January

Week commencing 29th January 2024

It was a very mixed week of weather this week - it is rare for the Nursery not to get outside to play every day, but unusually we had two indoor days, one due to the very high winds and the other due to the excessive rain!

We put our extra time indoors to good use and had lots of fun practicing our building skills, being creative, learning how to take turns, investigating different materials in our mini tuff tray and doing lots of singing and dancing. We also continued to develop our IT skills and more of us got the chance to learn how to use the i-pad to take photographs, gathering a rather vast selection of indoor images! Some of us also started to learn how to use the mouse with the desktop, navigating round the screen and clicking on icons as directed.

Despite our weather, we still had lots of fun outdoors practicing our balancing skills, mark making with chalk, and looking after the birds. The dinosaurs were grateful to get out of their box and came out to to stretch their legs. We also took a train ride to Grantown and made a bus journey to Aviemore for ice cream (very expensive thought at £100!). 

Enjoy the photographs - we look forward to seeing you all next week!

Weeks commencing 8th, 15th and 22nd January 2024

It was lovely to see everyone after the holidays and hear all their Christmas stories! We spent the first week settling in and welcoming our new starts, helping them learn our routines and how we stay safe at nursery when in the school, out in the garden and on Explorers. We were delighted to welcome Miss Langmuir and Miss Sobczak to nursery. Miss Langmuir will now be with us Tues - Fri, 9.00 - 12.00. Miss Sobczak is a student on placement and will be be with us this term Wed - Fri. 

It was a very cold start to the term and the frosty weather had created lots of slippery surfaces in the garden, so we had to do safety checks and do some gritting before getting to play! Our garden looked very pretty in the frost and in the first few days we spotted frosty spiders webs, saw and heard a gaggle of geese flying overhead and were amazed by the number of wee birds at the feeders in the school playground. We were also fascinated by seeing our breath condense in the the cold air and found lots of ice in different places, especially in our pots and tubs in the mud kitchen. Because we had noticed so many signs, we decided it would be interesting to see what else we could learn about winter such as how do we stay safe, what happens to animals in the cold weather and how ice and snow can change form.

We had a look at what clothes we should wear in cold weather to keep us warm and cosy, and designed our own gloves by drawing round our hands, practicing our pencil control and using our cutting skills to cut them out for our winter display. We are reading 'Ziggy Visits Granny' to learn about how we stay safe when crossing the road in the country, especially when the mornings are dark. We should finish this next week and the children who don't yet have a copy, will get their own book to take home.

We recorded the signs of winter using the Nursery i-pad, learning how we switch it on and find the camera symbol, and then how we take photographs and look back at them. We captured some fabulous images of birds at the feeders, wintry scenes, frosty spiders web, some new shoots and even a dinosaur rolling in the snow! In our search for wintry signs, we found some bowls with ice in them and took them indoors to see what would happen to them - the ones sitting on the radiator disappeared quickest!

We researched some interesting facts on the internet about Emperor Penguins and the snowy conditions they live in, and drew a life size penguin to see how tall it was. We learned to sing the "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do You Hear?" song, using sequencing cards to help us remember the order - what fantastic singers we have in nursery!

We had lovely fun making bird feeders by squidging together bird seed and lard with our hands, then coating pine cones and cardboard tubes with the mix. We hung them in our bird feeding station in the garden and we're hoping they'll find them before we do our RSPB Birdwatch next Friday!

We had our first PE lesson this term, and our older children were very helpful with our newbies, helping them learn how to behave in the school corridors and in the gym hall.  As it was very wet outside, we had a rainy day themed lesson and had lots of fun practicing how we move and use space safely, using hoops as puddles to run around and jump in and out of. Despite the weather, we managed to get outdoor play everyday and went on a couple of Explorers walks, taking the opportunity to look at the different signs of winter around the forest.

As the children are still showing interest, we will be continuing with learning more about winter next week, leading us into the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch on Friday. Have a lovely weekend all and we look forward to seeing you next week.