Nursery news

Wellbeing week has taken it out of us all this week – in the best way!

Monday was a great start to our wellbeing week! Some of our parents and children made it along to Bootcamp with Mr McCurdy at 8am, starting the week as they meant to go on – well done everyone, Mrs Conway still hasn’t recovered! The nursery children had great fun in a session with Star Harmonies. Ask your child if they can remember the ‘Toe – Knee – Chest – Nut…’ rhyme they learned! This session included singing and dancing.

The wellbeing week continued in the sunshine outdoors on our trim trail. School children demonstrated their caring ways by helping the nursery children to complete the course.

Tuesday brought our first parents for their stay and play and come back and play sessions. Parents were able to join us in a Yoga session in the school. It was very relaxing and zen. Lots of children found the funniest part was talking about filling their sandwiches… sounds strange but led to some good yoga posing!

The P6 buddies and the current P1 classes were down to have fun in our garden at school playtime today for transition fun this week. Parents of future P1 children are reminded that only a small snack is needed at playtime 🙂

Wednesday was a whirlwind of excitement as we had our ‘park picnic’ trip for our ‘Welly Wednesday’ focus, some of the parents were lucky enough to join us as part of the stay and play/come back and play sessions. We also had dancing! Lots of great moves were displayed, and that was just the teachers and parents 😉 the routine was simple but effective! Our favourite part was the freestyling without a doubt! We hope your weekend will be filled with dancing!

Thursday begun with football for the groups – this involved lots of careful listening to the coach… And lots of lovely laughing as we played games together to help us develop our movement, balance and ball skills. The future P1s enjoyed a real playtime in the school playground with their friends from P1! It was very exciting as they learned which areas they were allowed to play in and what happens if you need the toilet at playtime (you don’t ring the nursery bell.. haha!) – this has been a wonderful experience to help our children build their confidence in preparing for school in August!

Friday was a quiet day, we made most of the wonderful sunshine (and enjoyed a story in the shade) before the forthcoming rain and stormy weather!

Please stay tuned to your emails for next weeks weekly update 🙂 transition for P1 on Wednesday and Thursday next week! Have a lovely weekend 🙂

Nursery News

St Ninian’s Nursery has been a hive of activity this week!

Our boys and girls who are off to school in August have had an exciting week! On Tuesday, there were transition carousels in P1 classes – this gave the boys and girls a feel for how they will learn when they get into P1. The P1 pupils did a great job of modelling, showing them the ropes in the big school! There was much excitement during these activities, which helps to build the transition to P1 into a positive time of change in our children’s lives! We have also had buddy visits this week – this is a highlight for our boys and girls, who regularly ask ‘is my buddy coming down today?!’. It has been lovely to watch the relationships between the children and their buddies blossom over the weeks 🙂 next week, we have PLAYTIME for transition! On Tuesday, the P1 boys and girls (and buddies) will come to the nursery garden for a ‘playtime’. And on Thursday, they will go to the infant playground for a ‘playtime’, again with the P1s and their buddies. Preschool children should bring a small snack on these days to practice eating, playing, chatting all in the one! A drink is not necessary as they will have milk/water available in nursery beforehand, and when they get to school they will be able to have a water bottle in their classroom and milk after playtime.

In addition to all of this, the P1 classes have been finalised and the children now know which teacher they will have in August 🙂 Miss Boyes and Mrs Davenport (who used to be called Miss Meechan!) are very much looking forward to meeting their new pupils and their families.

Our interest in the garden has multiplied since the beginning of this beautiful weather spell! We have more than made the most of the lovely sunshine as we have scooted, climbed, ran, rolled and chalked all over the garden! Our welly Wednesday focus this week was chalk drawings.. we love to look at mark making in different ways and chalking was one of the suggested activities for our welly Wednesday sessions! By the end of the day there wasn’t an inch of garden that was untouched by chalk! We look to build mark making skills from basic shapes and lines, to more controlled written numbers, letters and detailed drawings. Which stage is your child at? Have they access to mark making materials at home? Share your views with your child’s key worker to see if, together, we can help them build their skills and confidence in this area 🙂

Jelly proved to be a very popular snack this week! The boys and girls loved talking about how it felt, with some of the AM boys and girls keen to play with it! On Friday we had jelly play and a sensory walk in the garden. The language and vocabulary around this play was fascinating – gooey, cold, gloopy, slidy! Great job boys and girls, maybe this type of messy play will make a reappearance sometime soon!

Make sure to consult our weekly update for all the details about wellbeing week next week – parent and child bootcamp begins at 8am on Monday morning on the school field. Mrs Conway and Mrs Martinek will be attending with their own children – will you join them? Letters will come home on Monday about our family wellbeing festival on Thursday evening (6-7.30pm) – it is set to be a highlight of the term with lots of interesting activities planned – make sure to get you choices handed back asap to ensure you get your first choice of workshops!

Have a lovely weekend!

Nursery News

A royal wedding to end the week – what more could the princes and princesses of st Ninian’s Nursery want!

We were jam packed and book bug focussed this week as we celebrated the national ‘Book Bug week’ alongside the P1 classes.

The AM group enjoyed a storytelling session with our special guest – Miss Meechan, who shared a story chosen by the P1 pupils. The boys and girls thoroughly enjoyed this and it was another lovely build up to the transition into P1 by sharing a story with the P1 class and their teacher.

The PM group had another special guest in the shape of Mrs Smith, our depute head teacher. They thoroughly enjoyed a twisted fairytale all about Goldilocks eating her greens! The boys and girls who are going to school are becoming more familiar with school staff in their interactions with them across the nursery session, especially when they get a blether in the office with Mrs Findlay and Mrs Vetesse!

Our welly Wednesday was a glorious one this week as we basked in the beautiful sunshine in the garden. We have planted our veg patch which can been seen on the side of the hill which faces into the school car park.. we have so far planted tatties and will add carrots and Brussels sprouts to our list!

We also planted some sunflower seeds and put them in our little green house to flourish before we can transfer them to pots in the garden 🙂

Our book bug activity on welly Wednesday was being joined in the garden by our P6 buddies and parent helpers where we could all share a story in a small group/pair in the garden. The boys and girls loved this reading buddy set up and many lovely stories were shared.

Thursday was national ‘Outdoor Classroom Day’ where many school staff donned their outdoor learning kit of wellies and waterproofs.. not the staff of st Ninian’s Nursery – who got all glammed up to join their very well dressed boys and girls to celebrate the upcoming royal wedding with a garden party! There were sandwiches, croissants and cakes galore as we all enjoyed music, dancing, a fashion parade and the beautiful weather to mark the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan at the weekend.

At the end of book bug week let us remind you about the fabulous initiative that is Book Bug via the Scottish Book Trust;

http://scottishbooktrust.com/bookbug/about

The below Facebook page gives a list of the free book bug sessions available in West Lothian..
https://m.facebook.com/BookbugWestLothian/

Happy weekend!

Nursery News

A short week it may have been.. but it’s been action packed nonetheless!

On Tuesday, our staff team joined local area colleagues to receive training from the Educational psychology team about how best to support children in the nursery setting. We were delighted to find that we are already implementing a range of strategies to support children and have been inspired to further develop these. Please always remember to share any ideas, questions or concerns with the nursery team when they arise.

We have fairly been getting involved in our ‘Garden’ learning context – and what better way to celebrate that than our road markings being added to our playground area and our mural being completed in our small garden! On our Monday holiday the road markings were painted to give a bit of structure to our bikes and trikes area of the garden.. along with six new ‘parking bays’ – the team will be back next week to add numbers to these bays, which will correspond with numbers on our wheeled toys to offer a practical number matching and sorting activity in the garden. On Thursday our ideas came to life as our wall mural was painted in the nursery garden. Mrs Martinek spoke to the nursery staff and children to come up with a design for our mural – it includes lots of aspect the children asked for, including a rainbow, dinosaur, snake and aeroplane.. we also added a number line and alphabet. Our nursery motto flies high across the top ‘where adventure, nurture and learning go hand in hand..’ We are very thankful to the parent Council who paid for this from their funds 🙂 what a beautiful addition to our garden!

Welly Wednesday this week was a treat – a new park to play in and explore! Falconer Rise Park is the perfect size and height for our boys and girls, with nothing out of bounds! We slid, climbed, spun, pushed, pulled, bounced – and most importantly – giggled! A short walk from the school, we think this will become a firm favourite! Hopefully the weather will stay bright and dry so we can take a picnic next time!

Next week is another busy week at St Ninian’s – we are asking that the boys and girls dress in their party finest on Thursday as we celebrate the upcoming royal wedding! If you have any wedding related items you could donate to our topic table we would be most appreciative 🙂

Nursery News

Another wonderful week at St Ninian’s Nursery – wonderfully busy that is!

This weeks PE focus with Mr Mccurdy was sprinting! Not a problem for our speedy children who enjoyed having their PE session outdoors. We hope the better weather can continue and we can get more outdoor PE sessions! Over the long weekend, if you get the chance post a photo to our social media accounts if your child gets a chance to practice their sprinting skills!

Welly Wednesday was a rare treat this week as the boys and girls brought in their own scooters and ride on toys from home! Mrs Conway led the way(on her daughters scooter..) as we did laps of the playground. The PM group got to enjoy the company of a few of the school classes as they did their daily mile at the same time 🙂 we love welly wednesday – let’s hope the weather picks up for next weeks park hunt!

Thursday was a busy day as we our world book day do-over celebration! It was lovely to see the boys and girls all dressed up. A huge thanks to our parents and carers who came in on Thursday to share a story with their child in the nursery and the nursery garden. We also welcomed parents and carers to our ‘Nursery Natter’ on Wednesday (Mrs Mushet) and Thursday where we took a short time to discuss their child’s online learning journals. We are hoping that by the end of May all of our parents/carers will have taken the time to comment on their child’s journal 🙂 any password reset requests please see Mrs Conway!

Our food prep snack was chosen by Lily this week who wanted Pancakes and grapes! Mrs Conway has never made pancakes (successfully..) before so that made for an interesting morning! The AM and PM group of helpers took their role very seriously – washing their hands, putting aprons on and listening carefully as Mrs Conway read the recipe. We talked about measure, ingredients and method as we created some pancake masterpieces! By the end of the day the pancakes were fluffy and tasty, every day is a school day as they say! Thanks for the suggestion Lily, we loved it!

Nursery is off Monday and Tuesday next week – we will see you all return on Wednesday! Enjoy your long weekend 🙂

Transition – Initial Sounds

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 🙂

Nursery News

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 🙂

Have a lovely weekend!

Nursery News

What a busy week we have had, getting settled back into real life after our snow days!

The boys and girls have missed the nursery as much as the staff have missed them! And we made the most of our time this week with lots of busy, creative learning together.

Our smart board has been popular this week as the boys and girls are becoming more confident in their ict skills as they use and access the internet to play nursery rhymes and songs to sing along to. Nursery rhymes provide a great basis on which to build literacy skills, we love to sing together at group time and are learning words and actions for common nursery rhymes. The boys and girls have been able to personalise this by self selecting the songs that they like to listen to, maybe they could share some of these at home? Twinkle twinkle is a favourite!

Some of our children were exploring science activities this week, a great lead into the whole school science week next week! Some of the boys and girls were using blocks as ‘magnets’ – talking about them sticking together and pulling apart. This led to the creation of a lovely ‘magnetic investigation’ area set up with the children. Can you talk about magnets at home? Have you got anything magnetic? The children enjoyed finding things that were magnetic and were able to identify things that weren’t.

The creative area had a real buzz this week! After a quick move around of our furniture we had some makeshift floor easels which were very, very popular! The children had the opportunity to draw on large a3 sheets of paper with felt pens, a great big space to fill with ideas and imagination! We have been astounded at some of the works of art from this area this week. Sitting on cushions alongside friends, in a new space really gets the creative juices flowing!

We like to encourage children to foster their skills of independence and have given our creative area a wee makeover to help promote this – the boys and girls can access all of the creative resources in the coloured trays and are developing their sorting skills when returning the things they haven’t used. We look forward to seeing what masterpieces are created as a result of this next week!

Mrs MacDonald was hard at work on Thursday trying to source some construction materials after lots of interest in construction and home building! The ‘Book of Homes’ sparked a great discussion about what kind of homes there are in the world and how they are made and built. We couldn’t believe the sultan of Brunei has 252 toilets!!!!! Watch this space as we prepare an area for building and construction, including real tools!

A gentle reminder that our Grandparents/Special Person day is Tues 20th March where the boys and girls will prepare to give their special person a tour of our nursery before singing some songs and enjoying some cake together!

Nursery News!

Roll up, roll up, the St Ninian’s Nursery Restaurant is open for business!

After a huge interest in creating a restaurant in our nursery, we have enjoyed transforming our role play area into a restaurant and takeaway! Our consultative planner is now on the learning wall – we urge you to take a look and see some of the fantastic ideas our children have come up with;

‘I go to restaurants with my family’ Lily

‘I went to a restaurant with my mum and dad, we saw Rojin there…’ Shay

‘It was McDonald’s!’ Rojin

‘The cookers make the food.. It’s called a chef..’ Shea

‘I’m washing the dishes’ Freya (Dylan was drying the dishes!)

We are not at nursery Monday or Tuesday next week – maybe you could take your child around some different restaurants to see the signage, menus, tables/chair set up and talk about what kind of food they serve – no need to go in and eat! We are going to talk about the difference between a restaurant and a cafe next week, we are hoping to visit the Candi Bean across the road and the Lanthorn Community Cafe to ask some questions! If your child has a really good question to ask, write it on a post it and stick on our learning wall!

We use a Thursday/Friday session to do a changeover of resources or to move around the areas of our nursery.. This week we have been noticing a lot of sand on the floor, with some children taking to sitting on the floor playing with the fallen sand. We have decided to create a sandpit on the floor this week to see if the children respond to this in different ways – the sand table has been swapped for water and the easel has been moved – we find a wee reshuffle every few weeks can reignite the children’s excitement about their learning environment! Have you seen or heard of any great ideas for early years? Maybe you are handy with a screw driver and can create wonderous things from pallets?? We are always on the look out for help and support to make our nursery a stimulating place to be!

Our boys and girls have enjoyed their ‘Learning Conversations’ this week with their key worker! Our GIRFEC focus this month is ‘respected’ and as such we wanted to think of the ways we hear our children’s voices in the nursery. The learning conversations will continue into next week and be presented at parents night alongside the tracker documents we use to gauge progress.

It was custard on the menu for food prep Thursday this week! The rich discussion that comes from food preparation is amazing – in this instance the wet and dry ingredients combining made for lots of chat about textures – great vocabulary on display. There was then the miracle of the white ingredients combining to make yellow custard! How exciting! We discussed safety – the custard has to be made on the hob, when the hob is on you should not go near the cooker area as it is hot and there is the risk of burning. We are so pleased with the engagement and focus of our children on food prep thursday and will continue this into the coming term 🙂 if you have any food prep photos from home, please share on our social media accounts or on on the online journal gallery area!

No nursery Monday or Tuesday – Have a lovely long weekend!

Nursery News

This week has been action packed – including the return of some snow!

The boys and girls have been full of creativity this week, painting on cling film, painting faces on plastic sheets – these exciting experiences have built on all the fun of tartan painting last week and have filled our easel with beautiful art work! We have been really interested in faces this week – have a look at our doorway to the school hall to see some of our handy work 🙂 this is something you can explore at home by checking what naming words your child knows to describe their face; eyes, nose, mouth are straightforward but what about nostrils, eyebrows and earlobes?

Food Prep snack on Thursday was scrambled eggs! Each week we take suggestions for food prep snack from our children and this week Lucy (AM) asked to make scrambled eggs! Miss Burns had a great time with the children as they cracked their eggs, added milk and margarine and whisked them before Miss Burns cooked them in the pan – the queue for snack was a mile long and the mini chefs were very proud of their accomplishments! Maybe your child could have a go this weekend? Share photos on their online journal gallery and/or our Facebook and twitter accounts!

Welly Wednesday was almost cancelled again due our glorious Scottish weather but fortunately we made it out, however briefly for some of us! As our Welly Wednesday sessions continue, Mrs Martinek has used the feedback from parents/children to create a plan for welly Wednesdays between now and the Easter holidays – hopefully as the weather improves so will the time we have available to explore on Welly Wednesday sessions!

Today we bade farewell to Miss Pinkett our college student who has been with us Wed/Thurs over the last few months! She has made a wonderful impression on our young people and will make a great practitioner when she qualifies next year – goodbye and good luck Miss Pinkett!

Please ensure you are receiving our weekly update emails over the weekend – any problems please speak to your child’s key worker 🙂

Have a lovely weekend!