Free Flow in the Nursery

This week the Nursery has introduced full ‘free flow’ play. This means that the nursery children will have access to the nursery garden for the vast majority of their session.

All the indoor activities have been moved into the large playroom to allow the outside area increased supervision. The garden door will be open during all weathers and children will be able to choose whether they learn and play inside or outside.

“There is a growing body of research that shows that young children’s access to nature and outdoor play is positively associated with improved self-esteem, physical health, development of language skills and disposition to learning.” (Davy, 2009 (57))(1)

The children have already been enjoying the greater access to the nursery garden this small change has provided.

We can provide waterproofs for the children on wet days but, to help the smooth running of free flow, parents are being asked to supply their child with a pair of  wellies to be left in nursery and ensure they bring a bag with a change of clothes everyday.

Lastly a reminder that you can check out Westfield Nursery’s learning journey, for the term, on our sway.

Nursery Week

Another busy week in the nursery. Some of the activities the children enjoyed included bubble painting. It was tricking remembering to blow through the straw and not suck!

As you can see our broad beans are growing, some children measured them and compared the sizes of the plants.

A number of children created a band and made a stage from the blocks. They practiced their rhythm using different instruments.

The children also enjoyed developing their math skills using a maths game on the smart board.

The children carried on taking responsibility for clearing and washing their own plates at snack time.

The Scholastic Book Fair has arrived!

We have displays packed full of exciting books for sale. Please come in and browse, or send in orders via the form that was sent home this week. For every book sold, the school will receive credits that will be transformed into books for use in school.

For top tips on how to encourage reading at home, please click on the following link:
http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning/learning-resources/resource/reading-with-children-and-teenagers-top-tips-sheets-for-parents

 

P3/4/5

I enjoyed doing PE volleyball with Mr cox-Cyrus

I enjoyed making the mosques in a sunset-Ava

I enjoyed painting the towers-Helen

I enjoyed doing maths we learned how to do a percentage with fractions and decimals-Rebecca

I enjoyed doing maths and in maths we learned how to turn a percentage in to a fraction and a decimal -Lewis

I enjoyed making fish out of willow in outdoor learning -Finlay

In art we were drawing/painting daffodils  by coping steps.-Alexander

I enjoyed wearing my pj’s on Friday.:-)-Meah

I enjoyed doing my soft start which was questions if you got them right you keep the card i got 8 right- Chloe

l need really hard work for homework like my 6x tables/Jamie

I enjoyed doing maths because in maths we are doing our three times table and we are doing chimney sums and i got every single one right – Sophie lee

I enjoyed handwriting because it was not to hard but not to easy-Toby

I enjoyed outdoor learning will Mrs Ferguson because we were making fish with sticks it was really hard at first but it got much more easier we were outside it started to rain so we went inside to get some shelter- Tia

I enjoyed PE with Mr cox because it was fun-Angus

I like doing my math. I have been learning my 2 and 3 times tables and I know them – Jack

I get excited to do maths because I’m understanding it now and getting it right – Amber

I liked math in Mrs browns class because it is challenging for me and that is because we are on decimals with using different math operations – Melissa

I liked making the willow fish with Mrs Ferguson in outdoor/indoor learning and I also helped people make theirs-Ava

I liked making a theme park in the hall-Kieran

 

 

Our new logo!

The wonderful new logo, designed by pupils with the help of Lesley Welsh (art specialist) will now be appearing on letterheads and other paperwork, and will be on new uniforms from August 2017!

Thanks to Lesley for helping the children with their design, and to Alec Cheer from New College Lanarkshire who digitised the image ready for us to use.

Showcase assembly

Thank you to everyone who came to our Showcase assembly yesterday. We enjoyed sharing our learning with you.

We hope to see you in school again soon so we can share our learning again.

Our visitors creating their own dinosaurs. We had a Doggysaurus and a Longleggedsaurus.

Our dinosaur lands that we made as a homework task.

More mums and dads creating their own dinosaurs.

Guessing which dinosaurs made our fossils.

Our visitors were hard at work pretending they were Paleontologists by removing chocolate chips from cookies using toothpicks.

 

By Callum, Kaila, Christopher, Maris, Stephen and Henry

 

P1/2 last week

In reading, we focused on the Jack and the Beanstalk story, answering comprehension questions and describing the characters using wow words. We also used props to act out the story with a partner and used yellow split peas to make something from the story – one of the characters, settings and even the beanstalk.

In maths, some of us have been learning our two times table. Others have been using ten frames to support their understanding of addition. Some of us have been developing our understanding of subtraction and others have been counting in 10s.

In language, some of us have been matching words with pictures to help our decoding and blending skills. We had to read the three sounds in the word and work to blend them together to read the word.

In health we have been learning all about medicines and how to stay safe around them. We focused this week on some do’s and don’ts of medicines including who to take medicines from.

In writing, we have been continuing our dinosaur adventure stories to get them ready for the West Lothian Young Writer competition.

By Josh, Ruby, Henry, Adam, Connor, Kaila and Ciara.

Nursery Week

This has been a busy week in the Nursery. Children have enjoyed lots of different learning activities from painting to making beanstalks for Jack, from Jack and the Beanstalk, to climb.

Some children even decided to make volcanoes from junk.

 

The children also voted for the healthy vegetables they want to grow in the vegetable patch.

The morning children will be growing pumpkins, carrots and potatoes, while the afternoon children voted to plant peas, beetroot, onions and lettuce.

Please check out sway for more details.