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 πŸ™‚ 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 πŸ™‚ 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 πŸ™‚

Have a lovely weekend!

 

Nursery News

Snow Week!!

Well what a wonderful surprise we got this week when the snow arrived! It feels like we have been waiting for a long time after all the discussions about snowy Christmas scenes and sledging – we definitely made the most of it this week! Mrs Beattie is thawing out this weekend in front of the fire!

 

Our week started with lots of chatter about winter as Mrs Mushet started to get ideas of what the children knew about winter and what they might like to learn about! Luke told her about storms – and this became all too real as the week progressed! Lots of the children spoke about snowmen – about building them at home, and wanting to build them in the nursery. We used a great smartboard game to build our own snowmen with lovely details added such as bow ties and reindeer antlers! Have a look in our floorbooks, around the smartboard and on the learning wall where these masterpieces have been displayed! ICT skills can be tricky to develop on our temperamental smartboard but what a great job the boys and girls are doing of learning to use our ‘pointer’ correctly – well done.

 

To warm us up we made soup on Thursday! Mrs Beattie and Mrs Hogg were hard at work with the boys and girls – chopping, slicing, mixing the vegetables and creating wonderful potato and leek soup! Roma and Lucy wrote a letter inviting Mrs Smith down to the nursery to taste their yummy soup – she was delighted and commented that it was delicious!

 

The creative area was awash with paintings in snowy colours – and the children even made snow dough! A super easy recipe of cornflour and water with added glitter made a crumbly, compactable dough for the boys and girls to play with! This was a very popular activity this week and one that would be easy to replicate at home – if a little bit messy!

 

We managed to bring some of the snow indoors into the water tray this week and use it to create homes and Play areas for our arctic animals! Next week if the snow reappears we are going to take our Mr and Mrs Potato head pieces out to build snow versions in the garden.

 

Thankfully we had one parent come along to the coffee morning on Wednesday where we discussed nursery snack and the results of our annual environmental health visit – a successful pass. We also had a few of the ‘big questions’ answered by parents who couldn’t attend. The team have collated the results of these questions – keep an eye out for it with your weekly update via email! Printed copies are also on display in the hallway.

 

Next week is a busy week for our nursery with the bedtime read relaunch for the children on Tuesday and a Burns Supper snack on Thursday – take home a copy of the Selkirk Grace to practice with your child in preparation for this celebration.

 

A reminder that our Ladies Night tickets are on sale this week – we have a minimum number to sell in order that the event can go ahead – round up your friends and family to come and have fun whilst raising funds for our children!

 

have a lovey weekend πŸ™‚

Nursery News

What a wonderful return to nursery we have had this week!

The boys and girls have filled our talking books with chatter about CHRISTMAS! It seems that Santa has been good to everyone – have a look in our talking books about what exciting things we got, seen and done at Christmas time!

It has been icy this week – this has led to lovely discussions about Winter/Snow/Ice. We will spend next week consulting the children so we can plan for their interests around this area. We loved throwing sticks onto the icy pond on our Welly walk on Wednesday – this led to lots of talk about what happens to water when it is cold, what happens to ice when it is warm… Super scientists! We have had ice cubes in the water tray and even painted with coloured ice cubes! Lots of boys and girls have enjoyed making winter collages this week and painting with cold colours.

 

We have had a reshuffle of furniture on the carpet area which has been very popular with the children – we have had so many lovely teas being made in the house corner, games being played at the games table and the garage and car mat have been well used! We will observe the children in this environment and adjust resources/spaces over the coming weeks depending on how the play progresses – it has been lovely to see so many engaged learners return from their Christmas break!

 

Mrs Beattie is looking forward to getting PEEP up and running for 2018! The sign up sheets will be available in the cloakroom next week with classes beginning again on 26th January.

 

Our parent/carer coffee morning is Wednesday 11.20-12 – please do come along as we discuss snack, food preparation and our future vegetable patch!

 

Have a lovely weekend!

Nursery News

Wow! Has that really been a week??? How busy we have been!

Elfie our naughty elf has been hiding from us this week! He ended up playing in the flour in the kitchen and he stole Mrs Findlays socks and hid them all over the garden!! Cheeky elf! We have enjoyed talking to the boys and girls about how we are trying to make good choices and prepare for Christmas, not only for Santa coming with presents, but also for the birth of the baby Jesus.

The nativity rehearsals are well under way! We tried on our costumes on Thursday for the first time – it was so exciting! We can’t wait to show off our singing skills next THURSDAY 14th DECEMBER 10am and 2pm for our nativity show πŸ™‚ can you please let a member of staff know how many adults you plan to bring so we can be organised for seating! We will have mince pies, cakes and refreshments available for afterwards – please stay for a festive blether and a bite to eat!

The creative juices have been flowing this week! We have made Christmas gift bags to keep all our special Christmas gifts in πŸ™‚ we have sent home invitations to the Nativity and have talked about what we can make for next week! We have started crafting a gingerbread house on the entry to the school – so many wonderful pieces of artwork have been added as sweeties and candy canes! Someone suggested we make reindeer food so we are looking to do that in the coming week πŸ™‚

The fundraising stall was a great success! Thank you to everyone who supported us in this venture! We have raised over Β£90 and will have a final total for Monday πŸ™‚ thank you!

Next week the school is having a Christmas jumper day on Friday – we are so lucky that we can wear our Christmas jumpers ANY DAY OF THE WEEK! We would love to see children in their festive wear between now and the Christmas holidays so if they would like to come with any jumpers, tshirts, hats or headbands they are more than welcome to do that!

PM panto trip is on Tuesday – the bus will be leaving at 12.20pm – please ensure that your child is dropped off at 12pm sharp, if you haven’t paid for the panto or filled in the EE2 form please do so on Monday.

Here are the final four nativity songs for you to practice this week πŸ™‚

An Angel Appeared in the Sky

 

Three Kings Were Riding

 

Away in a Manger

 

Ring out the bells

 

Enjoy!

Nursery News

What an exciting week!

This week we welcomed some parents and caters to our nursery as we had our Stay and Play and Come Back and Play sessions! We love seeing the children share their environment with their parents/carers as they play and learn together.

We kicked off the week with P1 and the JRSO (Junior Road Safety Officers) to launch Road Safety Week! There was much discussion about Ziggy who has given us an important song to learn which will help us when crossing the road – you can listen and learn at home here;

We have had such interesting conversations this week about transport. Some people have made boats to sail on the water tray, while others have been drawing and colouring traffic lights! Have a look at our lovely work on our learning wall!

Welly Wednesday was a bit dreich this week! We all got wrapped up warm and donned our wellies for jumping in puddles and talking about road safety. We talked about ways we can avoid crossing roads by using underpasses and bridges. We then found a bit of unused road to practice our safe crossing skills while singing Ziggy’s song! We also practiced our understanding of red, amber and green by playing the traffic lights game! The highlight of this trip was perhaps waving at the cars and lorries from the bridge – we got a few toot toots and some flashing lights!

Thursday brought a whole wave of excitement to the nursery as we welcomed two special guests! First up we had Colin, an author and father of Mrs Martinek, who read us all The Disgusting Sandwich! We loved joining in by shouting ‘ IT’s DISGUSTING’ !! This was followed by a visit from BOOK BUG HIMSELF! Book bug had bags of books to give our 3 year olds and a special book to hand to our 4 year olds! We were so excited with these lovely gifts and all agreed we couldnt wait to get home to read them!

Mrs Beatties PEEP groups were busy today doing literacy based activities! Including using and acting out words like stomping happily and grumping! The boys and girls also enjoyed making funny faces together with their families! Mrs Beattie has a different PEEP session planned next week due to the Christmas Fair taking place in the hall. She will run a Christmas Afternoon Tea in the nursery where boys and girls can make their own sandwiches and have a wee cake before dancing around to some Christmas music and enjoying the bubble machine! This will not last the full hour but will allow parents to spend some time (and money!) at the Christmas fair πŸ™‚

 

We have started to practice our nativity! There will be letters handed out next week to firm up the plans for our Christmas term – it’s a busy one!

Nursery News

An action packed week at St Ninian’s Nursery!

 

It was a busy start to the week with our individual and sibling photos on Monday! Our boys and girls donned their happiest smiles – we can’t wait to see the finished product!

 

Mr McCurdy has been the man of the hour in nursery this week after a very exciting PE session on Tuesday where the floor was lava!!! The boys and girls had lots of fun using their bodies and the apparatus to move around the hall in a safe way, taking their time and waiting their turn where needed and persevering when the going got tough! For the rest of the week the nursery has been alive with shouts of ‘THE FLOOR IS LAVA IN 3..2..1..’ – we might be able to adapt this to the outdoor area if the weather is kind to us next week?! Watch this space!

 

This week brought the third and last of our stories for the Bookbug awards! Mrs Campbell at Lanthorn library has read us (and P1) the three stories that are up for the bookbug picture book award! We voted for Gorilla Loves Vanilla as our favourite story! Today the AM nursery session and P1M joined together for structured play and lots of discussion about ice cream flavours! Mrs Conway loves chocolate ice cream with marshmallows through it! Mrs Martinek loves mint chocolate chip! Miss Meechan loves strawberry! But Mrs Beattie…….. she doesn’t like ice cream!!! She said she would like some cheese flavoured ice cream.. which we agreed might taste a bit strange! If you’d like to enjoy the story with your child you can watch the author read it on the link below;

 

Enjoy!

 

Welly Wednesday had us out in our local community to see what we could find. We realised we didn’t have enough cameras for everyone so we learned how to turn our eyes and brains into cameras – maybe your child can show you how?! We took ‘photos’ of interesting things we found and kept them in our brain to talk about when we got back! Some of our children knew lots about our local community;

Khyla – that’s Bankton school! That’s the pharmacy!

Emilie – you go there for medicine!

Carter – that’s a post box for letters

Luke – you go to the doctors when you have a sore tummy

Khyla – that’s the dentist, I went there.

Shay – you need pennies to get things from the shop!

We all enjoyed our snack at the Play park after our walk! We have deposited our pumpkins in the woods by the pond to be enjoyed by the creatures in the woods! We look forward to investigating them next week to see if any bugs have moved in!

 

 

Mrs Beattie is delighted to have two happy, smiley PEEP groups back this week! The parents and children enjoyed learning together as they went over, under and through different things and learned to listen to and communicate with one another. PEEP will continue next week πŸ™‚

 

Sign up sheets are available for stay and play/come back and play! In the nursery cloakroom – the Wednesday slots will incorporate welly Wednesday, more information available next week πŸ™‚ we also have sign up sheets for welly Wednesday helpers too! The more the merrier – we wouldn’t be able to run it if it wasn’t for the support of our parents and friends!

 

Many thanks to the parents who attended our coffee morning on Wednesday! If you couldn’t make it buy would like to share your views there are paper copies of the questions available in the cloakroom!

 

Have a great weekend!

 

Nursery News

It’s been a spoooooooky week this week at St Ninian’s Nursery!

The boys and girls had so much fun at the Halloween party on Tuesday! Dooking for apples, biting donuts off a string and decorating biscuits to name but a few – we have loved having the nursery decorated this week to add to the eerie atmosphere!

There have been many many wonderful additions to our water tray this week! We have had shaving foam, jelly and spaghetti to get our hands on – this has led to wonderful discussions about how it ‘feels’ in the water tray with super words like sticky, squishy, squashy and ‘like gummy bears’ πŸ™‚ we love to hear our boys and girls using interesting vocabulary! Be sure to check the weekly Box Clever words on the weekly update to help your child expand their vocabulary at home!

We have also had lots of interesting conversations about Autumn, hibernation and nocturnal animals! Does your child know what hibernation means? It was one of our box clever words last week and there are lots of lovely stories out there about bears going to sleep for the winter! We read Mr Bear Snores On in the hut this week and a few boys and girls were able to tell us that he was hibernating!

The writing table was covered in black on Thursday like the night sky as we talked about and drew fireworks in preparation for Guy Fawkes this weekend! The PM group also collaged some lovely sparkly rockets to add to this – we wonder if anyone will have a story about fireworks night on Monday at nursery??

Mrs Beattie is looking forward to having PEEP start back next Friday! The five week block begins 10/11. Classes are now full but keep an eye out for new sign up sheets for PEEP into the new year!

We have our termly Parental Coffee Morning on Wednesday 8th November from 11.20-12. AM children and parents are encouraged to stay on at the end of the session with PM parents encouraged to come along early with a packed lunch for their child. Children will be able to watch a movie in the nursery while parents enjoy a cuppa in the hall. We value your views and have acted on all points raised at last terms coffee morning in order to make our kids experience of nursery the best that we can!

Please keep an eye on your email inbox for the nursery weekly update – usually sent on a Sunday night. It has a plan for the week and important information to share!

A gentle reminder that parents are asked not to take any photos or videos in the nursery environment.

Thank you for your continued support!

Nursery News

What a busy week – and a great return after the October holiday!

 

Halloween has been on everyone’s lips this week! We have had lots of fun talking all things spooky – our talking tree has lots of lovely ideas from the boys and girls about what we could learn about around Halloween! Have a wee read – and check our learning wall for some of our fantastic work! Freya brought in some apples from her garden – after we had made apple crumble, we cut these in half and used them to print pumpkins with orange paint!

 

The staff team were so proud to see how much effort our boys and girls have been putting in with adding detail to their paintings – so much so that Paul received a head teachers award at assembly today for super effort! He was joined by Carter who received an achievement wristband as a well done for his achievement of going a whole mile! Novembers well being focus is ACHIEVING – based on the feedback from our coffee morning, we are looking to create an achievement area to celebrate all the fantastic things our children do! Keep a look out when in and around the nursery πŸ‘€

 

It was lovely to hear about the autumn adventures our boys and girls had! We shared these with our friends and will finish off next week! If anyone has one at home please return on Monday πŸ™‚

 

Lots going on next week – make sure you check your email for the nursery update on Monday to keep you in the loop 😊 Can’t wait for Tuesdays Halloween party! Fancy dress encouraged!

Nursery News – Term 1 Round Up

What a term it has been!

Highlights of this term include;

*Welcoming our new children and their families following the successful introduction of home visit/one to one enrolments!

*Outdoor learning – Welly Wednesdays! Learning opportunities in our local envirnment, supported by parent helpers on a weekly basis.

*Big Bedtime ReadπŸ“šOur PEF initiative set up by Mrs Caskie, aiming to have our nursery children having a bed time story on four or more nights of the week!

*The return of PEEP! Fridays at PEEP are a great start to the weekend, keep an eye out for the next block starting next week!

 

We have been busy! We continue to be blown away by the progress of our children, we can’t wait to see what next term has in store!

 

Some things to look forward to include;

*Halloween! Parties will be during sessions on Tuesday 31st Oct.

*Children in Need fundraising!

*Road Safety Week – our next opportunity for stay and play/come back and play sessions!

*All things Christmas! Nativity, Parties and Panto!

 

We have a lovely new display at the nursery doorway – leave us some feedback on a welly! Let us know if there’s something you’ve enjoyed or if there’s anything you would like us to look into/change!

 

Have a lovely, restful holiday! See you all back on TUESDAY 24th OCTOBER!

 

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