Lots of visitors this week!

We created a new reading/quiet corner this week and have been enjoying listening to and reading stories.  Some of us have been taking our babies over from the house to read to them too.  We like having some relaxing music over here so that we can have some chill out time in the busy nursery. 

We have been continuing with developing our balancing skills in the hall and have really enjoyed trying out all of the different balancing equipment. We are getting more confident each week.

We have been missing our stage this week so we decided that we would build our own with the blocks.  We worked really well together as a team and gave the grown ups a lovely performance.

 We are still enjoying learning about the properties of shapes as we use shapes to make pictures on the SMARTBoard and make gluey pictures with shapes.

 We were presented with a teamwork challenge this week where we had to get every child in the nursery across our nursery playground without anyone touching the tarmac.  We excelled in this working really well together as a team, using all of the loose materials that we could find to build a structure to get us safely across.  We then helped each other to get across safely.  As well use leadership, teamwork and building trust, we were learning how to take risks safely.  The grownups were so impressed with how we managed this task.

 

We are very interested in dinosaurs at the moment so were delighted to find sand and dinosaurs in our sensory tray.  As we began digging we found lots of bones!  Can you imagine, dinosaur bones in the nursery??!!

To build on this, Sandra came to visit us.  She is a ranger for the SNH and she shared some photos with us of archaeologist on digs around Orkney.  She spoke to us about how we find out about things in the past such as how dinosaurs lived. She showed us some examples of bones, necklaces, pins and potter that have been found then let us borrow some of her trowels to see if we could find these things in our sand tray. 

We took advantage of the nice weather this week.  We put on our waterproofs and had lots of fun with water outside. 

We were very creative with our blocks, building a great big aeroplane with enough seats for everyone to go on holiday!

We also had a visit from Louise and Patsy from the Library.  They were here to give us all our Bookbug Pirate packs.  The read 'Peace at Last' and sang some songs with us.  We particularly loved when they took out the big Lycra and we sent some teddies to the moon!

Ho Ho Ho...Christmas in March??!

Christmas and Santa has been a popular topic in the nursery this week with many of the children wrapping presents for each other, using their writing skills as they practise writing each others names.

We were also practising our names using the sensory trays.  Some of us used them to make a plan of what we were going to do in work time.

We have had some interest in castles this week making them with the stones and the large building blocks.  

 

We have had some very poorly children in the nursery this week so have had to call in some doctors and nurses to help us make them better.

Our waterproofs are home!  Thank you to William Shearers for helping us to get these brilliant two piece suits for the children.  We loved wearing them on the snowy day.

We had cooked spaghetti in our sensory tray this week to practise our scissor skills.  Some of us weren't very keen on the texture of it!

We have continued exploring shapes this week by going on a shape walk to find as many shapes as we could around the school and by making some shape pictures.

 

We made dens outside using our large logs, some washing line, clothes pegs and our fancy material. 

We had great fun running under it as the fabric blew in the wind.

We have been using Google Earth to find our houses.  A lot of us were having a look to see if we could see anyone inside our houses!

 We finished our week up by dressing up in red for Red Nose Day.

 

 

 

 

 

A musical week in the nursery!

There have been two main interests of the children this week in the nursery as you will see from the photos below. The Walrus in Orkney was very topical at the beginning of the week leading to a lot of talk about the sea, singing ocean related songs and reading stories about different creatures of the sea.  The children have also taken a big interest in music this week leading us to creating a more interesting music area that now includes a staged performing area with space set up for an audience!

We started off the week by setting up our new music area with new drums and xylophones to play which attracted lots of interest then the teachers brought in some of their instruments from home so we have had great fun trying out a clarinet, saxophone, bodhran and rainstick.  We were all so proud of ourselves when we managed to make some nice sounds from the instruments! 

We were looking at music books and writing some of our own music and we realised that it is super easy to play jingle bells on the recorder!

Mrs Whitford even came in and had a go at the clarinet!  We loved hearing the adults playing the instruments and requested many many tunes!

We caught Mr Jones on his way home and asked if he would play a tune for us.  We loved hearing Postman Pat on the trumpet and a few of us decided that we are going to play the trumpet when we are bigger!

As we have loved performing with the instruments this week, we asked Mr Cursiter to bring the staging in for us and set up our own performance area.  Check out how much fun we have been having on the stage!!

We were so good at our performances that we created an audience area and decided that we needed to sell tickets for our shows.

Music is not all that has been happening in the nursery though. We discovered that we had a globe in the nursery and there have been many questions about where we live and where certain places are.  As the globe was too small to find some of the places we are going to have a look at some different maps next week.  We were a bit concerned as to why there were no roads on the globe!

 

We noticed that our house was in need of some repair so we called out one of the best repair men for the job.  He had our kitchen handles fixed back on in no time!

We have been developing our fine motor skills and learning about our initial letters as we played and explored playdough. 

We created some giant necklaces using the threading beads. 

We had a lovely surprise when Tom Muir came to join our session and told us a fantastic story all about Jack and the Princess.  We thought that this was the most hilarious story that we have ever heard and couldn't stop laughing when Jack was carrying the donkey past the castle!  We loved having Tom act this part of the story out for us. 

We are starting to build up our loose material store and we have been very creative with hose pipes and tyres this week. 

Finally after such a busy week it was time for some of us just to relax and look at the pictures in the clouds!

I wonder what excitement next week may bring!

Some of last weeks highlights:

We had lovely bubbly water in the water tray this week and some of us discovered that we can blow great big bubbles using the big pipes.  This led us onto trying out some bubble painting with bubbles, paint and straw.  We had lots of messy fun and our pictures were beautiful.

We have been looking at the cold and ice the past few weeks and P2 have let us borrow their igloo.  We loved hiding in it and often used the big blocks to build a door so that no-one could see us inside!

We were learning about capacity as we explored filling and pouring with the beakers and cups in the water and using the pipes in the porridge. 

We were learning how to do ballet from some of our very own professionals who showed us how the snow fairies dance. 

 We used the small, medium and large building blocks to build some structures.  Some of us built towers and castles.  Others were building roads, the Cathedral, or trying to balance as many blocks as we could before they toppled over!