Nursery news

What a wonderful MATHS week we have had in St Ninian’s Nursery!

The boys and girls have explored many wonderful areas of maths, including; numbers, counting, bigger/smaller, shape, pattern….. and many more!

We have been tweeting from our new twitter account @StNinsNursery giving an insight into what maths week looks like in our nursery.

We have welcomed parents/guardians/family/friends along this week for stay and Play sessions, and come back and play sessions. These have been very popular and we have had great verbal feedback from those who made it along 🙂 please take time to pop a few words on a post it to tell us what you thought of the sessions – how can we improve?

Mrs Beattie has been drumming up support for new PEEP classes which start on Friday 22nd September! There will be two classes running and although they are full for this block, if you would like to attend the next block please let a member of staff know so they can pop your name on Mrs Beatties list 🙂

Our Facebook page has a poll to come up with a catchy name for our outdoor learning Wednesdays – go on to vote for your favourite! We will be asking the children to vote next week too, let’s see what the winner is next Friday!

*NO NURSERY MONDAY OR TUESDAY*

It is the September holiday weekend – we will see you all back on Wednesday!

Nursery News!

This week has seen the beginning of our Outdoor Learning days! What a day it was 🙂 the AM and PM groups enjoyed a woodland walk to the Mid Calder woods, across the bridge. We discussed many things before, during and after our walk. Some of these included safety when out and about; we seen broken glass and dogs mess and discussed how to keep ourselves safe from these hazards. We talked about when it is ok to run and when we need to stop (when Mrs Conway, or another adult, shouts STOP!). When we got to the woods we learned about ‘jaggy’ nettles and dock leaves – we even had two ‘nurses’ on the PM walk who took charge of the magic leaves incase anyone needed them. We all collected some interesting things and brought them back to nursery, including sticks, stones, leaves and acorns.

We are looking for a catchy name for our outdoor learning days – feel free to add one to our facebook post, or tell the nursery staff any ideas you have!

Mrs Caskie has been busy this week setting up our ‘Big Bedtime Read’ initiative. We are hoping to increase parental engagement and give children great literacy experiences through this initiative, where each child will receive a book pack with five stories each week. As part of our Pupil Equity Funding we hope to achieve 80% of our children to be sharing bedtime stories with their families on four nights of the week or more. You will see our lovely ‘bedtime’ area created in the nursery – letters went out today to outline the plans for this and we look forward to launching it at the beginning of October.

Next week is ‘MATHS WEEK SCOTLAND’ – the boys and girls have enjoyed exploring the talking tub which was full of interesting maths resources, their views and ideas have been taken into account and will be used to plan learning for next week. Please come along to stay and play, or come back and play next week – sign up sheets in the nursery!

PEEP classes begin on 22nd September – Mrs Beattie is hoping to meet some of our PM parents this week to encourage their attendance at these classes 🙂 a fantastic way for kids and parents to bond!

Ninian’s Natter is on Thursday 6-7pm – please do come along! Nursery staff will be on hand to chat all things nursery and have you joining in with maths week activities 🙂 kids and parents welcome!

Nursery News!

We have had a busy week at St Ninian’s nursery this week.

In transition the boys and girls have had their ‘moving up mornings’ and enjoyed getting to know their new teachers – Miss Meechan and Miss Boyes. They were missed in the nursery in the AM group where we were depleted in numbers, in the PM group we were very impressed with how well they joined in after a busy morning at school! Next week in transition we will have our ‘lunch hall experience’ in groups.

Red Group – Monday

Blue Group – Tuesday

Green Group – Thursday

Children and parents should report to the school office at 11.45am. The children will go to the dinner hall and the parents will get the opportunity to chat to Miss Boyes and Miss Meechan in the hub. The kitchen staff have all the chosen options for lunches but will also provide the children with a wee ‘taster’ of the other trays so they can see how a school dinner is served and the kinds of food it has 🙂

We are fast approaching the end of term and as such life in the school and nursery is very busy!

This week in addition to the transition lunches we also have NURSERY SPORTS DAY! Please send your child in a tshirt/jumper the same colour as their group on sports day 🙂 it will be weather dependent but we are hopeful for some sun to come and shine through for us! Parents and families are invited to come and watch (and cheer us on!) – 10 – 11am for morning group and 2 – 3pm for afternoon group. Get running around this weekend so you have built up your fitness!

We have been chatting lots about summer this week and have changed our seasons display from Spring to Summer. There have been some lovely summer pictures drawn and great discussions had. The AM floorbook has some ideas from the boys and girls about summer which we will use to plan learning over the next week 🙂

School has been a big talking point this week and the addition of school uniform to the dress up area has been very popular! The ties have been like gold dust – we are thinking that the boys and girls might like to make some of their own next week so that everyone can have one 🙂

We had a good turn out at our parents coffee moring – all feedback is recorded in the talking books. We are looking to enhance our outdoor learning provision next session and would value very much your views on this 🙂 there was some great discussion between staff and parents on Wednesday which will help us in our planning of these developments for next session!

Have a lovely weekend everyone – see you next week!

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

What a quiet and peaceful week we have had in nursery! It has been so lovely to welcome back our older children who have enjoyed exploring their surroundings and getting used to the rules and routines again. 🙂

Our first task this week was to learn how to keep the nursery tidy and organised. We used our tidy up cards which show us what each area of the nursery should look like when it is tidy. The children have been absolutely fantastic with this new approach and all the visitors to the nursery have commented on how organised and responsible the children are. Well done boys and girls!

Our next job is to get everybody involved in using our visual planning wall. This wall will showcase the learning experiences that are taking place in the nursery and will reflect everyone’s ideas and suggestions. We especially welcome ideas and suggestions from our parents and carers. Please let us know if you would like to contribute to our planning wall and we will help you get started!

Next week we will begin to welcome our new nursery pupils into our Saint Ninian’s family. We are very much looking forward to meeting our new friends and we are excited to show them all that nursery has to offer!

Unfortunately we were so busy with all our activities this week that we forgot to take any photographs!! Oops! We promise we will take lots of photos next week!

Have a wonderful weekend,

The nursery team 🙂

Nursery News

What a busy week we have had in Nursery. We started our new topic Space planned with the children. All their super ideas are now on our Talking Trees. Please feel free to have a look at these the next time you are in Nursery. Also if you have any ideas or thoughts on this topic we would love it if you could write these in our Talking Books which are on display beside our trees.

One of the most favourite activities to come out of the planning was to make a rocket and these are now flying up on our Space display and from the ceiling. This gave the children the opportunity to discuss what shapes they might use in their models. The children have also become astronauts zooming into Space in our big rocket discussing how they would walk and eat in Space! Lots of sparkling stars will also soon be appearing in the sky keep an eye out when you are in. We also listened to the story Aliens love Underpants which the children loved. We talked about the author and illustrator and some children drew their own aliens which we have displayed in our Reading Corner.

On Thursday we celebrated World Book Day with a pirate theme. Lots of pirates were seen in Nursery trying to discover the lost treasure! We started the day with a yummy pirate breakfast and then we listened to a pirate story. Our Space rocket seats then became pirate boats and we even had some pirates walking the plank! The Nursery team were glad we didn’t have to do that!

Also on Thursday the children who are preparing to go to school in August went through to join the Primary 1 children for a shared story which was My granny is a Pirate which they all really enjoyed. They all behaved so well and were confident individuals. They are all certainly ready for this next exciting step in their learning. We were all really proud of them. Our transition programme will continue next week with some of the children getting an opportunity to visit the Primary 1 classrooms and get a chance to sit at a desk and have a look around.

A big well done to Jarred who received a reading Achievement certificate at our Achievement Assembly on Thursday afternoon. Our AM children will get an opportunity to go along to the next morning Achievement assembly.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and Happy Mother’s day on Sunday.

Apologies there is not enough storage space to upload more photographs. When more becomes available I will post some more.

The Nursery Team.

Nursery News

Another busy week in Nursery. First of all we would like to thank everyone who came along to our Nursery Natters on Thursday and Friday. If you were unable to attend this time there will be more Nursery Natters coming up.

We have continued to learn about Winter this week and we continued to look for signs of Winter outside. We discovered some ice and discussed how ice was formed and how it changed when it melted. We also looked at patterns on the leaves and how the frost changed their appearance.

Our PM children were worried that the birds were not getting enough food as it was Winter and so decided to make bird cakes. These will be put in our Nursery garden on Monday. We then plan to do some bird watching. We can’t wait to see what birds appear!

We also had a visit from Primary 2M who showed us something amazing on their iPad it was a picture of a rocket which had landed in the playground. They wanted to know if anyone had seen anything but we promised to have a look on the way home. It was all very exciting.

We have also been busy preparing for Grandparents Day which is on Thursday 28th January at 10 am and 2pm. We are very excited to show you what we have been doing. We would also be very grateful for any donations of home baking that could be handed in for this special event. Everyone is welcome to come along .

There is also a Breakfast Blether on Tuesday 9th February at 8:45 am. This is an opportunity for you to have an informal chat and provide valuable feedback to our Headteacher and members of our Nursery team. We are looking forward to seeing as many parents/carers as possible. If you are available please add your name to the sign up sheet in the Nursery . Breakfast is included!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team.

Nursery News

Happy New Year from all the Nursery Team.

A warm welcome back to all our Nursery boys and girls and a special welcome to our two new children who have joined our AM session – Blake and Oliver. We hope you both enjoy being at St Ninians Nursery.

As part of our Values and Vision week we revisited our Nursery Charter and how we can help Nin by following the Nursery rules. He was very impressed that the children could remember most of the rules. We have been concentrating on getting back into our Nursery routine and being able to share resources with each other.

Our learning focus for the next few weeks will be Winter and as part of our responsive planning we will be asking the children what they would like to learn within this topic.

Our Primary 7 Polish buddies continue to visit us twice a week to have a chat and find out what we have been learning in Nursery.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team.

Nursery News

This week in Nursery we have been learning about Diwali the festival of light. Our AM children made flower necklaces and our PM children made lanterns all associated with this festival. We also continued with People who help us which was responsive planning from the children after we had discussed fireworks and fire safety. On Thursday we had a special visitor linked to this topic PC Welsh very kindly came in to see us on his day off and spoke to both sessions about Stranger Danger and Road Safety. All the children listened very well and answered lots of questions. They also got the opportunity to try on a policeman’s safety vest which we discovered was very heavy. Watch this space for more visitors whose jobs are about helping people!

Also on Thursday our AM children took part in a minute silence for Remembrance Day and they were all very respectful and thoughtful.

Children in Need was celebrated by both sessions by wearing their pyjamas to Nursery with crazy hair. The children seemed to enjoy wearing their pyjamas as did the staff! Thank you all very much for your support and donations for this.

Just a little reminder that Nursery photographs are on Tuesday 17th November. A list of upcoming dates for Nursery was available this week in paper form. If you didn’t receive one please speak to any member of the Nursery team and they will be happy to get one for you.

Thank you to the parents/carers who came along to our Parents evenings. It was lovely to get the opportunity to discuss your child’s progress and all the learning that is taking place in Nursery.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend. Stay safe out of the horrible weather.

The Nursery Team