Orchard Brae Early Learning and Childcare department have 2 developmental nurseries on 2 separate sites. Orchard Brae Nursery at Howes Road is based within the school site, while Orchard Brae at Ashgrove is based within the Ashgrove children’s Centre. Places at both nurseries are allocated on application through the Educational Psychology service in conjunction with NHS Health Visitors. Placement meetings take place in June, November and February with pupils starting in the term after their 3rd birthday, depending on the availability of spaces.
Both Nurseries have pupils with a wide range of additional support needs. The aim of the Nurseries is to support pupils to develop the skills required to allow them to reach their full potential. A place at Orchard Brae nursery does not assume a place at Orchard Brae school as many pupils will gain skills that allow them to start Primary 1 in their zoned Primary school or Mile-end ASN provision.
Room 5 have been on a very exciting class trip to Aberdeen Airport.
We all have a fantastic time! We got to go through security, go onto a plane and sit in the pilots seat, drive down the runway, visit the fire station and spray the water hose and of course see lots of planes and helicopters take off and land. George and Ali at Aberdeen Airport were brilliant tour guides!!!
The pupils in Room 4 have been very busy exploring maths in a range of fun and practical ways. They have been exploring water and different coloured foams, and enjoyed working on measuring, weighing and comparing them as well as sorting by colour.
It’s that time of year again to look out the gardening gloves, trowels and spades and to start growing. Firstly we examined our sunflower seeds, then we filled our little containers with compost, poked our little seeds under the soil and finished off by watering them. Now it’s time to tend our little seeds and watch them grow.
We had a little Easter Fun in nursery. Firstly we painted our Easter eggs beautifully and then we went outdoors to find a hill. Look at us having fun and rolling our Easter eggs down the hill.
This term our topic has been Our Colourful World. We have been reading the book The Rainbow Fish and exploring the colours of the rainbow using all our senses.
Each week we discover a different colour by touching and feeling lots of different things that are all the same colour and we use some of these materials to make a scale for our very own rainbow fish. Then we get to taste, feel, smell and play with food items that are that week’s colour. It has been fun to discover some new foods and juices. Some of the things we have liked: sweet chilli rice crackers, green beans, strawberries, baked beans & orange smoothie. Some of the things we haven’t liked: jelly (it was fun to play with but we didn’t like the texture in our mouths), radishes, green smoothie, tomatoes.
Room 3 were very lucky to go on a trip to Jump In to celebrate our classmate’s 8th birthday!
We had a wonderful time bouncing on the trampolines and playing in the sponge pool and by the end of the day we were all ready for an early night!
Room 5 worked really hard last term. As an end of term treat they went to Innoflate. Everyone had lots of fun, staff included, and enjoyed the slides, jumping around and playing on the big bubble. We were all very hungry after our play session so enjoyed a relaxed lunch in Burger King. We have all settled back really well this week too.
We would like to wish all our students, their families and staff a very happy spring holiday. Enjoy your well deserved holidays and we shall see you back in school on the 15th of April.
The children in Room 4 have been creating their own colour amongst the stars. They used papier mache to make planets and then decorated them in different colours.
The pupils in Room 2 have been working extremely hard on their book study of ‘The Colour Monster’. The poor Colour Monster is all mixed up, his colours are all over the place and therefore his feelings are too.
We explored each colour and feeling by initially doing Sensology work exploring objects of each colour and listening to pieces of music, mainly classical, which helped create the appropriate atmosphere. After this we did a BIG art session for each colour and feeling which was so much fun!
When we explored yellow and happiness, we used our favourite art techniques. We rolled balls down ramps, crinkled cellophane, used the salad spinners, shook pasta in a metal tin, painted with beads – each child used their favourite technique before happily exploring those of their friends. There were SO many smiles in class!
Blue brought the feeling of sadness and we did watery art. We were all amazed to listen to, feel and look at what happened when we blew straws into bubbly water! We also sprayed paint from bottles and made incredible marble prints.
During our angry, red session we made lots and lots of noise! We stamped our feet in the paint as hard as we could and banged on drums and cymbals…paint went flying everywhere!
As we discovered about black and fear, we made ‘scary’ creatures scurry over our bodies before dipping their feet in black paint and make them scurry over our paper! Some pupils were mesmerised while we dropped the heavy, clanking chain onto the floor after dipping it in paint and there was some amazing requesting for ‘more’.
There was a lovely, gentle atmosphere in class when we explored green and calm. We made balloons fall from a height and beautiful patterns from gymnastics ribbons made beautiful marks on our paper. A definite highlight was waving the big green cloth to create a textured collage; we started off by waving it gently although many pupils communicated that they liked it going fast fast fast!
We are very proud of our pupils for their fantastic engagement and new learning from this project. We will check back in with the last little bit of our Colour Monster book study work before the end of term!
