Last Saturday we had a very successful ECO day. Staff, families and friends all mucked in to ensure our garden looks its best. Bark and stones were spread in Toadstool Tales, a bottle top mosaic was produced, the sand pit filled, vegetable plots weeded, cable drums painted, flowers planted, strimming and power washing carried out and many more jobs. A huge thank you to everyone who helped. 
Care Inspectorate
All services providing early learning and childcare in Scotland must be registered with the Care Inspectorate and are regularly monitored and awarded grades. Inspections are unannounced. We recently had an inspection and we are delighted to share with you the inspection report. Please take some time to read this.
www.careinspectorate.com/berengCareservices/html/reports/getPdfBlob.php?id=302598
Glenwood Family Centre were inspected in two aspects, Quality of care and support and Quality of staffing and we were graded excellent for both.
I am sure you will recognise that the commitment and professionalism of the staff team are a real strength of our centre and we strive to continue to maintain excellent standards in ensuring the highest quality care and support for all our learners.
We have noticed some changes!
Our seeds have started to change.
“Look, our plants are growing!”
“We need to give them water so they grow bigger.”
Lots of excitement with the changes to the seeds.
Planting Sunflowers
We have been planting sunflower seeds.
“They need to be in the soil or they will be freezing!”
“When are they going to grow?”
“I think mine will be a rainbow sunflower.”
British Science Week
We have been celebrating British Science Week. Have you been taking part in our daily science challenges? Each day this week we have been displaying a challenge on our plasma screen (in the corridor) and sharing this on Twitter for you and your child to carry out at home. Why not take a photo or send a tweet to let us know how you have got on.
Our Family Fun Bags this week contain the items needed to carry out Friday’s challenge. We had a great time trying this out this week!
We have been experimenting with a Balloon Rocket. The children followed the instructions had a countdown.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 … 🚀🚀🚀#BritishScienceWeek pic.twitter.com/Pbxix0Uivg— GlenwoodFamilyCentre (@GlenwoodFC) March 13, 2019
Block play
Our block play area is so popular and versatile. We use the blocks in so many ways. We have opportunities for risky play as we climb and create slides. 
Recently we have been very interested in performing so we created a stage. We have been dancing, singing and playing instruments while the audience watch us perform. 
We even used the large planks as guitars!
Building inspired by buildings!
We have been using images of famous buildings and landmarks around the world to build using the small blocks. Can you recognise the places we have built?
We are having a picnic!
We love to have pretend picnics in the quiet room… so we decided to have a real one! We wrote invitations to invite our friends and we had lots of preparations to do. 
We made bunting to decorate the room.
We planned our menu. 
Once we decided what we wanted to eat we made shopping lists and will be visiting the shops to purchase what we need.
We can’t wait to have our picnic!
Patterns
We have been creating repeating patterns. 
Fairtrade
Our Children’s Committee met recently to discuss what we can do for Fairtrade Fortnight. They created a mind map of ideas.
The children decided to use some Fairtrade ingredients to bake banana cup cakes. We followed a recipe and we had lots of measuring and weighing to do.
The cup cakes tasted yummy! We thought it would be a great idea to sell the ingredients in our Family Fun Bags to allow everyone the chance to make Fairtrade banana cup cakes at home.
Come and Join Us
We are starting monthly sessions of Bookbug and Musicality (Literacy through music) for parents and their Glenwood children. Please come along and join us. Let us know if you can manage to allow us to organise the children.
- Monday 18th February 2.00pm- 2.30pm- Musicality
- Thursday 21st February 10.00am- 10.30am- Musicality
- Monday 4th March 2.00pm- 2.30pm- Bookbug
- Thursday 7th March 10.00am- 10.30am- Bookbug
- Monday 18th March 2.00pm- 2.30pm- Musicality
- Thursday 21st March- 10.00am- 10.30am- Musicality
- Monday 15th April 2.00pm- 2.30pm- Bookbug
- Thursday 18th April 10.00am- 10.30am- Bookbug
- Monday 29th April 2.00pm- 2.30pm- Musicality
- Thursday 2nd May 10.00am- 10.30am- Musicality
- Monday 13th May 2.00pm- 2.30pm- Bookbug
- Thursday 16th May 10.00am- 10.30am- Bookbug
Puppets
We are continuing to develop our literacy through puppets. We decided to make our puppet theatre even more inviting and we used the internet to see what traditional puppet theatres look like. We also searched for more ways to make puppets and decided to make sock puppets.
If you would like to make a sock puppet at home, look out for our Family Fun Bags on sale this week and containing all you will need to make a puppet.
Bookbug
As part of our induction to Glenwood programme, we invite children who will be starting soon to join us for Bookbug sessions. Many other children joined in too.
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt
We love to hear stories and we have been listening to one of our favourites read to us by the author. Michael Rosen is the author of “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” and we can join in with the actions as he reads this story.
We loved this story so much we decided to make props and puppets to retell it. We made a big bear puppet and some long swishy grass.
I wonder what else we will need to make to tell this story?
Chinese New Year
We have enjoyed some Chinese food for snack this week as part of our celebrations for the Chinese New Year.
“I don’t like the noodles but I like the rice.” Naomi.
“It’s good and yummy.” Marnie.
“I don’t like the stir fry. My daddy likes stir fry.” Euan.
“Lovely. I want some more. It’s delicious. I don’t like the corn.” Matthew.
Creating stories
This week we have been creating stories with Mrs Kerr from the early literacy team. We used story dice to think about the characters and setting and events of the story. We wrote our stories in our story book and we illustrated them. Today we acted out our stories.
Super tower!
Look at the fantastic model we have built using our large blocks!
Come to our puppet show!
We have been using puppets to re-tell familiar stories.
We decided to hold a puppet show and made tickets for the audience.
We began to create our own stories and wanted different characters for our puppet shows and so we made our own!
We especially like telling stories using our Transformer puppets!
Building castles
We had some cardboard boxes in the construction area and decided to use them to create castles. We worked together to plan, design and create our castles. We decided our castles would need turrets, windows, a drawbridge and a flag. We used cutting, writing and creative skills to create and decorate our castles.
Construction
We design and create all sorts of models in the construction area. Recently we have been making enclosures for animals and ourselves!
As we play we use measuring skills.
We work with others and develop our problem solving skills.
We develop our mark making skills as we plan what we are going to construct. 
