Ready Steady Go… on PhotoPeach

The children finally completed their obstacle course after our fourth attempt. They had such a great time going across the bridge, through the tunnel, under the parachute, along the plank and in and out the tyres.Thank you to everyone who turned out to watch and cheer them on. Also thank you to everyone who helped support the children with the various obstacles. The amount raised so far is £1012.00. This money will be used towards our Summer Family Outing to East Links Farm.

Party, Party, Party on PhotoPeach

We celebrated the Queens Diamond Jubilee on Thursday 31st May and Friday 1st June. There was lots to prepare for our celebrations and we made bunting and crowns. We have been learning about Queen Elizabeth and her family and that she has been our Queen for 60 years. An email was sent to congratulate her ‘wearing the crown’ for such a long time and looking after our country. Guess what? Buckingham Palace sent a reply to say thank you for our kind words.

We baked special ‘Queen’ cakes for our party and learned the rhyme ‘Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been?’ On Thursday and Friday we had a special Jubilee Celebration in the Sunshine Room. We came to nursery wearing red, white and blue because that is the colours in the ‘Union Flag.’ We had a fabulous time.

You will never guess who came to visit the nursery! Why not have a look at our slideshow and find out who popped in to hand out our celebration bears and cake pops.

Thank you to everyone who took part in our Walking Bus during Walk to School Week, especially when the weather was so awful. We will be collating the results and displaying them in the pram porch. We have talked to the children about the benefits of walking to nursery if at all possible. Walking helps to develop fitness levels, it helps to reduce carbon emissions in the environment and congestion at the school gates. As we walked together to nursery we discussed the importance of keeping ourselves safe when out and about. We know to take hands with our grown ups, look and listen for traffic and always find safe places to cross. At the end of the session the children received their new books from the Ziggy collection, courtesy of Safer Scotland, Scottish Government and Road Safety Scotland.

Thank you to Kirsty, Claire and their family for providing the nursery with frogspawn from their pond. We have watched this change and now have tiny froglets. They are quite amazing. The children have cared for them ensuring they have enough water, (collected from our water butt), chickweed and daphnia to eat. They have observed the changes through the various stages and pointed out the back legs, front legs and finally little frogs. They are beginning to understand that as tadpoles they stay in the water and as frogs they need to be able to climb out and therefore their habitat had to be changed as they developed. They learned to be very gentle as they helped to clean out the ‘little indoor pond’. Some of them have now gone back to the big pond but hopefully in the near future we will have an outdoor pond of our own.

We would like to wish all our friends and families a very Happy Easter. All children return on Tuesday 17th April. We will look forward to hearing all your news when you come back.

In the nursery we have been talking about Spring and Easter and what that means to us. We have thought about the animals who will be wakening from their hibernation and the new baby animals such as the birds and lambs being born. We have been observing our tadpoles daily and will look out for any changes over the holiday period.

The boys and girls enjoyed the story of Max and the Chocolate Chicken by Rosemary Wells, which led to us having our own Easter Egg hunt. They demonstrated very good matching skills as they matched the eggs to the ones in their basket.

We have also made some beautiful Easter gluings and paintings. Everyone took home an Chocolate Easter Nest as a special treat. Easter Fun on PhotoPeach

Over the last week we have celebrated Mother’s Day and St Patricks Day.

We have talked about what we do with our mummies and why we love them. We made a tree of love with all their interesting comments hanging from it. The children also made special gifts and cards to say Thank You to their mums for all their love and kindness.

St Patrick’s Day was celebrated with Irish Dancing, Champ for snack (mashed potatoes and scallions – spring onions). We learned about St Patrick and what he did for Ireland. We also heard the story of Finn MacCool and the baby. Finn was an Irish Giant who built the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim. We performed this story through music and dance. This is a fantastic story which the children thoroughly enjoyed.

The children have been enjoying shopping at Levenhall Shop’. They have written their own shopping ‘wish’ list which included a bear, some oranges, bananas, socks and sweeties as a special treat. They have been learning about the role of the shop keeper, working the till and handling ‘money’. The prices are very reasonable – perhaps you should look in!

We have also played a shopping game where the children have to ‘read’ the shopping list and find the items on the shop floor. They are very good at finding the items for their shopping trolley.

Here at Levenhall we aim to foster a love of books and an interest in literacy. The children were invited to bring their favourite books to nursery and throughout the week we have read these stories to the children. To promote this on World Book Day (1st March 2012) some of the children received their Bookbug Pirate Bag and the others received a special book to take home. They were very pleased with their gifts. You can see how they are looking after their books and turning the pages carefully.

Dance, Dance, Dance on PhotoPeach

We have recently started our annual creative dance sessions at MECLA. The children have enjoyed using dance as a medium to express themselves and act out a story. They have been learning about different ways to move and make shapes with their bodies. We are working on a dance routine, which we hope to show parents in May as part of ‘The Big School Dance Pledge’.

One of our children informed us that it wasn’t winter anymore, it was spring. She was right, we are now in the season of spring and many of the flowers are peeping up through the grass. The snowdrops were first to come through in the garden, next came crocus and now daffodils. We have watched our resident magpies taking pieces of twigs from an old nest. It is possible they are building their nest at the top of the fir tree. We have observed the flowers and made comparisons in shape, size and colour. These observations were recorded in paintings, which we have put on display in the rooms. Look out for these when you come in.