Nursery News
As we’re about to start our second term in nursery, we thought it would be a lovely opportunity to have a look back at some of the highlights of last term.
At the start of term our nursery was visited by a crew of treasure-hunting pirates. After finding a map of the nursery garden, they enlisted the help of the children to help find the buried treasure. After a very exciting treasure hunt, we found some pirate story stones buried beneath a big X. The children used the stones to share some wonderful stories with each other, many of which are displayed in our foyer. We also made a collection of their illustrated pirate short stories for them to look at in our story corner. Because of their interest in pirates, the children started making their own pirate maps and hiding their own treasure around the nursery. Usually the only clue was a map, and an X drawn in chalk or made out of sticks – to show where they had hidden it.
Following the children’s interests, we started learning about animals. Some groups were more interested in learning about pets, while others preferred to find out about wild animals. One group used a metre stick and a lot of ribbon to find out how long the biggest snake ever found was. If you would like to see it, their ribbon snake can now be seen around the top of the bottom nursery’s ceiling. It’s 15 metres long! Other groups measured how big an elephant would be and discovered an adult elephant is so big it couldn’t even fit into our nursery. It was lovely listening to the children’s experiences of visiting zoos. A few of the children had even seen some of the animals we talked about, in the wild.
One of the nursery children brought in a photo of his leopard gecko and the eggs she had laid and shared the photos with his group. Everybody was fascinated. So Mrs Hall’s son came in with Chloe the leopard gecko and talked to the children about taking care of geckos. Many of the children enjoyed holding her. We also invited an officer from the SSPCA to come in and talk to the children. They learnt about the work the SSPCA do and then talked about ways they could help their own pets and what to do if they came across any injured animals. Our role play area became an SSPCA centre/ animal hospital which gave the children plenty of opportunity to share what they’d learnt and what they knew about taking care of animals whilst exploring some of the jobs that people do in our community.
As autumn came closer, many of the children started to talk more about the animals that they’d seen getting ready for winter. One of the children brought in some pine cones that had been partly eaten by squirrels and several children found food in the nursery garden that they wanted to eat. This led us to start exploring autumn food. We talked about how some food is for animals, some is for people, and some can be eaten by both. One of the children talked to the group about poisonous berries and why it is important to check with an adult before eating anything that you find growing. Another child talked about what happened if you ate berries that weren’t ripe The children have enjoyed finding apples and brambles in the nursery and have started showing us any food they find. We check it together to see if it was safe to eat, before washing and eating it, or making it in to a delicious crumble. Although the Hedgehogs and Rabbits preferred Gruffalo crumble!
Meanwhile the Rabbits have been enjoying exploring outer space. They started hunting for space rocks in the nursery garden and have regularly been blasting in to space for adventures and moonwalks. Potato aliens started appearing all around the nursery and there were always lots of astronauts in the space station role play area. The tray of moondust was a big hit. The children enjoyed playing with it and in some cases rolling in it. They discovered that when it was added to paint, it was wonderful for making textured lumpy paint. Next term we are hoping to explore a famous artist that also created paintings with very thick swirls and lumps of paint, although I don’t think he ever used his wellington boots to spread it onto his canvases.
Next term we will also continue to explore what happens in autumn. The children have been fascinated by some of the nuts they found in the nursery garden and wondered if they were small coconuts. We are hoping to plant some of the seeds and nuts that we find around the school and nursery and see what they grow into. Perhaps we can grow our very own forest. We have looked at leaves and watched them changing colour. In the main entrance of the nursery you can see the leaf garland some of the children made by threading leaves onto raffia with a needle. It really helps the children develop a good pincer grip which will help when they start writing. We will also look at ways we can help creatures like hedgehogs and birds as the weather starts to get colder.
We have been looking at making our Christmas in nursery extra special this year, so we will be focussing on Christmas traditions – not just from Scotland but also from countries around the world. We will learn songs and traditions, try foods, listen to stories and make all kinds of crafts – mostly child-led ones. We are also going to have our own special Celebration of Light to which we would like to invite all parents and carers, grandparents and friends. We hope you will be able to join us for a candlelit parade and songs by the campfire, and maybe even a hot chocolate. We will also host Christmas parties which will be full of seasonal games and activities – not to mention a special visitor, of course! To help with our celebrations we are collecting jam jars over the next few weeks. If you have any spare we would be grateful for any you could pass on to us.
A big thank you to everyone that has been involved with our Focus group. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 4th November. At the last meeting we talked about the possibility of setting up a nursery Facebook page, as it was felt it is easier for people to use than the blog. We have now set up a private group. Please email if you would like adding to the group and we can send you an invitation. We also discussed changing our eprofile provider to one that is more user friendly.
Also thank you to everyone that helped make our Come and Craft session so much fun. We hope you enjoyed it as much as our nursery team did.