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!
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.
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.
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 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 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!
Thank you to those who attended our session last night – we hope you found it informative.
Here is the presentation that was shared.
If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to ask.
Thank you.
by Miss Callaghan
The children have been enjoying participating in a wide range of science activities this month. This provides a great opportunity for children to explore materials and observe changes.
“What happens if I mix that one and that one (yellow & red). It’s orange!”
We have been exploring colour mixing with primary colours and pipettes. The children have been growing their confidence in using charts for information and have been using them effectively to make choices and plan which colour they would like to mix. The pipettes have been great for developing fine motor skills and children have enjoyed discussions around colours and how they change.
“I want to make green – I need blue and yellow. It’s green!”
We then focused on using different materials to investigate change and colour. The children used glue to create a pattern on a piece of paper then covered it in salt. Children were able to use their problem solving skills to predict what would happen when they used the pipettes to drop colour onto the salt and glue.
“I think the colours will mix.”
“It moves slow!”
“It looks like fireworks that I went to watch.”
The children were excited to see the colour droplets expand as they travelled through the salt and when they added another colour beside it, the colour would mix and travel.
Lastly, we expanded on our materials and made puffy paint. The children used flour, baking powder, salt and food colouring and mixed it together to make a cake-like consistency. This also involved the use of instructions and a recipe, the children were able to recognise numbers and count out how much they needed. The last set of instructions was to put our creation into the microwave for 30 seconds and watch the painting come to life! The picture puffed up and the children were delighted with the result, this was a great opportunity to explore cause and effect and it left an open ended opportunity for discussion.
by Mrs Wilson
The children and adults have been learning about planting, growing and harvesting a variety of different vegetables and fruit with help and support from Goody Foody. Towards the end of August we began to harvest our beetroots and the children have been exploring them in their play experiences.
The children have been learning how to prepare the beetroot for cooking, using brushes and water to clean them and joining in with a rhyme as an adult used a sharp knife to cut off the bottom and cut the leaves off the top.
Chop, chop, choppity-chop,
Cut off the bottom, and cut off the top.
What there is left, we put in the pot.
Chop, chop, choppity-chop.
When the beetroots were cooked the children had the opportunity to have a go at tasting them.
The children were very interested to observe that the beetroot cooking water had changed colour.
“It looks a bit like purple now. The beetroot has changed the water.”
The cooking water was used to investigate what would happen if some white cotton material was soaked in it.
The children developed their mark making skills using the cooking water to paint with.
The beetroot leaves were also used, along with some nasturtium flowers and leaves grown in the garden, to try the Japanese art of Hapa-Zome (leaf-dye).
We have had a summer full of interesting and exciting experiences – here are just some of them that we shared on Twitter.
The children learned about our local community and services – with visits from the police and fire service and trips to the synagogue, library, park and shops.
They enjoyed harvesting and preparing fruit and vegetables from our garden…
Here is a snapshot of some of the other experiences on offer!
It is important that we teach our children how to stay safe online.
Jessie and Friends is a new online resource from CEOP for children aged 4-7 years to use with their parents and educators to help them develop the knowledge, skills and confidence to stay safe online.
Find the parent information here : Jessie and Friends parent guide
Find the videos and games here: Jessie and Friends
The children have been learning about making life and the impact rubbish can have on animals living in the water! Let’s dive in and take a closer look at what they learned..
“700 is like the whole sea! We need to save them before they get extinct like the dinosaurs”
“If we save one fish from every type then we can save them all next year and all the years after that”
“If a fish or a birdie gets stuck in a net then it can’t move and be safe”
“Nets stop swimming”
“Babies and children like me can suffocate with plastic bags and so can fish and birds!”
“If they eat it and don’t mean to they get sick and sad”
“Some fish accidentally eat plastic bottle tops and straws because they think they are food”
We asked our nursery friends some questions about what rubbish they see on their way into nursery. After seeing the results we used recyclable materials to create a ‘3D’ poster of ways rubbish affects the sea life.
“We made a rainbow fish with masking tape, bottle tops and wooden sticks to show all the rubbish pollution”
“The nets are making the fish sad because they get trapped in them all of the time and they can’t get out”
“Nets get fish trapped”
“Plastic bottle tops make the fish sick because they think that they are food to eat”
What can we do to help? Here are the children’s ideas…
“We can make paper straws by rolling up paper and then we can recycle them”
“We can keep the grounds clear by not littering”
“We can go on a litter pick with our mums and dads and we can do them in nursery too”
“We need to work together with team work to help the oceans get free from plastic”
“We can have a plastic bottle bag to collect the, all at the door and use them for junk modelling”
#source2sea #KeepScotlandBeautiful #LfS
We have been learning about the Muslim month of Ramadan and the celebration of Eid-ul-Fitr.
A special thanks to Idrees’ mum for visiting to read us a story and tell us about their family’s celebrations.
We also had a special snack of chapati, dates and raita.
The staff would also like to say a special ‘thank you’ to the families who gifted us a yummy cake.
The children in the Orchard bubble have been exploring magnets and how they work. They used horseshoe magnets to find out what was magnetic in the nursery garden.
A basket of items made from different materials was sorted into magnetic and non-magnetic items. The children were very interested to find out that not all metals are magnetic and a magnet will only attract certain metals such as iron or steel.
The children investigated if a magnet would still attract a metal paper clip if it was covered over by different materials.
The children used their senses to help understand that when two magnets are near each other they either repel or attract each other.
We looked at an information book about magnets to learn that a magnet is strongest at its two ends and found out that they are called the north pole and the south pole.
The children were also interested to learn from the information book that earth is a giant magnet and we can use a compass to find where the magnetic north is.
We celebrated World Book Day by coming to nursery in our pyjamas and bringing in our favourite stories (and teddies!).
We had a special snack of Gruffalo Tusks…
We shared lots of stories through the day and a special ‘thank you’ goes to our visitors who read stories outdoors.
There is a World Book Day Token for everyone – we hope you enjoy reading the special £1 books that you can use it to buy.
We have been busy practising for our outdoor nativity performances next week – we hope that the weather is kind and that you can join us!
If you would like to help your child practise at home, here is a copy of the words to our songs.
We are always in need of resources for our junk modelling area and would be grateful for any donations of:
Many thanks for your donations.
Junk modelling or recycled art is being creative with materials that would otherwise be discarded. Junk modelling construction gives children the freedom to build what they want with the addition of resources like tape and glue.
Modelling with recycled resources encourages higher order thinking. Children can work on their own or co-operate with others, learning to explore and share ideas. When they create something new it can build self confidence and boost self-esteem. Junk modelling is all about the learning process rather than the end product.
Here are some examples of what we have made so far this term:
Up-cycling!
Donated cable drums have also been up-cycled to make tables for our indoor role play areas and outdoor areas. We measured offcuts of cloth, cut them to size and stapled them to the cable drum surface.
Story stones are great resources for developing children’s communication skills, promoting their language skills and encouraging their imagination and creativity.
Here are some ideas you can use story stones for at home..
When using the story stones use language such as:
These phrases help develop your child’s ability to predict and retell stories they are both familiar and unfamiliar with.
All you need to make your own story stones are:
If you try this at home, why not share your photographs with us on Twitter @GlenwoodFC
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