird watching area has continued to be popular and Miss Brien one of our students made some bird cakes with us. We are planning on hanging these outside in our garden next week and then hopefully we will see more birds arriving!

As part of the 40th Birthday celebrations for the school we were asked if we would contribute to the time capsule. We discussed our favourite songs, films and hobbies.

We finished off the week by having our Wellie walks. Both sessions were lucky with the weather and we all looked for signs of nature and listened for the birds. Thank you all so much for your generous donations. We made £170 which is fantastic and we will discuss with the children the resources they would like to buy with this money.

Just a little reminder that we have our February break next week. Nursery will be closed on Friday 10th February and we look forward to welcoming children back to nursery on Wednesday 15th February.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team😊

Nursery News

Happy New Year from all the Nursery team. We are looking forward to lots of exciting adventures and fantastic learning experiences this term in Nursery.

As part of Vision and Values week we took the opportunity to revisit our Nursery Charter with the children. They were all excellent at discussing this with each other and have put it into practice over the past few days. The kindness Elves continue to help us to share and be kind to each other.

We welcomed five new children to our St Ninians family this week. Carter, Zaki and Isla joined the AM children and Lucas and Shea joined the PM children. It was lovely to meet you all and we hope you enjoy your time with us at Nursery. We were super proud of our older children who looked after our new friends so well.

It was also Happy Birthday on Wednesday to Christopher in AM session. He helped make his birthday cake with his friends. It smelt delicious.

Our AM children are sharing their favourite experiences at Nursery this week.

Oliver” I like listening to stories and playing in the house corner.”

Roma and Lucy ” We liked playing in the house corner and making some food for our friends.”

Amelia ” I loved making things with the play dough.”

Isabelle and Abigail ” We loved story time this week and reading stories.”

Blake ” I enjoyed playing with the bricks and working on the smartboard.”

Micah, Seren and Abu Bakr ” We loved being back at Nursery and playing with all our friends.”

As part of our Outdoor Learning we were hoping to make a small Music area and we wondered if you had any old pots, frying pans, small trays or utensils to spare.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team.

Fantastic P2/3

It has been another busy week in Primary 2/3 with lots and lots of fantastic learning.

We have reached the last chapter of The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark and we have loved listening to the adventures of Plop, the little barn owl. Ask your child what their favourite part of the book was and let us know in the comments.

We celebrated All Saints’ Day with a lovely whole school mass. It was great to have so many parents joining us for this special feast day.

In Spanish we have been counting to 20 and having great fun challenging ourselves to learn the trickier numbers.

In maths we have continued our work on telling the time. In numeracy P2 have been adding doubles and near doubles and P3 have been adding teen numbers.

We are so excited that our new topic is The Funfair! We had a busy and creative planning session on Thursday when we worked in groups to plan our topic. Our first challenge was to create a price list for a Fairground food stall – you can see our creative price lists in our Learning Journals.

Everyone has been busy setting their targets in literacy, numeracy and health and well-being. Our targets are all in our online learning journals – please log in and have a look.

In writing we thought about firework safety and created rules to keep everyone safe at the weekend. Look out for our stories appearing on our Learning Journals.

The highlight of our week was the multi-sports festival at James Young High School. We tried badminton, rugby, basketball, football and a mini assault course and we loved all of the activities. It was great to try so many new skills!

Have a great weekend.

Mrs Howley, Mrs Keegan and P2/3