Please encourage your child to find items of these colours at home.

Mathematical Development

For March we will continue to further develop the children’s awareness and understanding of number through a variety of number rhymes e.g. Five little ducks, 1,2,3,4,5, once I caught a fish alive, Five little speckled frogs etc.  Number will also continue to feature in our play as usual. 

Safeguarding and Protection

Please remember our Covid-19 procedures are still in place including the one-way system outside and the use of face masks while on the school grounds.  We really appreciate your support in keeping children, their families and staff safe. 

Let’s respect and protect each other.

Please be aware that Covid-19 is still in the community and therefore if your child shows any signs of illness including the symptoms of Covid – high temperature, persistent cough and/or lack of smell or taste then please keep them at home.  (Please be aware children of this age may also have vomiting, diarrhoea or conjunctivitis.) 

We would advise that you phone your GP and ask for advice detailing their symptoms.  We would also request that you phone school, in order to inform staff. 

Please be aware if a member of your child’s class bubble tests positive for Covid-19, then the class will be closed for 2 weeks and all children and staff will have to self-isolate. This will also happen if we do not have enough staff available. 

Thank you for your continuing support, we all need to work together to keep each other safe.     

Dates to remember

Monday 8^th March

Nursery reopens for all children.

Monday 15^th March

All children will be in school this week.

Wednesday 17^th March

St. Patrick’s Day – We are awaiting confirmation as to whether the School Meals Service will be providing dinners on this day and we will let you know what is happening when we hear back from them.

(They may provide packed lunches instead.)

Monday 22^nd March

Nursery only open this week for keyworker children.   Home learning via Seesaw will restart.

Friday 27^th March

Nursery will close for keyworker children at 12.00 noon.  We will not be having lunch on this day, so no need to send in a packed lunch.

Monday 29^th March to Friday 9^th April

Easter holidays – Nursery will be closed

Monday 12^th April

Nursery will re-open for all children.

March Learning Plans

Please be aware that these learning plans will be covered as best we can in the weeks that all children attend school, but these activities can also be completed by yourselves when the children are home learning via Seesaw.

Themes: Spring/Easter

Colours:  Green and yellow

Shape:  Oval

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Children will have opportunities to:

• Develop teamwork through games e.g. parachute games, board games and building.
• Express emotions through work with books, puppets, mirrors and role play.
• Encourage recognition of facial expressions in themselves and others.
• Encourage children to discuss situations where they felt happy, sad, angry or scared.
• Develop an awareness of love and caring for others through Mother’s day activities.
• Further discuss the ideas of friendship, good sharing and taking turns.
• Re-look at the nursery rules through discussion with the children when they return to school again.

Ideas to reinforce your child’s learning at home:

• Children along with other family members could make something special for Mum for Mother’s Day.
• Talk to your child about emotions and encourage them to recognise facial expressions in themselves and in others.

Language Development

Children will have opportunities to:

• Extend vocabulary with respect to:
  • Trees/leaves
  • Flowers – hyacinths, crocuses, daffodils, bluebells and snowdrops
  • Baby animals
  • Weather
  • Growing seeds
  • Life cycles – frog, butterfly, ladybird, chicks, beans
  • What creatures come from an egg.
  • Animals waking up from hibernation.
• Write greetings cards for Mother’s day
• Practice pencil control
• Learn songs and rhymes relating to Spring and Easter
• Discuss Easter and learn new vocabulary

Ideas to reinforce your child’s learning at home:

• Sing songs and rhymes with your child relating to the theme of Easter and Spring, this can enhance their future reading abilities.  (These rhymes can be found on the monthly rhyme sheet.)
• Consolidate rhymes from last month by singing them at home.
• Talk to your child about Spring and point out new plant growth, baby animals and the weather when out on walks or drives.
• Read stories to your child which again will help them when they come to reading for themselves. 
• Encourage children to recognise their own name.

Early Mathematical Experiences

Children will have opportunities to:

• Sort and match weather pictures according to type.
• Sort and match clothes for different weather types
• Match, sort and count seeds.
• Match animals to their babies and name.
• Sequence the life cycles of frogs, butterflies, ladybirds, chicks and beans.
• Sing songs and rhymes that include numbers (see the monthly rhyme sheet).
• Talk about containers that hold the most or least sand, soil or water.
• Count items through natural play situations reinforcing 1 to 1 correspondence.
• Reinforce and practise 1 to 1 correspondence with respect to setting dinner tables and giving out musical instruments.
• Look at numbers in the environment.
• Reinforce counting through number rhymes.
• Recognise shapes in the environment through drawing and painting.
• Reinforce prepositions within the nursery environment.

Ideas to reinforce your child’s learning at home:

• Sing number rhymes with your child at home to reinforce counting.
• Count naturally with your child and reinforce 1 to 1 correspondence i.e. point to each item while counting.
• Name shapes in the home environment.
• Talk about prepositions such as in, on, under, beside, behind and in front of.

Physical Development

Children will have opportunities to:

• Experience Spring weather during outside play.
• Develop fine motor skills using art equipment, construction materials and general self-help skills.
• Develop gross motor skills handling larger construction equipment and ensuring their own and others safety.
• Further practice at putting on outside suits and boots.
• Practise ball skills.
• Use streamers, kites and windmills on windy days.

Ideas to reinforce your child’s learning at home:

• Practise ball skills at home too.
• Use kites, streamers and windmills on windy days.
• Talk to your child about Spring weather.

The Arts

Children will have opportunities to:

• Make collage eggs.
• Grow seeds and beans.
• Make a seed collage.
• Make cherry blossom tree with branches and flowers stuck onto paper.
• Make an Easter tree.
• Make paper plate chicks.
• Make a caterpillar from paper plates.
• Fold paper.
• Make a zig-zag life cycle book with an adult.
• Draw chicks and eggs.
• Look at different fruit, flowers, vegetables and paint or print with them.
• Mix colours and discuss.
• Look at a famous painting e.g. Van Gogh ‘Sunflowers’ and try to replicate it.
• Still life drawing of Spring items e.g. daffodils or hyacinths.
• Decorate wellington boots with pictures from gardening magazine.
• Make Mother’s Day gifts.
• Participate in Easter art activities.
• Continue with junk art.
• Make musical instruments.

Ideas to reinforce your child’s learning at home:

• Encourage your child to recognise their own name by writing it on to their drawings.  Remember not to write their name in capital letters i.e. JAMES but instead write James as this will be the way they will be taught in Primary 1.
• Talk to your child about all the art creations that they bring home from school.

The World around Us

Children will have opportunities to:

• Continue to examine the change in the seasons.
• Experience Spring weather outside.
• Look at birds building nests and at the bird table.
• Look at changing states of water i.e. water freezes to give ice, melts to turn back into water and is boiled to give steam.
• Look at and experience the colours yellow and green.
• Observe how flowers are growing and changing.

Ideas to reinforce your child’s learning at home:

• Get your child to find something yellow or green in the house.
• Go on a Spring walk and use our Spring Hunt Sheet.