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!

Chinese New Year, Pancake and valentines day!

We have had such a busy week learning about different festivals and celebrations.

On Monday we learned about Chinese New Year.  We made some money wallets to take home a lucky penny.  We shined the pennies in vinegar before putting them in our red wallets which we had decorated with some Chinese writing.    We practiced some Chinese writing on our large easels.

We then tried some noodles for snack and even had a go at using chopsticks to eat them.  We loved this and asked if we could do it again sometime.

We made a Chinese Dragon then did some dancing to music and took a walk through the school to show all the other boys and girls. We announced on the school tannoy that there was a dragon on the loose!

This is the head of the dragon that we made.

 

On Tuesday it was Pancake day.  We all made our own pancakes for snack.

Then we cooked them.

 

Some of us even had a go at flipping them!

Take a look at our delicious pancakes:

 

 

We were playing 'screen games' this week where we worked in pairs, covered by a screen.  One of us had to give instructions for the other person to follow.  We really enjoyed this and asked to keep it out for the full session. 

 

We had rice in our sensory table this week.  We added in the magnet wands and metal balls and were learning a bit about forces as we explored them.

We made Valentines Day Hearts on Thursday to all our special people at home.  

We also made some strawberry jelly valentines playdough and were busy making heart shaped biscuits for each other.

 

 We also had a red valentines snack of tomatoes, peppers and red apples. 

We are looking forward to a quieter week next week!

Nursery and Preschool Registration Week

Monday 11th - Friday 15th February is the Nursery and Preschool enrolment week.

If you child was born between 1st March 2009 - 28th February 2010, they will now need to register for their full year of preschool.

If your child was born between 1st March 2010 - 28th February 2011, they will now need to register for their place in nursery. 

Preschool registration packs will be in the children's trays on Monday. 

Nursery registration packs for the Stromness Catchment area are now available from the school reception. 

All completed forms need to be returned to the school by Friday 1st March 2013.

January

We have had an extra busy month having moved into our new nursery.  Check out some of the activities that we have been doing:

We love our new outdoor space and have been outside playing nearly every single day since we moved schools.  We have been very imaginative in the way that we have played with the climbing logs, rolling logs, caterpillar, boardwalk and grassy mound.  

Even better....it snowed!  We discovered ice, snowballs, cold, melting, footprints, tracks and snow angels.

   Inside, we have been drawing and playing games on our new Interactive SMART board.  We have been learning new tricks every day and love using our photos on the board to sign ourselves in each day.  

We love our new purple sand and have been exploring pouring and filling, transferring, measuring  baking, sorting, hiding objects and many other games that we can play in it.  

Our big bricks our back and are more popular than ever now that we have a great big space for building it.  We have had a lot of 'fires' in the nursery this week requiring us to build fire engines to put them out!

We discovered that the new library is a lovely place to visit on very windy days when it is not safe to go outside.  The beanbags were nearly as big as us!  They were very comfy!

We celebrated Burns day with some pipe music, dancing, haggis and oatcakes.

We had a teeth-brushing session and were practicing our little gentle circles on the teddie's teeth.

We are participating in the Scottish Book Awards so have been reading the stories 

Jack and the Flumflum Tree

The Day Louis Got Eaten

Solomon Crocodile.

We have undertaken some activities relating to these stories to get to know them well.  We shall be voting on our favourite story next week for The Scottish Book Awards 2013.