It’s a beautiful autumn day and we are having a day in the orchard today.  At the weekend a working party has been in the garden taking out more of the rotten wood, building a new raised bed and filling the gabions with gravel to finish them off.  The beds which had the potatoes in have been dug over and the garden is beginning to look beautiful again.  Many, many thanks to the families who came along to help Anne and Shaun achieve all this.  Anne has brought us some of her apple crop from home to allow us to make some apple juice in our orchard apple press.  We are hoping that our wee baby trees, which have been growing well this year, might begin to produce apples for us next year.  In the meantime we are very grateful to Anne for her apples.  If you have an apple tree and a lot of surplus apples, please bring them in and we will make some lovely apple juice for snack.

This week in nursery we are looking at the changes Autumn has brought to the outside world.  We are going to be collecting beautiful autumn leaves, conkers, acorns and all sorts of seeds and bringing them in to nursery to use them creatively for inspiration in our paintings and models, and to examine more closely on our interest table.  We will be thinking about why it is getting colder and the nights are getting darker earlier  and enjoying seasonal fruit at snack time.  For our children this is only their 3rd or 4th Autumn on this planet so it is really new and exciting.  We will be extending the vocabulary of autumn and displaying new words we are introducing as part of our Word Aware program, on the hall walls.

Maureen is  creating a “What fills our bucket?” display in the hall, gathering children’s comments on what makes them happy.  Well worth a read!

On Wednesday we are taking the children for an Autumn Walk to Barloch Moor, to look at the effects of the change of the season on our woodlands.  It is also a chance for our pre-schoolers to look at where we will be going for our Forest Kindergarten sessions this year.  Fingers crossed for a beautiful, crisp day.

On Wednesday Kate and Dionne are attending a 5 to Thrive Conference at Kilmardinny House – we’ll let you know what was all about later in the week.

On Friday we are having another happy Snappy Sounds Music Session with Susan and her animal friends.

4 PGDE Students from Strathclyde University joined our nursery team this morning.    We are delighted to welcome them to Milngavie ELCC and hope they will really enjoy their time here, and learn lots about the world of 3-5 year olds.  They are teaching students on their Nursery Teaching Placement. They will be with us for the next 2 weeks.  They are: