Author Archives: Loanhead P.S

Meditation

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Happy Thursday everyone,

We hope that you found the zones of regulation chart a useful tool and are able to use it with your child at home. The chart lets children explore the different feelings they can experience on any day and helps them identify and name their emotions and feelings. 

Here are some more ideas and activities to help your child recognise and explore their feelings and emotions through drawing, writing, talking and listening. These are activities that help children build vocabulary and word recognition skills around topics that relate directly to their daily lives and experiences. 

All you need is a pen or pencil and some paper.

Ask your child “can you draw me a sad or a happy face?”  To make the activity more fun you could use a mirror and ask your child to look at their own face to decide if they look happy or sad. You could extend the activity by asking more questions such as do you feel happy? What sort of things make you feel happy? Can you make a happy face? What does our mouth and eyes do when we are happy? What noise might we make? What would ‘sad’ eyes look like? Can you make me a ‘sad face’? What makes you feel sad? 

We would love to see your pictures.

We often participate in meditation sessions at nursery to bring some calming energy and relaxation at the beginning or end of a busy day.

Meditation can help children read and respond to internal signals of stress before their developing brains and bodies give in to a full-blown tantrum. The key is intuiting what your child needs to come back into balance and giving him or her the tools to practice.

Meditative music and recorded meditations can have a profoundly calming effect on children. We have chosen 2 links to share with you. We hope you are able to take some time out to watch the meditation links along with your child.

Another useful resource attached is a copy of the ‘Play well pack’ produced by Play Scotland.

The pack has even more suggestions to support play at home and describes how important play is for children’s learning and wellbeing.

The pack is based around the SHANARI wellbeing indicators that we use to support wellbeing and ensure children develop and reach their full potential within the nursery.

PS0019-Play-ScotlandSTC-Partnership-Pack-Web

Aliens Love Underpants

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Good morning everyone,

Hope you are all having a good week. This week our story of the week is Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman.

I know you will all love this funny story and hope you enjoy the learning opportunities suggested. Remember to send any photographs of your learning or Tweet us at @NurseryLoanhead

 

Home Learning Doc 3

 

 

Happy Tuesday

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Good morning 🙂

I hope you are all feeling good today.
During group time at nursery and throughout our nursery day we use our zones of regulations to help us open up and discuss how we are feeling.
This allows children to express their feelings and learn how to self regulate. We use the poster below to identify which zone we are in and discuss strategies that we can use to move zones. You can try using this at home with your child.
This allows children to achieve good self control and emotional regulation.

____________________________

The Big Garden Bird Watch.

Since we are spending a lot of time at home and outdoors we thought we could do a spot of bird watching as we know this is a huge interest and children love to watch out for what different birds we can spot out in our nursery garden.

We would love to hear about any birds you see in your garden at home or when out on local walks. You can email this to your child’s keyworker.

For more information please follow the link below to RSPB where you can submit your findings. You can also find more fun activities.

https://www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/everything-you-need-to-know-about-big-garden-birdwatch/#Resources

Happy Bird watching.

Children’s Mental Health Week

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Good Morning!  Today is the start of a new week and a new month, today is the 1st of February and the beginning of ‘Children’s Mental Health week’.

We try very hard in nursery to boost children’s wellbeing from helping the children build resilience, the positive relationships that have been built and the access to outdoor play!  We understand that children, like adults have good days and a bad day now and then, this is one of the reasons we keep in touch with you all to see if there is anything we can do to support your children.

Remember these are difficult times for everyone, including your children.

This is a powerful and very helpful poster, with such a strong message that it is OK not to be ok.

Here is an E-book produced by the Scottish government you can read with your children, the story is, “There’s a Spider in My Hair”.  The book was written for children aged 3 to 5 and will help parents and carers explore with their children who they can turn to for help.  This book is also a good starting block to discuss feelings.

CIS-Book-LowResAW-JUN19-2

 

Hopping Mad

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Good morning boys and girls,

This Friday Mrs Donnelly has read you all a story called “Hopping Mad”, we hope you all enjoy!

More scottish activity ideas

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To continue with our Scottish theme this week here are some ideas that support emerging numeracy & literacy skills .
I wonder if some of you enjoyed a traditional burns supper ? Did you eat haggis, neeps and tatties on Monday after reading our post about it being Robert Burns birthday?
How about baking some shortbread ( a traditional Scottish biscuit )
Follow the simple recipe below .
Shortbread recipe
Ingredients

  1. Put the flour and butter into a mixing bowl and rub together with your fingers until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the vanilla & sugar .

  2. Squeeze the mixture into a ball with your hands. Sprinkle a work surface with flour and roll the dough out to a 0.5cm/¼in thickness.

  3. Use a biscuit cutter to cut out shapes and place on the baking tray. Re-roll any leftover dough to make more biscuits.

  4. Bake the biscuits for 12-15 minutes or until pale golden-brown.

This baking activity gives lots of opportunity to weigh and measure ingredients using scales and other measuring tools with a grown up supervising.

Can you  follow the instructions to weigh out the ingredients ? How about timing how long the shortbread will take to cook? Watch the clock to keep a eye on the time.

If you make some yummy shortbread please share some photographs with us.

 

 

Tartan pictures
I wonder if  you know what tartan is?
Tartan is a traditional Scottish pattern and usually seen on kilts.
Maybe you have worn a kilt or seen someone in your family wear a kilt to a special occasion such as a wedding or party.
Have a look at the tartan below .
Takla Makan Tartan | Venetian Red Art Blog
Can you make your own tartan picture?
All you need is some pens, chalk, crayons or paint and paper .
Experiment making symmetrical patterns using lines and crossing them over .
Share your creations with us.
Scottish rhymes and songs
If you were in nursery this week we would be enjoying listening to a selection of Scottish stories, rhymes and songs.
Here are two of our favourites.
Try learning the words to – Three craws
https://youtu.be/Ckhyx9QCMpo
Do you recognise any of the Scottish words and know what they mean?
Can you join in the rhyme using your fingers to represent the number of craws, counting down as they fall?
Can you practice counting up to 3? Or how about counting up to 5 or even 10 or more?
Our all time favourite that we sing all year round in the nursery is – You cannae shove your Granny off the bus. This is such an upbeat song even our quieter children love dancing and singing along at the top of their voice. Get your grown ups singing and dancing along with you.
Have fun and remember to share your learning with us.
We love to hear what you have all been up to, as we miss you all very much.

The Smartest Giant in Town

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Good Morning everyone!

This week our story of the week is “The Smartest Giant in Town” by Julia Donaldson. Please click on the link below to access the story and some great ideas for learning experiences. If you complete any of the tasks we would love to see your photos! Maybe you could send them to your keyworker or post them on our nursery Twitter!

Giant in Town Final1(002)

Homemade play dough

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Good Morning, 

who would like to try making their own play dough?

All children at nursery love working at our play dough station. This provides endless sensory fun and allows children to explore different sizes, shapes, patterns and promotes imaginative play. 

All you need is-

Ingredients

  • 1 cup of flour
  • 2 tsp cream of tartar 
  • 1/2 cup of salt 
  • 1 tbsp vegetable oil 
  • 1 cup of water 
  • food colouring 

Method 


1. In a large bowl, combine all of your dry ingredients (flour, salt, cream of tartar) and mix well.

2. Mix food coloring with your water first. Then add the vegetable oil and water with food coloring to a large pot. Mix together. (Food colouring is optional). 

3. Add the dry ingredients to your pot and mix well.

4. Cool over a low heat until the dough starts to form and becomes dry.

 

5. Once it starts to form a ball together and looks fully cooked, take it off the heat. Let the dough cool first before touching. 

6. Once cool, knead the dough for 5 minutes to make the dough soft. 

Children also enjoy adding different scents to the play dough or textures for example glitters, seeds etc.

 

You can also follow the above recipe for a no cook play dough recipe using a large bowl missing out the cream of tartar and mix with cold water.

 

I hope you all have a great day today.

 

From everyone at nursery ☺️