Cranston Country Nursery

This week in the Rainbow Room, we have been busy developing and exploring our literacy and numeracy skills through various activities. The children have been enjoying learning about the Zodiac animals as a continuation of Chinese New Year. They have also been discussing and sharing their individual personal knowledge and interest around one of our new topics of dinosaurs as well as learning new dinosaur songs and interesting facts. We have also been spending some time in the computer room where the boys and girls have been developing their technology, problem solving, communication and literacy skills using the computers and smart board. They have been learning new mathematical positioning language using the animals and loose parts to demonstrate ‘in front, behind, beside’.

The children in the Ladybird room have been involved in making hand print spiders to make an incy wincy spider display. The children have been singing the song and making up new song words and discussing where the spider was on their body. This helps the children to develop their knowledge of different body parts. We also were using sticks and play dough to make spiders. This allowed the children explore different ways to put the stick in the play dough.
The children have also been discussing numbers and looking at their symbol. We have written numbers in the den in the room for the children to point to while we were singing. We have created number cards with dots for the children to look at and count the dots.

This week in the Ladybird Room the children used a range of different shape cutters while playing with the play dough. They mostly used cutters shaped as people and animals. It was lovely listening to the children as they used their imagination making up their own little stories and scenarios using the play dough. We decided to make gingerbread men biscuits. The children and adults discussed different mathematical language as we measured out the ingredients. We spoke about ...the numbers on the scales, if we thought the bag of sugar and flour were heavy or light. When mixing the ingredients we spoke about the movement of mixing and how we were mixing round in a circle. The baking continued as we made cakes. The children were very good at turn taking making sure everyone had a turn of mixing and measuring out the flour, sugar, butter and eggs. The children decorated their own cakes with chocolate and sprinkles.
Happy Valentines Day❤️ The children have been very busy decorating their own card for someone special.
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Happy Valentines Day! 🌹 The Poppy Room enjoyed the messy sensory experience making special cards with our handprints and splashing in the water afterwards. 💦

Happy Valentine’s Day from the Rainbow Room!

Due to the weather Planet Soccer will be cancelled tomorrow.

UPDATE!!! weather conditions are getting worse. Parents have reported that Driving conditions are dangerous, Vogrie road has not been gritted and has caused major issues with parents who have already pick children up. Edgehead to whitehill is extremely slippy and causing poor control of the vehicle.

For all parents with children in nursery today. Please be aware that the snow is heavily coming down at present time and is lying on the ground. This may cause hazardous driving conditions and hold ups on the roads. Please allow sufficient time to be able to pick your child up safely.

Over the past 2 weeks, the children and staff in the Rainbow Room have been learning and celebrating Chinese New Year. We have all been enjoying participating in a variety of activities: food tasting, making our own lanterns, discovering the Chinese alphabet, dancing along with their cultural music and dance, making money pouches to wish each other luck and prosperity and performing with our very own made Chinese dragon.

The Sunshine Room would like to welcome new children into the room! We have had a lovely time helping them all get settled and getting to know them! We have been creating activities for them to enjoy and finding out what they like taking part in. The story corner is very popular and also our messy play area where the children have been exploring painting, glueing and sticking!
With the lighter nights beginning we have also been spending a lot more time outdoors where the ch...ildren have been developing their physical abilities and exploring different soft play areas outside and in. We have also visited Edgehead Park where the children have been on the climbing frame demonstrating their gross motor skills. They have also been advancing their hand eye coordination by throwing and rolling balls in different ways.
The children have also been exploring what they can do through play with the transportation toys we have in the room. Some of the children have been taking the cars to the top of the slide and letting them roll down. Other children have been running the cars along different surfaces prompting one child to tell us that it was a “bumpy road.”
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The Poppy Room have enjoyed some messy play painting some lanterns for Chinese New Year which look great hanging from our ceiling. Many of the children have been developing their physical skills using the different equipment around the room. They have been balancing very well standing on the humped bridge while others are practicing climbing on the toddle box and steps to the slide. We enjoyed a lovely walk to Vogrie where we saw lots of horses and enjoyed getting some fresh air.

In the Ladybird Room the children have been working with the natural resources discussing size and shape. We were using mathematical language bigger, smaller. We have asked the children to find the difference between two objects e.g. Bottle tops, shells, curtain rings and sticks.
We have also been counting while we have been singing and also counting the objects in the room. The children have been choosing what number we count to before we start singing the song. Pointing to ...our fingers as we say the number.
We have been also making some art work using different textures and using similar colours. While we have been doing this we have discussed colours and using our sense of touch to say how the different materials feel in out fingers. The children have been identifying more colours around their environment.
We have also been adding some road signs to our car area as the children on a recent walk pointed these out. So we have added some at the child's height in the room with Velcro for the children to look at and move around. This will also help them to develop their fine motor skills as they take them off the wall and put them back on again.
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The children in the sunshine room have been exploring lots of messy play activities recently, we have been transforming our story corner into a beautiful garden and the children have been creating colourful flowers using paper plates, paint and glitter! They have also created a sunshine using their hand prints.
We have also been expanding our home corner by adding lots of new pretend food and utensils. The children are enjoying setting and sitting at the table as well as dis...covering new foods through play. The children have also shown interest in the toy babies recently, through this they have been learning about how to care for themselves and others by pretending to feed the babies, bath and dress them and pop them into their beds.
We will be continuing to expand different areas of the sunshine room and introduce new activities that are related to the children’s interests.
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The children in the Ladybird Room have been learning about Chinese New Year. We have been involved in making a dragon for a wall display. We have been painting paper plates and egg cartons using red and yellow paint. We also spoke about why they have dragons in their new year celebrations. We have tried some Chinese foods as well the girls and boys tried spring rolls, wontons, prawn toast, egg fried rice and sweet chilli sauce and it all went down amazingly.
The children have also been learning about light and dark using the iPad for a torch and some glow sticks in a large cardboard box that the children have decorated as a den.
We have also started working with the children counting different resources matching and sorting using different colours or sizes.

This week in the Rainbow Room, the children have been busy learning about Rabbie Burns. They have all been participating in a variety of activities to celebrate his life: tartan painting using forks and toy cars, baking shortbread, food tasting, listening to some famous poems, learning new Scottish songs (3 Craws, Donald Where’s Yer Troosers & Ally Bally Bee!) weaving using different materials, Scottish dancing and making our very own kilts and sporrans and yesterday we all had a very tasty traditional lunch of Haggis, Neeps & Tatties! This afternoon, we ended our busy week with a lovely walk and play up at Edgehead park.

The children in the Ladybird Room have been tasting lots of different types of Scottish foods. We sat down in small groups and discussed the foods that we were tasting and also used the Scottish names for the foods (tattie scone, Lorne sausage, black pudding and short bread) we were doing this as part of us celebrating Rabbie Burns day. We also had haggis neeps and tatties for our lunch on Thursday. We also googled some of the poetry that Rabbie Burns wrote and we listened to it during story time. We also made delicious shortbread which the children were very excited to show mummy and daddy.

The Sunshine Room have been enjoying exploring the outdoors. They have been continuing to develop their physical and gross motor skills through climbing, jumping and running in the gardens using an outdoor obstacle course we created using benches and tyres.
The children have been learning more about dinosaurs through different methods of play including painting, looking through picture books and playing with the different types of toy dinosaurs we have around the room.
We have also been having lots of fun with the bubble wand which the children love! They enjoying catching the bubbles and shouting ‘pop’ when they burst.

The Poppy Room children have shown a large interest in the Dear Zoo book. We have enjoyed reading the book looking at the pictures of the different animals and making their sounds. The children used different colours of paint to transform paper plates into the animals from the book. We can now read and visualise the story from the display while enjoying our artwork. We would like to welcome all of he new children who have started in the Poppy Room, we look forward to getting to know each of you.