To continue with our theme of giving back to the local community the 3-5 room children paid a visit to our local care home, Park House, to perform some Christmas carols. They all practiced very hard at nursery and at home and this has not only encouraged them to develop their communication skills through patterns of speech, rhythm and rhyme but has given them a boost in confidence and self-esteem performing in front of an audience. After they had performed they presented them with a canvas that some of the children had created of their own portraits. 
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This brought great joy to the residents and gave them pleasure in listening to the children and chatting to them.
"This is what Christmas is all about, children, joy and happiness."
Their canvas has taken pride of place in their sitting room.

For Christmas the 3-5 room children created art work for some of our local shops. This project ran from October to December and involved them creating their best work. We visited the local shops to learn their names for example the children always talk about “The Café” but they have learned that it is called The Allan Water Café. They had the opportunity to learn how to focus on something for an extended time period and put all our efforts into creating something that was special all while developing our hand/eye co-ordination, design skills, mixing colours and concentration. They also helped wrap our canvases and hand these out to everyone. 

We have started venturing out into the local woods to explore what land we can use. The 2-5 age group have visited the Mine Woods high up at the top end of Bridge of Allan. There is a large open area that is great for exploring and we have now visited this twice. The children had great fun exploring the natural resources that they found which allowed them to climb, role-play, and roll down hills. They explore weight and length of branches and worked as a team to move them in different positions and even created a habitat for animals in a tree. A few children risk assessed their environment and managed to use their imagination to turn a tree stump into a slide!

Child M - “let’s spin really fast.”
Child R - “Oh…. I’m dizzy…..”
Child I - “Weeee…..”
Child N - “I’m higher than you!”
Child S - “5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0…… GO…..! STOP! We’re here, we made it to New Zealand guys!”
Child L - “Can you throw me in there?”