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We have welcomed many new children into the nursery over the last couple of weeks and to help us get to know each other better, we have been chatting about ourselves, who is in our families and what we like to play with. We have been drawing pictures of our families and ourselves and looking in the mirror to see what we look like. There have been some wonderful pictures already created. Have a look on our art wall when you come in and see if anyone looks familiure.

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The Best All About Me Activities For Preschoolers

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One of my favorite preschool themes year after year is All About Me! It's especially perfect at back to school time. But I will have to admit that it is kind of a tricky preschool theme to come up with ideas for!

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Celebrating the success of our children at Wardie Nursery develops confidence, promotes learning and fosters a sense of belonging in the children. Within our cloakroom we have an achievement tree to promote and celebrate the achievements of the children both from home and at nursery. It is an important way to recognise and acknowledge the efforts of our children and families. Whenever a child achieves a next step we will recognise this by celebrating their achievement with the class and putting a leaf onto our tree. If your child achieves something at home such as learning a new skill, facing their fears and doing something they find scary like putting their head under the water at the swimming pool or trying a new food, let us know on the learning journals and we will acknowledge this by adding a leaf to the tree. You can also add a photo if you wish which we will print out and also add to the tree.

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The children have already started to notice that the leaves on the trees are changing colour and some children have been bringing in conkers and acorns that they have found on the ground to show their friends.
This week we will be exploring the colours of Autumn and creating lovely art work using these colours. We will be looking more closely at the conkers, acorns and leaves by using magnifiers and other types of technology.

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Autumn is a great time of year for themed craft projects, with plenty of inspiration to be found in the colours, events and natural phenomena associated with the season. Get your preschoolers outside observing and collecting, and back inside making and painting, with these 12 autumn craft ideas - you'll soon have a nursery full of colourful autumn artwork!

Take a walk to your local park and collect different coloured leaves, pinecones, acorns, conkers, twigs and sticks. At this time of year there's a huge range of interesting colours and textures to find.

The natural world is an obvious starting point for autumn crafts - particularly the changing colours and falling of leaves - but you could also take inspiration from the main events of the season, such as Halloween and Bonfire Night or Diwali, and the things that are associated with them (eg fireworks, lanterns, spiders, bats and pumpkins).

Autumn Craft Ideas for Early Years

1. 'Rainbow' leaf collage

Get the children to collect lots of leaves, in as many different colours as they can find (this may work well as a cumulative project involving several trips). Back inside, set up a long section of rolled-out paper and help the children sort and stick the leaves onto it by gradations of colour; so for example, starting with all of the dark red leaves at one end of the paper roll, moving onto bright reds, then oranges, yellows, greens etc.

Start by painting some short sections of cardboard tube brown - these are the tree trunks. Get some green card and cut out tree canopy shapes (a bit like clouds). Put out some bowls of autumnal colours - eg red, orange, yellow, green, purple, brown, gold - for the children to use to make thumbprints on both sides of their pieces of green card. Cut some short slots into the trunk tops and slide the canopies on.

Each child chooses some leaves; they may be all the same type of leaf, or perhaps a selection of different ones, but all should be fairly large and sturdy. You can then staple them onto a cardboard band to make an autumnal leaf crown.

Paint a bare tree silhouette on a large sheet of paper, then get the children to add handprint leaves to the branches, using red, orange, yellow, green etc paint. Some of the leaves could be falling or already on the ground.

For this project you'll need A3 paper, conkers, and paint in a range of autumnal colours. Get the children to dunk a conker in some paint and roll it over the paper (they may need some help with this); build up layers using different colours.
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Collect some pinecones with the children, and then decorate them. You could push small pompoms (red, green, yellow, orange) into the crevices, or wind pieces of wool (in the same kind of colours) around them.

Find some Y-shaped sticks - small enough for the children to hold easily but sturdy enough to be used for weaving. Make the top part of the Y into a loom by wrapping wool round and round the two arms and tying it off. The children can then weave their autumnal finds into the wool, such as small leaves, feathers etc.

Get the children to make hedgehog shapes using air-drying clay, and then add spines by pushing lots of small, thin twigs into the clay. Eyes can be added using a shaping tool, or by sticking googly eyes on once the clay has dried.

Take four pipe cleaners in one hand and then wrap another pipe cleaner tightly around the middle with your other hand. Once the pipe cleaners are secure (you may need more than one around the middle), you can shape the legs on either side of the body, and then hang them up with elastic cord.

10. Pumpkin apple prints

Cut some apples in half and use these to make prints with orange paint on dark-coloured paper. The shapes will look very pumpkin-like, especially with the addition of eyes and mouths once the paint has dried - for these you could use black paint, pen or stickers.

For this activity you'll need several lengths of cardboard tube with slits cut around the circumference (approximately 5cm long and 5mm wide), so that the tubes can be splayed out into flower-type shapes. The children can then use these to make exploding firework prints on dark-coloured paper with bright-coloured paint.

Get the children to collect handfuls of thin twigs. Back inside, help them stick these onto sheets of dark-coloured paper to make the base of a bonfire. Put out some bowls of red, orange and yellow paint and get the children to add flames by making several handprints of each colour above their twigs. These bonfire paintings can be really effective.

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Autumn is a great time of year for themed craft projects, with plenty of inspiration to be found in the colours, events and natural phenomena associated with the season. Get your preschoolers outside observing and collecting, and back inside making and painting, with these 12 autumn craft ideas - you'll soon have a nursery full of colourful autumn artwork!

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Last week we read stories about recycling and in one of the books it showed the children how we can reuse plastic bottles by making bird feeders. Whilst in the garden some of the children noticed berries growing on the trees and told Mrs Duncan that they are for the birds to eat. We provided binoculars so the children could look out for birds and information books about how to look after birds, especially during the winter months. This week we will make feeders to help look after the birds, binoculars using toilet rolls and a bird watching hut where we can sit quietly and look out for birds.

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How to make 3 recycled bird feeders! | Maddie Moate

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Last week the children were enjoying the story 'Goldilocks and the 3 Bears.' Through reading the story and discussions with the children, they asked for props so they could act out the story. Some of the children began talking about other stories they like such as 'Little Red Riding Hood' and 'Jack and the Beanstalk.'

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Goldilocks and The Three Bears - Read Aloud Kids Book - A Bedtime Story with Dessi!

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When Goldilocks went to the House of the Bears

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When Goldilocks went to the House of the Bears

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We have also been learning the Goldilocks song to go with the story.

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When Goldilocks went to the house of the bears.

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UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

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UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

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The Un Convention on the rights of the child (UNCRC) is the basis of all UNICEF's work. It is the most complete statement of children's rights ever produced and is the most widely-ratified international human rights treaty in history.
Each month we will focus on 1 Right which will link to our intentional plan. For the month of September we will be focusing on:
Article 2 - All Children have the Right to Protection Against Discrimination.
Through our All About Me discussions, we are ensuring the children are listened to and are seen as individuals, irrespective of the child's or their families race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinions, national, ethnic or social origin, disability, birth or other status.

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What is the UN Convention?

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is the basis of all of our work. It is the most complete statement of children's rights ever produced and is the most widely-ratified international human rights treaty in history.

What makes the UN Convention so special?

The Convention has 54 articles that cover all aspects of a child's life and set out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that all children everywhere are entitled to. It also explains how adults and governments must work together to make sure all children can enjoy all their rights.

Every child has rights "without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child's or his or her parent's or legal guardian's race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status" (Article 2).

The Convention must be seen as a whole: all the rights are linked and no right is more important than another. The right to relax and play (Article 31) and the right to freedom of expression (Article 13) have equal importance as the right to be safe from violence (Article 19) and the right to education (Article 28).

We are the only organisation working for children recognised by the Convention.

The Convention is also the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the world. All UN member states except for the United States have ratified the Convention. The Convention came into force in the UK in 1992.

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UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - UNICEF UK

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The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is the basis for all of UNICEF's work and upholds children's rights all over the world.

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September 23rd and 30th - Stay and play
October 14th - All break for the mid term break
October 25th - All return

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Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) - gov.scot

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Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) approach supports children and young people so that they can grow up feeling loved, safe and respected and can realise their full potential. At home, in school or the wider community, every child and young person should be:

Safe

Healthy

Achieving

Nurtured

Active

Respected

Responsible

Included

These eight factors are often referred to by their initial letters – SHANARRI.

Each month we will also focus on one of the factors of SHANARRI and as it is a new term and we have many new children who are still settling in and are still developing relationships with both the staff and peers, we will be focusing on the children being nurtured during the month of September.

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Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) is our commitment to provide all children, young people and their families with the right support at the right time. This is so that every child and young person in Scotland can reach their full potential.

We want all children and young people to live in an equal society that enables them to flourish, to be treated with kindness, dignity and respect, and to have their rights upheld at all times.

Our ambition is to work together with children, young people, families, organisations and communities to make Scotland the best place to grow up. Through GIRFEC, everyone in Scotland can work together to build the scaffold of support children and young people need to grow up loved, safe and respected.

GIRFEC provides Scotland with a consistent framework and shared language for promoting, supporting, and safeguarding the wellbeing of children and young people. It is locally embedded and positively embraced by organisations, services and practitioners across Children's Services Planning Partnerships, with a focus on changing culture, systems and practice for the benefit of babies, infants, children, young people and their families.

Actions

We:

Background

GIRFEC timeline

2019: In September 2019, the Deputy First Minister made a commitment to the Scottish Parliament to seek to repeal Parts 4 and 5 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and GIRFEC guidance.

Contact

Email: girfec@gov.scot

Telephone: 0300 244 4000 - Central Enquiry Unit

Post:
GIRFEC Team
Scottish Government
Children and Families Directorate
Victoria Quay
Edinburgh
EH6 6QQ

Twitter: @girfec

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Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC)

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National approach to improving the wellbeing of children and young people in Scotland.