November - December 24

w/c 16 December 2024

Jolly Jingle

Our Jolly Jingle was a great success! The children practised well and sang so beautifully for their adult visitors - what a wonderful performance! Thank you to everyone who came along and took part in our festive experiences.

Creating snowflakes together

Rolling paper to make Rudolph's nose

Crawl through Christmas hoops!

Through the icy tunnel!

Carrots for the reindeers!

Snowball throw!

In my sleigh, ho, ho, ho!

Along the snowy rooftop!

Presents down the chimney!

w/c 9 December 2024

Bonnyton House

Some of the nursery children visited Bonnyton House this week to spread Christmas cheer to the residents. Wearing Santa hats, they sang ‘We All Go To Busby Nursery’, ‘Wind the Bobbin’ and ‘Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, 'We’re Going To The Moon’, and played one of their favourite games, 'The Bear and the Honey Pot’. They finished their performance with a sneak preview of our Jolly Jingle Christmas songs, including our chimney prop where our Santa got ‘stuck’ inside! It was lovely to see some of the residents joining in by clapping and shaking jingle bells. We are so pleased that our visit brought a smile to their faces! On our walk back to nursery, we saw Christmas decorations, a holly bush and a boat in a driveway that sparked a conversation about Captain Hook living near Busby Nursery 'that's Captain Hook's boat'.

'They are
wee stoaters!' (Resident)

'Just lovely.' (Resident)

'Oh look its big Santa!'

'Oh I like these bells.'
(Resident)

'High five'
(two residents came to the door to wave children away)

'Ting ting ting' (Sound from the triangle)

'Clap, clap clap your hands!'

Ice Hunt We experimented with all the ice that had formed overnight and had fun exploring our garden to find more.

'It's super hard to crack
when it's cold'

'Ice, when it's so cold,
when it freezes'

'Look at this one!'

'I found a triangle one!'

We explored the Secret Garden for more ice, had fun rolling down the hill and made a sledge using fabric.

We spotted frosted spider webs on our nursery gates.

w/c 2 December 2024

Pattern Painting

We have been experimenting with different painting techniques such as printing to develop our creative skills. We used some of our building blocks and the children painted over different sizes of triangles to print shapes to create Christmas tree art.

We spoke about the properties of shapes and identified triangles have three sides.

'snow falling'

'using my fingers, lights'

Engineers in the making!

Just chilling!

w/c 25 November 2024

Let's Go Shopping! In the last few weeks children have been engaging in positive and interesting conversations about money during their play. To support and help children link this learning with real life, what better than a visit to our local supermarket. Inviting children to make decisions about spending money helps them build their confidence to develop their financial skills and independence. This is the next stage of their learning journey!

First things first before venturing out – a shopping list and a plan! Children decided on buying ingredients to make a pizza. Before departing children looked again at all the different coins they explored last week, then put in each purse ten pence’s to the total of one pound, two fifty pence’s in another and so on to gain an understanding of monetary value. Watch this space for perfect pizza which will be made on their return!

Take a look at their exciting expedition…...

'Oh that is expensive!'

'The shelves are too high for children.'

'That’s my TESCO.'

'That’s a very high lorry…..you could fit a big house in there.'

'I’ve never been this way before.'

'My house is round there.'

'So we got tomatoes and cheese and stuff.'

'It cost one seven seven.'

'Cheese is my favourite food.'

'Cheese is expensive, its five..'

'I didn’t get change back.'

'I gave exact amount.'

Let It Snow, Let It Snow
Inspired by our snowy weekend, the children enjoyed creating snowmen, winter tree and snowy artwork. What lovely detailed creations! We spoke about the weather changing and described what it looked like and felt it - the children were very descriptive, using wonderful language skills!

'Snow is falling from the sky.'

'Snow falls and when it rains it melts, snow is cold'

'Snow falling, it was freezing, my hands were freezing and my gloves got colden.'

'I'm going to make a tree, the mouses sneak in the hole'

'Big snow falling down, frosty, cold.'

'Snow, we can make a snowman in it'

'Water frozed up'

w/c 18 November 2024

The children are investigating money by playing shops and discovering coins have different names, shapes, sizes and colours. Exploring money through play allows children to build their confidence and helps them develop their financial skills and independence. We had great conversations about money!

“These two are brown…this one is smaller.”

“You need to pay for clothes and food and stuff.”

“Fifty pence is the biggest of them all!”

“We need to save money to go on holiday.”

“I am at the till…I’m selling things …you are buying them.”

'I want lots of money. I want all of them'

'We need money so we can pay'

'We need to save money'

'We use money to buy magazines'

'I am collecting silver coins. This is the smallest.'(Five pence)

We also played coin dominos!

We have been learning about SIMOA

SIMOA is an elephant character created by the Care Inspectorate to help early learning and childcare practitioners keep children safe. It can help our families too.

SIMOA stands for Safe, Inspect, Monitor, Observe, Act.

We use SIMOA in a variety of ways, including poster and art work, puppets, discussions and

floorbooks. These can help children and families understand how to stay safe and secure in a setting.

https://hub.careinspectorate.com/media/4530/keeping-children-safe-poster-artwork-simoa.pdf

Let's prepare snack! We demonstrated our great cutting skills by cutting up slices of apple for snack. Everyone was very responsible using our knives while developing life skills.

Milkshake Time! We followed our recipe and worked together to make a mixed berries milkshake. The children were very careful adding in ingredients and checked the measurements. We all had a turn to press the blender button and it was so noisy. The children enjoyed tasting it and everyone had it for snack - yum yum!

'I like it, yummy'

w/c 11 November 2024

Amazing Adventures What a wonderful week the children have had! Everyone was excited to visit Busby Glen and explore the unknown. We were ready to discover new things about ourselves and learn how to manage potential risk, while learning about the world around us.

“I like mushrooms but they are poisonous.”

“The leaves are all brown.”

“Leaves aren’t crunchy!”

“…choo choo it’s our train” (fallen tree trunk)

“The water is really cold!”

“You can’t swim in it”

“Awwww a baby fairy”

We also went to the park on the way back to nursery!

Teamwork! Problem solving by working together

Money, money, money We are investigating money and finding out there are different shapes, sizes and colours of coins. Can you find 1p?

w/c 4 November 2024

Game Time We've had a busy week enjoying taking part in numerous games such as Pairs, Snake and Ladders, and puzzles.

Having fun developing lots of skills!

communication and social interaction

visual and short term memory

patience

turn taking

problem solving

playing fairly

Musical Marching The children took part in our musical game where we identified how many syllables are in our names. By adding drumming and marching, this highlights the syllables to help embed our literacy skills, as well as having lots of fun!

We're Going on a Bear Hunt Bringing the story alive with interactive storytelling.

Outdoor Spaces The great outdoors, sand, water, curiosity, problem solving, teamwork and creativity - what more do we require to create limitless learning opportunities for our children!

This was evident this week in our outdoor spaces, take a look at children having a shared vision using mathematical concepts and science based exploration creating a water channel in the sand then adding water to observe “the flow” of water. They manipulated materials discovering cause and effect in the process!

'we're making a waterfall'

Plenty of loose parts available in the Secret Garden to enable children to construct a water channel with guttering, demonstrating great teamwork at play. Children were moving their bodies in a tactical way, stretching and positioning the guttering to a tall height in order to see the waters’ trajectory. Not an easy task!

A schema is a pattern of learning, linking perceptions ideas and action to make sense of the world.

See more about schemas - trajectory, connection, rotation, enveloping and transforming by accessing this link www.teachearlyyears.com/enabling-environments/view/supporting-schemas