We are in the swing of preparing for our Moving On ceremonies for our children who will be leaving us to go to school after the summer.
If you would like to practise at home here are the words to our chosen songs.
How Far I’ll Go (Glenwood Version)
Let’s hope the sun shines for our special day!
We are delighted to have received our Rights Respecting Schools SILVER award.
Click here to see our submission and read our report here.
by Mrs Wilson
Last year we planted some wildflower seeds in tyres in the garden and seeds from these plants have started growing this year. The children were keen to plant some more wildflower seeds and we decided to do this by first making some seed balls.
Seed balls are a really great way to plant wildflower seeds in your garden or outdoor area. Making the seed balls will not only introduce children to the variety, shapes and sizes of different seeds, but also develop their gardening skills as they learn about what seeds need to grow and how they can support wildlife in their garden or outdoor area.
“The bees will like these flowers when they grow.”
After planting and watering the seed balls the children are now looking forward to observing the wildflower seeds grow and hopefully welcoming some bees and butterflies and other creatures into our garden.
When the wildflowers have grown they will add a variety of colours where they have been planted, providing food and shelter for insects and other creatures. Wildflowers are also greatly important for pollinators such as bees so they can carry pollen from one plant to the next.
Why not have a go at home by following our recipe and help support wildlife in your area, or try the recipe below to make recycled paper wildflower seed balls.
https://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/resource/make-recycled-paper-wildflower-seed-balls/
by Mrs Silvester and Miss Zangrande
Sharing books with children is a great way to help children develop language and communication skills. Books can introduce topics to children to help them to understand the world around them. 
The children have enjoyed creating their own story books. The adults scribed the children’s stories and colourful illustrations were added by the authors. There was much excitement when the stories were read aloud and shared with friends.
The children made a cardboard box setting and sock puppets to act out the stories to their friends as the audience. The children’s interest continued making and using puppets to act out scenes of traditional tales and stories, adding character movement and props to the story.
While at the woods the children collected sticks and leaves to help put together a story scene for the Gruffalo using another cardboard box. We added material to our woodland scene and finally brought the puppets and story book to life. They enjoyed retelling and acting out the story of the Gruffalo in the deep dark woods together enhancing their learning.
We are delighted to announce that our Lending Library is back. Please use the QR codes to sign your chosen books in and out. We are still missing quite a few books, if you have any please return them to the front office. Thank you.
by Miss McCallum
This year’s theme for British Science Week was time.
We followed the instructions and made our own sand timers. We used a stopwatch to count how long our sand timer ran for. It was two minutes.
Using our sand timers we timed how long it took for our colour changing flower experiment to work. We made predictions on how many times we would need to turn the timer over.
In Glenwood, we celebrate what is special and unique about each and every person. We are all loved and included just for being who we are!
We had a special Being Me! celebration and invited all our families. We performed some of our favourite songs using Makaton signs. Our songs included our Rights song as we learn all about the rights of all children.
Together with our families we decorated wooden hearts to celebrate what is special and unique about us and to share some of things that are important to us.
by Mrs McGrory
The themes of loss, change, grief and bereavement are challenging ones to discuss with children of any age let alone early years children. Everyone will experience loss at some point in their life. We often don’t approach the subject until we have suffered bereavement and then it can be too difficult to know how to discuss it with a very young child to help them cope with the grief.
We cannot fully prepare anyone for a bereavement and the strong feelings associated with grief, however, encouraging children to talk openly or express themselves and explore a variety of ways of managing these often difficult emotions can be helpful when they face loss, change or even death.
In early years we work hard at providing a range of experiences targeting the awareness of loss, grief and bereavement naturally in the centre’s environment. This is done through books, stories, puppets, emotion stones, arts, music and discussions about life cycles of animals and plants.
Each experience we provide is age appropriate and encourages children to listen, talk, express and share their feelings freely. It is so important for children to recognise their emotions, to have their emotions validated and have tools to help them regulate these sometimes overwhelming emotions.
Simple language such as “look this plant has died, that made me sad. I really liked looking at the plant when it had the beautiful petals and it smelled amazing too.” It is very important when talking to children about death that you use simple and concrete words as children can interpret things very differently. For example “your Grandad is gone”. The child then thinks gone, gone where? Are they coming back? When they don’t come back it can cause the child anxiety because mummy’s gone to the shops …Oh no what happens if she doesn’t come back, like Grandad? It’s helpful to say your Grandad has died and that means we won’t see him again. I hear you gasp and say, you can’t say that to a 3 year old. Yes you can, it avoids confusion.
When talking to your child of the loss or bereavement, take their lead. They may want to know more or just sit with what they have been told. It’s important to care for yourself too as you could also be grieving this loss. If it becomes too much, allow someone else the child trusts to answer any more questions they may have.
I know when my mum died I really struggled and my children and I made a memory box to help us process our loss. We talked together, laughed together and cried together making the box full of our memories we had of this amazing person that we loved.
All the experiences Glenwood provides can be done at home and we have some helpful resources which are welcome to take home should you need to do so. A group of professionals from across East Renfrewshire created and developed parent pamphlets and activities you can also do with your child and family. These are suitable from birth to high school and are accessible through your centre or school.
Further information can be found here-
Support for Bereavement or Loss
and
Meeting Learners Needs- Support for Bereavement and Loss
If you or a family member require any more information please ask a member of staff.
Our children love to be creative. Look at the wonderful stories they composed. They shared their stories with the adult who wrote down their words. The children then drew beautiful illustrations and wrote their name as the author.
by Mrs Clark
At Glenwood, we value the importance of inclusion for all our children and families, and strive to ensure this is clearly reflected in our nursery environment.
We provide a safe, secure and nurturing environment that is accessible for all our children, creates a sense of belonging and reflects their individual needs, interests and rights.
We recognise and celebrate the uniqueness of our children in many ways, including respecting and sharing our different family religions and cultures.
We are fortunate to have 11 different languages spoken by our community of families which helps to create a richer learning environment. These include English, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Urdu, Arabic, Sinhala, Pashto, Punjabi and Vietnamese.
We have a range of fantastic resources, including books and games, that are invaluable in helping to teach our children about different experiences and what makes them unique, valued and respected in relation to culture, race, ethnicity, gender, disability, identity, nationality, religion, and beliefs.
We use a variety of strategies to support our children’s development and enable them to participate in play, such as Makaton as a whole nursery approach to promote and develop language and communication skills.
We adopt a ‘can do’ attitude to ensure that every child can achieve their potential.
Our rehearsals are going well – the children are looking forward to sharing their nativity with their families on Wednesday.
In case you would like to do any last minute practising at home here are the words…
The Christmas Star 2023 Song words
by Miss Chrystal
The children were excited when we received a delivery of new resources containing balls and other gym equipment such as skipping ropes and bibs.
We asked the children what they would like to do with our new equipment and they decided that they wanted to play football. We collated all of their fantastic ideas and then together came up with a plan.
First of all, the children took responsibility for preparing our resources by pumping up the new footballs.
We have been focusing on different skills with the children, such as kicking and stopping the ball, as well as passing and dribbling. This has supported the children to further develop their understanding of the different stages of football.
The children have also been developing their gross motor and teamwork skills working alongside each other in small groups. The children have really enjoyed this block of football and are excited to show their families their talents.
Thank you to all the parents who were able to attend our recent Curriculum Evening. We showcased how we demonstrate our values in all we do.
We received lots of lovely feedback.
“What a wonderful, educational and welcoming nursery! The staff are friendly and professional. We are so grateful that our children get to come here. Thank you all.”
“Very interesting and informative- I hadn’t realised that there was so much thought and planning going in to the children’s day here.”
Amazing resources. So many fantastic experiences with great variety. Staff are always so helpful and supportive. Thank you for all you do. “
“very interesting to see the spaces and activities. Clear to see how much you consider the children’s views and opinions. Staff very enthusiastic as always. Thank you.”
If you were unable to attend, you can access some information about this here.
Happy Diwali to our families and friends celebrating this week.
Diwali is the five-day Festival of Lights, celebrated by millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Jains across the world.
Diwali is a festival of new beginnings and the triumph of good over evil and light over darkness, and for some also coincides with harvest and new year celebrations.
One of the ways people celebrate Diwali is by decorating their homes with colourful rangoli designs, lighting diyas or displaying lights around the house.
We have been learning about Diwali through stories, research and activities.
We painted colourful rangoli designs to decorate our nursery.
We created clay diya lights and painted these in bright colours.
Happy Diwali!
by Mrs Allison
After reading ‘Room on the Broom’ the children decided they would like to make their own Halloween potions. We used lots of natural ingredients like pumpkin seeds and pulp, herbs, spices and petals.
We had a few horrible ingredients too like Goblin snot and Giant’s toenails. The children used lots of different utensils to measure, stir, pour and mix our ingredients.
There was lots of great descriptive language being used when talking about our potions and the children came up with some brilliant names:
“Pumpkin in space”
“Unicorn in a bush”
“Dragon fire”
“Stinky Slime”
Afterwards some of the children used their mark making skills to make potion recipe books.
by Miss McCallum
Bookbug promotes positive interactions through telling stories, singing songs, rhymes and play. We have been taking part in sessions over the past few months to help encourage new friendships and develop positive relationships between staff and children.
We have also started our family session within the centre and have loved seeing how many families have joined us so far. Sharing stories, songs and rhymes with your children also have a huge impact on your child’s language development. Taking a few minutes each day to read a story or sing a song will help form positive parent and child relationships and help develop the connections in a child’s brain that promote emotional development. It is also a great way to have fun!
We noticed one of our books was torn so we repaired it with sticky tape. Lots of our books were looking tatty so Mrs Brown asked us what books we would like for the nursery.
“I like this kind.”(held up a flap book from the book corner)
“I like dinosaur books.”
“I have a Yeti story in my house. I’d like that for nursery.”
“I like monster and dragon books. I am not scared by them!”
“I like this book.” (held up Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson)
Adult- “I love Julia Donaldson books…. Do you think we need some more by that author?”
“Yes! We were looking for the Snail and the Whale in nursery but we couldn’t find it.”
“Yes, look at all those ones we could get.” (Looked at inside cover of the book to point to other titles by the same author)
“I like the Gruffalo and the Gingerbread man. I have them in my house.”
“I like the Worrysaurus.”
Here are some of the books we bought, just as requested by the children, along with some others to reflect our nursery values. We look forward to more books being delivered soon, including the ever popular Julia Donaldson titles and some traditional tales.
by Mrs Wilson
The strawberry plants that we planted in April have finished producing fruit so we have been very busy caring for our strawberry patch.
We have been weeding out some grass that has grown there and cutting off leaves that have turned brown.
We noticed that lots of runners have grown from our strawberry plants and we have been learning how to plant these using compost, pots, trowels, dibbers and watering cans, so that we can grow new strawberry plants.
One of the children thought it would be a good idea to make a new sign for our strawberry patch so we used some old wood and acrylic paint to make a new one.
We have also been developing our awareness of how we can care for the environment by reusing and recycling different items. We made our own plant food by cutting up banana skins, left over from snack, into small pieces and adding them to old bottles filled with water. After a few days, the banana water will be ready to use as plant food to help our strawberry runners to grow.
by Mrs Sylvester
In the garden, some of the children have been enjoying a story about a hedgehog who learns the importance of friendship and being helpful. In the story, the hedgehog struggles to remove an apple from his spikes and is helped by a donkey.
To retell the story, we found a toy hedgehog and donkey but we also needed an apple. The children thought we should gather some apples from the apple tree in the nursery garden but unfortunately the apples were out of reach. With little success, the children independently tried to reach the apples using various techniques such as jumping up high, using hula-hoops and even sticks to reach the apples from the branches.
However, when the children shared ideas and worked together they were finally able to reach the apples. Just like in the story, the children learnt the value of friendship and teamwork!
by Mrs McGregor
At Glenwood, we use a ‘Fun Friends’ programme to encourage the children to learn new skills and to help build their confidence. ‘Fun Friends’ is aimed at improving communication skills, social skills and building resilience.
These are the skills and phrases that we frequently use with the children:
Here are some snapshot interactions demonstrating ‘Fun Friends’ in action. It began when one little boy was scared to go down our new slide. Two other children noticed this and offered support to their friend. They were determined to help his confidence and independence by encouraging bravery. They helped him to overcome his fear and then celebrated his achievement with him.
The perfect example of kindness, compassion and love at Glenwood.
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