Transition – Page 2 – St Ninian's Primary School

Nursery news

We can’t believe this is the last blog post of the session. What a quick year it has been full of exciting learning adventures.

Both sessions enjoyed our Gruffalo party on Tuesday. It was a pity about the weather but we didn’t let it dampen our spirits. We enjoyed party games including pin the tail on the mouse. Mrs Mushet did some fantastic face painting we had our own Gruffalos! Our party food included Gruffalo crumble, Gruffalo cake and purple grapes as his spikes. Both Primary 1 classes joined us to share our learning with each other and we were amazed when we looked in our talking books that we had actually thought up lots of the same ideas.

It was a very emotional end to the week on Thursday when we said goodbye to our fantastic pre school children who are moving on to their next exciting step in their learning. We were super proud of them all and we wish them lots of luck in Primary 1. As we were so busy we didn’t get a chance to take photographs so if you have some and are happy to share please post on our nursery Facebook page where you will see the photographs taken of the children and what they wanted to be when they grow up.

The whole nursery team would like to say a huge thank you to all our families who shared kind words, lovely cards and very generous presents. We have been so touched by this. We are so thankful for the wonderful support we receive from our families.

Just a little reminder of staffing in the nursery next session. Both Mrs Mushet and Mrs Martinek will take on new leadership rolls as Early Years Officers and Mrs Conway will continue as the nursery teacher. Mrs Mushet will now work all day Monday and Tuesday with Mrs Martinek continuing to work all mornings. Mrs Beattie, Mrs Hogg and Mrs McDonald our Early Years Practioners will continue to work their usual mornings or afternoons with Mrs Conway in on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mrs Caskie ( teacher) will continue to work in the nursery on a Tuesday providing direct literacy and numeracy teaching as part of our Pupil Equity Fund arrangements. Full details of all these changes are detailed in Mrs Purdie’s Headteacher headlines given out at the beginning of this week. Any questions regarding these changes please ask any member of the nursery team.

We would like to wish all our families a lovely summer holiday and look forward to welcoming back our returning children on Tuesday 22nd August and we are excited about all our new children who will be joining our nursery family. We would also like to say good luck to some of our children who are moving onto other nurseries after the holidays.

Happy Holidays 😊😊

The Nursery Team.

Nursery News

Another week flies by at St Ninian’s nursery! This week has been super exciting as we prepare for our final week of the 2016/17 session next week 🙂

Planning for the Gruffalo Tea Party is well under way! The boys and girls have given us so many fantastic ideas and we have done our best to put them into action for them 🙂 we are hopeful for nice weather so we can celebrate in our nursery garden with games, dancing and a lovely tea party. Our P1 friends will join us at the beginning of our celebration to share all the learning that has been shared across the transition period. We have invited our P6 buddies to join us for the final part of our tea party to share a small snack and look forward to our adventures next session!

We have also been chatting to our pre-school children this year who have given us some great ideas for their ‘Graduation’ ceremony! The staff have been having some lovely discussions about how much the children have changed during their time at St Ninian’s nursery – and this fed in to our enrolment induction meetings this week as we welcomed our new children and families into the St Ninian’s nursery community.

Although the rain has been threatening to ruin our outdoor fun, we have managed to have a great time in the nursery garden! The boys and girls have been helping the staff ‘clear out’ our ‘bunker’ in the garden by testing out the ride on toys and sorting through our old resources – the cars and tractors have been a BIG hit! We have also had our balance bikes and helmets out – we will look at managing these resources effectively in the new session 🙂

Mrs Beattie said farewell to her PEEP groups today – with a lovely spread and some lovely words. She is very proud of all the children and families who have joined in with the PEEP classes this term and has enjoyed seeing children grow in their confidence and interactions with their parents/carers, and with each other. We are delighted to confirm that PEEP will continue into next session – keep your eye out for our sign up sheets in the cloakroom area!

Next week brings our Gruffalo Tea Party on Tuesday – just throughout the nursery session as normal. We also welcome the parents/carers of our preschool children to our graduation ceremonies at 10am for the AM group and 3.15pm for the PM group – siblings also encouraged to attend 🙂

A reminder that the last day of term is Friday 30th June. Pupils will return on Tuesday 22nd August.

Nursery News

How the weeks are flying by in Nursery! Our transition programme concluded this week with the children getting the opportunity to try school lunches in the dinner hall. They were all amazing and they seemed to enjoy eating the lunches! We hope that you have found our transition programme helpful and it has prepared the children for their new exciting move into Primary 1.

On Wednesday we had our Sports day and we were lucky with the weather. The children were all excellent and learned how to participate in a sports day, be part of a team and encourage their fellow team members to do their best. Thank you to all the adults who came along to support the children. Well done to everyone who joined in with the races.

Also in our learning adventures this week the children got the opportunity to use real tools ( under close supervision! ) They all showed great maturity and used their curiosity and imaginative skills to measure , hammer and build exciting models.

Next week we will be making and discussing what we would like at our Grufdalo tea party. This idea came from the children and is an exciting way to round off all our learning within this topic.

In PEEP this week with Mrs Beattie Group 1 are playing memory games to help with their concentration skills and Group 2 are joining in with new parachute games to improve their listening skills.

Our PM children are sharing their favourite learning experiences this week.

Rojin” The bean bag race was the best.”

Harry” I liked Sports day.”

Mark” What was good was that I got a medal and a lolly.”

Luke” The best bit was running.”

Elena” running”

Scott” Scott goes fast!”

Just a wee reminder that graduation for our preschool children will take place on Thursday 29th June in the school hall at 10am and 3.15pm. All families of our preschool children are invited along to these. Our anti pre children will remain in the nursery during the graduations where they will get a little treat.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery team.

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

What a great health week we have had in nursery. We enjoyed all sorts of activities and had healthy snacks.

We started off the week with trips to the park and learning some football skills. On Tuesday morning our AM children had their visit to Almondell country park where they went on a Gruffalo walk, listened for sounds of nature, made pictures from natural resources and enjoyed the park. Both sessions loved expressing themselves in the dancing and yoga activities. On Thursday the children were encouraged to bring their scooter to nursery and had great fun ‘zooming’ up and down the playground . It was great to see so many parents and carers join us for the daily mile and also the Fun run. A big thank you to Mr McCurdy for arranging such a brilliant week and also to the parents and carers who helped us on our trip and activities. We couldn’t have managed these without your support. All the children had super fun as did the nursery staff.

Transition events continued this week with the preschoolers joining the Primary 1 pupils for the daily mile and a measuring activity.

PEEP classes with Mrs Beattie have started again with both groups learning sign language for the hello and goodbye song and being introduced to “The old woman who swallowed a fly.” Group 1 were also counting bubbles and trying to see how fast they could pop them. Group 2 were asked to draw round their hand and their parent/career’s hand and find words about their feelings.

Transition next week will be the Moving up mornings on Tuesday 6th and Wednesday 7th. Arrangements for both these days have been outlined in a letter given out on Thursday / Friday. If you have not received your letter please see a member of the nursery team.

There will also be menu options available on Monday for the preschoolers to choose what they would like to eat the following week at the lunchtime experience. Please note the choices depend on which particular day your child is going. These details were also included in the same letter. If you have any questions about any of these events please ask any member of the nursery team who will be happy to help you. We would also like to ask if anyone has the talking book at home as we are unable to locate it and some children have still to get the opportunity to take this home.

Our AM children will share their favourite Health week highlights this week.

Lucy” I liked the bus”

Christopher ” I liked the fun run”

Anna ” I liked the healthy food”

Celine” I like running the best”

Isabelle” I like the dancing”

Blake” I liked being outside with my friends”

Annabelle” I liked dancing n the playground”

We would also like to invite parents and carers to a drop in session on Wednesday 7th at 11.15 am to discuss ways in which we as a nursery can improve to make your children’s learning experiences better. This will be held in the P7 classroom and you will get the opportunity to chat to staff and other parents over a cup of tea. Children who come along will be able to watch Trolls on the smartboard! We would love as many as possible to come along.

Just a little heads up on some dates. Nursery sports day will be held on Wednesday 14th June at 10.00 am and 2 pm weather permitting. Nursery graduations for preschoolers only will be on Thursday 29th June at 10.00 am and 3.15pm.

For more photographs of our Health week please check out our Nursery parents Facebook page.

Have a lovely weekend.

The Nursery team.

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 🙂

Hard at work in P1R

Another week passes with lots of learning and fun!

Fractions was our new topic in maths and we learned about halves, quarters and sharing fairly and equally. We started the learning with some chocolate! Mrs Roy gave us a challenge to cut a mini roll into halves then quarters, we had to be very accurate with our slicing. As we did so well we then got to eat the pieces, if only maths could always involve chocolate!!! Our learning continued when we learned about sharing fairly and equally. Mrs Roy was very naughty and shared sweets with all of us but it wasn’t fair! Some children got 1 bag, some got 2 bags and some got 3 bags! So we had to use our thinking heads and solve the problem,we came up with lots of good ideas and tried them all out. We decided the best way to do it was by giving each person in turn 1 bag then another bag and so on until all the sweets has been handed out. We have a good understanding of fair shares and as a reward got some Haribos which we shared fairly.

We continued to discuss the Gruffalo story and this week worked on sequencing the order of the story in preparation for making our own Gruffalo storybooks to share with the nursery,this was Dexter’s idea from our learning wall. Everyone worked really hard on these and when Mrs Scott popped in we took pride in sharing them with her. In Art we made ‘big’ Gruafflos which again was another idea from our learning wall. We used coloured sugar paper to do this, we made connections in our learning as we folded paper in half and then in quarters, we made also made different 2D shapes for our Gruffalo.

As it is the month of May we have been learning about Mary our Mother. As a class we started to make a special altar for Mary at the front of the classroom and discussed the meaning behind the different symbols. We will add to this next week. Then we all shared our thoughts about Mary and wrote them down.

During nursery transition we flipped it around and we went to the nursery instead of them coming to us. We went out into the nursery playground and buddied up with a nursery child to play and have fun with. We are being really responsible and helping the children prepare for coming into P1.

We also had a visit from the UN Ambassadors and they talked to us about Global Goals. They asked some of us to have our say by writing a tweet for our new Global Citizenship display in school. Have a look when you are here next week for Parent’s Evenings.

Our weekly news

What a great week we’ve had in P1R this week, where shall we begin…

In literacy we have now learned all our P1 Sounds so have been focusing on revising the ones we found tricky, eg. Digraphs and oa/oi. Some of us even learned about alternative spellings of the vowel sound ai/ay. We played games in pairs, used letter join on the iPads, did some cut and stick word tasks, did a team task in our Talking Book and practised spelling in our journals. Lucy and Isla wanted to share this funny video with everyone:

In reading we are all progressing well and are quickly getting through different books. We enjoy our paired reading on a Tuesday with P7 and Mrs Docherty is now joining us for reading too which has been lovely!

Maths has been good fun as we continued to learn about time using little clocks, matching digital to analogue times, Stop the Clock (Dexter was our champion) on the smartboard and time bingo. We are all reminding Mrs Roy about lunchtime-12 o’clock and hometime-3 o’clock! You can download the Stop the Clock app onto your tablet or iPads at home if you want to try and beat your fastest time!

The Gruffalo continues to be our topic and we worked with the nursery to share our favourite characters, we all drew a picture and labelled it for our display while listening to the Gruffalo song. During Art we got out the paints and then created paintings of our favourite characters for our Art Gallery. We also finished our Gruffalo collage, we can’t wait to share it with you at Parent’s Night.

In writing we wrote a recount of our trip to the woods,congratulations to James and Klaudia who were our star writers.

As the sun was shining we took some learning outdoors for PE and Structured Play. We are all enjoying Athletics and are preparing well for Sports Day.

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.