outdoor learning

Nursery News

The sun has got his hat on – hip hip hip hooray… The sun has got his hat on and he’s coming out to play!

We have been blessed with beautiful weather this week and we have made the most of it in the nursery!

The PM group had their second, and final, trip to Almondell on Tuesday – have a look in our talking book for all the wonderful pictures that were created whilst we were there with Kirsty the ranger! The AM group are very excited about their forthcoming trip on Tuesday of next week. Thank you for the prompt return of permission slips – we have a few payments outstanding, please ensure you have paid £1.50 by Tuesday.

Transition was fantastic this week as we had a playtime, with our buddies, in the school playground! The boys and girls got the opportunity to join the P1 classes in the school playground and learned all about what happens at playtime at school. They have to get used to eating a snack as they play with their friends – and of course, putting their rubbish in the bin. We listened for the sound of the school bell and the whistle used by Mrs Smith so that we know when to come back and line up in our classes. Next week our transition will be in joining P1 for some health week activities.

Next week is HEALTH WEEK! We have a busy timetable, thanks to Mr McCurdy and the nursery staff for finding lots of fun activities to promote a healthy lifestyle 🙂 some of us had super ideas about being healthy and drew some lovely pictures in our talking books – have a look and see what we know and what we want to learn! The timetable for health week will be displayed in the nursery and will be on the weekly update. Please note that THURSDAY will be a ‘bring your scooter to nursery’ day – we have a selection of bikes and scooters for anyone who doesn’t have one. And we will welcome parents/carers/friends from 10.30-11 and 2.30-3 as we walk the daily mile together.

We are offering a parent/carer drop in session on WEDNESDAY 7th JUNE from 11.15am – 11.50am. We will have Trolls on the SmartBoard for the boys and girls to enjoy, and tea/coffeee/biscuits for the adults. We are looking for YOUR views before we tackle our nursery action plan for Session 17/18. Parents, carers, grandparents, friends – your views matter to us and will help us move forward positively for our children next session.

Have a great weekend!

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

Another week has flown by in nursery. First of all we welcomed another member to our St Ninian’ s family. Khyla has joined the AM session. We hope you enjoy your time with us. On a sad note we said goodbye to Liam in our PM session who has gone to another nursery nearer his new house. We wish him well and will miss him.

The transition programme for our children going into Primary 1 continues with the nursery children working together with the children in both Primary 1 classes on Numeracy and Literacy carousels . This gave the nursery children an opportunity to see how they will be working when they come to big school. They were all excited and again were a credit to us. Well done everyone. In nursery we also listened to a song about the letter ‘m’ and we tried to think of things that began with this sound. As a home link activity we would love it if the children could bring something in beginning with this sound and also if you are out and about have a look and see what you can find that begins with ‘m’. Next week the nursery children will be going out for a short playtime with both their buddies and the Primary 1 pupils. This will be in the nursery outdoor area and the following week it will be in the school playground. If they wish the nursery boys and girls can bring a snack and drink with them which they can have at this time. It is only 15 minutes so something small to eat will be great. As they will be outside we would ask that the children come in appropriate clothing and shoes. Thank you for your support in this.

The children also received a lesson on personal safety this week when we had a fire drill. Both sessions had to stop what they were doing and leave nursery quickly and safely. All the children were amazing and we were very proud of them.

Outdoor learning has been very busy this week with lots of exciting adventures in their learning. The children have been using their skills of curiosity and inquiry when using our natural open ended resources. They have been on the bikes, making lots of yummy recipes in our mud kitchen, sitting in the sand pit and role playing at schools! We hope the sun keeps shining for us next week. A wee reminder that children should come to nursery with suntan cream already applied and proper clothing for the sunshine. Please check out our Nursery Parents Facebook page for some photographs of our outdoor learning.

Mrs Beattie’s PEEP classes continue on a Friday and this is what they will be doing this week. The first group will be working together choosing different size balls and finding ways of rolling , bouncing and throwing them to each other while singing songs. They will then enjoy snack and a story together. The second group after nearly being blown far far away on top of their large parachute quite literally and having so much fun doing so have decided to go outside again! Hopefully they will find other ways that they can use and play with the parachute together and also use stop watches to time themselves going over the school assault course which they had tried last week for the first time. Another exciting PEEP session ahead!

It is the turn of the PM children to share their learning with us.

On Primary 1 transition.

Liam ” I made a snake ” ( this was linked to our shared topic of The Gruffalo)

Riley ” It was good”

There was lots of chat at the snack table.

Martin” I like to have this at home” ( yoghurt)

Emilie M ” I ‘m tidying up ”

Outdoor learning

Scott ” I like to play with the train”

A little reminder that there is a information meeting on Monday 15th May at 6 o’ clock in the school for new Primary 1 parents.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery Team.

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.

This week we tried to take a lot of our learning outdoors and everyone had great fun.

In literacy we did some spelling work outside using the large chalks then played outdoor Frys word bingo. It got a bit messy but we all agreed that it was a fun way to practise our Frys words. Well done to Paul M for being our bingo winner!

In maths we were learning about positional language and directions. We played lots of fun games to help us, eg. Stand beside the door, sit on top of the table (don’t tell Mrs Purdie we were on top of the tables), sit under the table, stand beside the gate, etc. We also used hoops outside and had to follow more instructions, eg. Jump in the hoop, stand behind the hoop. Then Sahara had a great idea to help us remember left and right, she taught us all how to dab then we had to sing,” dab to the left, dab to the right”. We also used this song:

For our science learning we focused on seasons and went on a spring scavenger hunt. We had to use our senses to see,touch, hear and smell things. We all set to work and recorded our findings on our clipboards.

We then shared this learning with the PM nursery when we all joined together to go for a walk to the Dedridge pond and woods. It was a lovely afternoon and we were super excited to see lots of squirrels, ducks and 2 swans, we think the mummy swan was sitting on her nest guarding some eggs, we will go back in a few weeks to check how she is getting on. We also spotted some bat boxes and different types of flowers and trees.

To finish the week off we decided to stop off at the park for some fun and games. It was lovely to see everyone playing nicely together, seeing lots of smiles and hearing lots of laughter!

Welcome back P2/3!

It has been a busy start to the term in Primary 2/3 and we have thoroughly enjoyed using the outdoor environment to develop our learning during Outdoor Week.

Read on for some of the children’s highlights:

Carly enjoyed planning our Food and Farming topic with her elbow partner.

Harry enjoyed PE outside with Mrs McMullen, especially playing tig.

Maya enjoyed doing our alphabet challenge outside where we had to use all of our senses to find something for each letter of the alphabet.

Brooke enjoyed our full stop hunt in the playground – you won’t believe how many full stops we found!

Aaron liked everything!

Andrew enjoyed writing about his trip to London during Big Writing.

Kuba enjoyed today’s assembly.

Oma enjoyed making a graph in the playground to show what we collected in the garden.

Chloe enjoyed Big Writing because she wrote about her friend and her holiday.

Maeve enjoyed Big Maths Beat That and our alphabet challenge because she even found a holly tree for the letter H.

Alishba enjoyed finding out about the vision of Jesus in RE.

Rachel enjoyed our full stop hunt in the playground.

Calvin enjoyed information handling when we sorted out information about food.

Levente enjoyed our Sumdog assessment.

Angel enjoyed collecting leaves and stones so we could make a graph.

We’ve also been busy working on our assembly for next Friday. We hope that you can join us at 9am. We’re especially looking forward to sharing our Egyptian songs with you!

from Primary 2/3, Mrs Keegan and Mrs Howley.

Outdoor Learning week in P5

Toni – We enjoyed using the trundle wheel outside to measure the grass to the fence line.

Cole – During our drama lesson outside we built an imaginary house. It was great fun.

Paige and Rachel – Mrs Purdie shared with us in the Assembly how to be safe around stray dogs that do not have their owners. We should remain calm and keep walking.

Rebecca – I enjoyed learning a new hymn – peace is flowing like a river with Mrs Smith on Friday. I especially liked doing the actions.

Beth and Lorena – In PE we used metre sticks to measure out 50 metres and then we ran this distance in groups trying to improve our time.

Joseph – I was delighted to share with the class that I had been successful in getting to the next round of the Radio 2 500 words competition.

Brandon – I enjoyed coming back to school again to see all my friends again although it is tough to get up!

Vanessa – I am excited about our new class topic – the human body. I am really interested in learning about the human body as I would like to have a job looking after people and keeping them well in the future.

Bea – I enjoyed having Mrs Smith teaching us on Friday.

Nursery News

Its hard to believe this is the last blog entry for this term! Another busy week in Nursery has ended.

On Monday we visited the library and Mrs Campbell the librarian read us a story called ” My granny is a pirate ” This fitted in really well with us having Grandparents Day on Thursday. She also taught us a song called 5 little speckled frogs. We sang it really well and it helped us with our numeracy skills by counting to 5.

We were all very busy this week too making Easter cakes, baskets and pictures to give as presents to our special people who were coming on Thursday.

Although we had loved playing in our shop we decided it was time to put out some different resources for our learning adventures. The children voted for some babies for the house corner and some dressing up clothes with a mirror for them to have a look at their reflection. We were all super excited to see how big our caterpillars have become and we noticed that they are preparing to go into their cocoons. As we were going on holiday for two weeks we were all worried that there would be no one at Nursery to look after them. Mrs MacDonald kindly offered to take them home and she has promised to take photographs and videos of them as they grow. You never know she may bring them back as butterflies!

We were all so excited on Thursday to welcome our grandparents and special people to our nursery. The nursery team were very proud of all our fantastic children as they confidently showed all their families round inside and outside the nursery and joined in with all their learning experiences. They then demonstrated their brilliant singing skills when they sang for all the visitors in the hall. The nursery team would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came along to this event it was fantastic to see so many and we hope you enjoyed your time with us. Thank you also for your generous contributions which will go into our nursery funds. Here are some pictures of the day there are lots more to see on our nursery parents Facebook page.

At our Achievement assembly today Dylan received the certificate for a super first term at nursery. Well done Dylan.

We finished our week though on a sad note as we said goodbye to one of our nursery teachers Mrs Craig who is leaving to have her second baby. We will all really miss her as she has been a fantastic teacher to all the children and a very special colleague and friend to all the nursery team. On behalf of the whole nursery team I would like to thank her for her commitment, enthusiasm and friendship. We wish her every happiness in the future.

As we are planning a walk in the woods the first week back could you please return your EE2 form on our return after the holidays. Thank you.

The nursery team would like to wish you all a Happy Easter and a lovely holiday and we look forward to welcoming the children back on Tuesday 18th April.

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😊