Holidays close… just a reminder!

Just to remind you all that nursery will finish for the October break on Friday 4th October (both sessions will run normally that day) and children will return on Tuesday 22nd October.
We will be starting our stay and play sessions in nursery when we return and will organise dates with you for this if you have indicated that you wish to come into nursery to spend some time with your child via the parent helper lists in the children’s cloakroom. If you still haven’t added your name to these lists and would like to come in please add your name as soon as possible. Thank you.
We hope you all have a happy and safe October break.

Weekly roundup….

The children started to learn about what lives under the sea and enjoyed exploring some real seaweed in one of our outdoor exploration trays. They talked about what sea creatures they liked and shared their knowledge of sea creatures with the other children. Sharks were the most popular sea creatures with both groups and a few children really surprised the staff with what they actually knew about them! Several children helped complete a fantastic large scale fish collage picture using a variety of materials while others painted a really colourful shark. The smart board was well utilised as usual! for a variety of activities including watching and listening to stories about sea creatures and exploring an ‘Octonauts’ game, catching the jellyfish while watching not to get eaten by the sharks!
We also had a super drumming session with Steve from Drumfun which everyone enjoyed albeit very very noisey!!!

New member of the team!

We have a new member of staff, Miss Erin Rutherford, who will be joining our team after the October holidays. She will job share with Miss Nikki Munro and replace Mrs Maarianne MacLeod who has been working with us on a supply basis each Monday and Friday since August.

Transition into nursery survey

We would be grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete a short survey using the link below with regard to yours and your child’s experiences during the transition to Crown Nursery.

Thank you very much for your help.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WVWQM65

Bottles wanted!

Do you have any small plastic bottles with lids that we could use for a science activity in nursery? If so, could you please hand them in? We are planning to do an ‘Ocean in a bottle’ activity with the children and will require several of these to make the activity possible so please start collecting! Thank you.

Weekly roundup

The children have had yet another fun packed week in nursery this week learning even more about pirates. They have been using the smart board for a number of activities including an activity which taught them more about how pirates used to live in the past and most children agreed that we have much better lives today than pirates did long ago! although some (particularly the boys!) thought that pirates had a really exciting time at sea, going to battle and firing canons from their ships! Several of the children made up their own pirate adventure stories (using super imaginations and great use of language) and the morning group helped Percy the parrot with a literacy challenge.

We visited the gym and All Weather Pitch as part of our health and well being focus this week to practice our ball control and play co-operative group games. Mrs Danby, our visiting PE specialist came to see the afternoon group on Friday and was really impressed at the progress they are making with her exercise session!

A huge thank you to all parents and Primary 7 pupils who helped us on our sponsored walks on Friday. The weather stayed dry for us, which was great, and all the children did an amazing job either walking or cycling the 10 laps of the school grounds. We were amazed at how much energy most of the children still had when they were finished! Could we ask that all sponsor money is collected prior to the October break and handed to a member of the nursery team, we will then let you know exactly how much has been raised this year.

It was super to see such a good turn out of parents at our open morning/afternoon on Thursday. We hope that everyone who did manage to come along enjoyed their visit. If you didn’t manage to come along we would be very pleased to see you at another time (please speak to a member of the nursery team and we will work out a date for you).

Quick reminder…..

Just to remind you all about the nursery parents open morning and afternoon on Thursday 19th September. Morning nursery parents are welcome to come and join us from 10.30 until 11.30am and afternoon parents from 1.30 until 2.30pm. We would love you to join us (even for a short time) so please come along if you can! You are free to take your children home early following your visit, if you wish to do so.

We are still awaiting the return of several permission slips for our proposed sponsored walk/cycle on Friday 20th September. Please return these a.s.a.p. so that we can finalise arrangements for this. We are also still looking for parent helpers for the event (particularly in the afternoon group) so please let us know if you are able to assist with this event, thank you.

Weekly roundup

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We have had another packed week full of activities in the nursery this week which started with our celebrations on Monday to mark the ‘Blas’ festival. Lucy from Eden Court Theatre came to tell us a fantastic Scottish themed story and the children all got involved in the story by using different props.

Some of the children made other parts for our large scale pirate ship including an anchor, steering wheel and sails, It looks fantastic! We made super pirate ship flags, pirate passports and thought of some great names for our ship. We have started to look at real money, recognising coins, doing coin rubbings and talking about what we might use money for, shopping for toys was a very popular answer here!!!!. The children also enjoyed a variety of physical play opportunities, particularly the ‘cybercoach’ disco themed exercises on the smart board.

It was a super end to the week on Friday with our Pirate themed activity day with Primary 1. Thank you so much to all parents who came to help us with this, it was much appreciated. The children all looked amazing dressed in their pirate attire! We have posted some of the photos the nursery staff took during this week and hope you enjoy browsing through them.

Can you help? We are continuing to develop our outdoor area and will hopefully be able to progress this further throughout the year through monies raised from our fundraising initiatives. Do you have any wooden planks, pieces of drainpipe or other natural materials that could be used for the children to extend their imaginations during outdoor play? If you do and would be happy to donate them to the nursery then please let us know.