Milngavie Early Years Centre

Elaine has sent us some lovely rainy day activities.  I hope you enjoy trying these!

Hi everyone,

As it has been raining for the last couple of days, I thought that we would look at some creative activities to do in the rain.

 Rain Art

For this activity all you need is kitchen roll and felt tip pens.

Take a piece of kitchen roll and decorate it using the pens, use as many colours as you can for the best results. I drew a flower and some patterns.

Now put your picture on a tray or lid (I had to put little plant pots in the corners to hold the paper down as it was really windy) and set it out in the rain and watch the changes that the rain makes to it! These are my pictures after they had been hit by the rain drops! Look how they changed.

You can now bring your pictures indoors to dry.

Wet Chalk Drawing/Writing

It’s a different experience to draw with chalk on a wet surface. The colours are more vibrant and the chalk is easier to draw with too! Here are drawings that I made on the slabs in my garden.

Have a lovely weekend everyone and I look forward to seeing you all next week.

Elaine J. x

On Saturday, we are holding a special, little. private ceremony in our orchard.  We are planting three trees in memory of a very special pupil – Ellen Burnip.  Ellen was a pupil at both our nursery and Primary School and tragically died, aged just 20, in 2019.

Ellen’s mum, Ann- got in touch with Mr Graham and asked if she could plant some fruit trees in the orchard in Ellen’s memory.

Trees are a beautiful way to celebrate a life, particularly Ellen’s.  At nursery, Ellen loved the outdoors – muddy puddles, hide and seek, and climbing trees.  As she grew up she had a great love for animals – particularly dogs and horses.   Planting fruit trees that flower beautifully in the spring, and fruit in the autumn seems particularly fitting for such an outdoor spirit.

Ellen’s family  friends will be planting 3 trees in the orchard, around our blueberry bed that we sow wild flowers in, each spring – a beautiful place to remember a beloved daughter, sister, pupil and friend.

Our tree planting is taking place at 11am on Saturday 20^th February .

If you have not had a look at the Learning Journal Task this week – here is something you might like to do instead.  It’s a wee check-in to see how your child is feeling just now.  Some of our little ones might be feeling a bit worried about coming back to nursery after such a long break, and it would be really helpful for us to know who might need a wee bit of extra support.  It also gives us a sense of what current interests might be and what we can work on together, to make learning fun and relevant.  You can print this or just make your own sheet. Remember to bring it in on your first day back to share with your keyworker.  Alternatively you could upload it to your child’s learning journal.   Many thanks!

Good morning!! A week today we will be back in  nursery!  We are so looking forward to being back and seeing all our little ones again.  We will be welcoming some new boys and girls to nursery too, that were due to start back in January.  We are hoping for some nice spring weather so we can enjoy looking for signs of Spring in the Nursery garden, playground and orchard.

Eric has made a great start on rebuilding the rotted wooden wall.  He has completely demolished the old wall and is set to cement in the foundations for the new one.  We have had an email from our wonderful PTA who have donated £400 to help us buy the materials for the new wall.  This is extremely generous of the PTA – they have not been able to fund raise at all this year and we are so grateful for such a large donation.

If you have been out welly waddling and have raised any money for our wall fund, we would be very grateful for any donations.  You can hand them in to nursery this week in a sealed envelope, or bring them in next week.  It will be amazing to see the wall and new steps to the upper level of the garden take shape.

On Wednesday, following on from the great success of our on-line Teams Sing Along and Story Time on Friday, we are having another live event with Julie and Claire.  So many of you came along on Friday and made it a great experience.  If you would like to join in the fun again on Wednesday at 10.30  a.m. , please email: caroline.mcmenemy@eastdunbarton.gov.uk  and Caroline will send you a link to let you in to the session.  Julie and Claire were wonderful on Friday – it is a difficult thing to do well and they were brilliant!

This week’s Learning Journal task – if you have time to do it – is to ask your child about what they would like to do when they get back to nursery.  If you could write this down for them and they would like to draw a picture – it would be really great if you then uploaded a photo of this to your child’s learning journal.  This will help us plan around our children’s current interests and provide activities that they will love, for that first week back.  Many thanks for all the wonderful uploads you have made to Learning Journals throughout lockdown.  They have really helped staff keep up with their group’s interests and are a record of the amazing learning they have been doing at home.

Shona and her wee daughter Mila have been doing some counting using some interesting things!    I love the raindrops – just perfect for a rainy day like today!  I wonder what you could find to count?  Here is Shona’s post:

Today it is Chinese New Year.  China is a very, very big country 5,000 miles away from Scotland.  Lots of people live in China, and lots of Chinese people also live in other countries around the world.  China is famous for its ancient culture, beautiful buildings, wonderful food and also for being the home of pandas.

Today Chinese people will be celebrating New Year.  It is a very happy, hopeful time and there are lots of different things that Chinese people do to celebrate.  We are very lucky to have Rong working at Milngavie EYC just now.  Rong is from China and has very kindly put together a powerpoint to show us some of the stories and traditions that Chinese people have at New Year.

Click this link to see Rong’s post:

https://glowscotland-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/r/personal/ed062rbiegus_glow_sch_uk/Documents/Chinese%20New%20Year.pptx?d=wad632c37117a4961859aae96104240e7&csf=1&web=1&e=i0Db4e

Rong celebrates with her family and this year she has made beautiful cakes to eat as part of the celebration- they are traditional steamed buns decorated with Chinese dates.  Rong says she has made mini ones, but her mum, who lives in China makes huge cakes up to 2kg in weight!

We hope that Rong and her family have a wonderful celebration and that the Year of the Ox is a lucky, happy, prosperous and healthy one for all of them.

Here is a little Cbeebies film about another Chinese family celebrating Chinese New Year:

https://video.link/w/4YTQb

Here is a lovely story about a little girl’s first Chinese New Year:

https://video.link/w/aVVQb

Maybe you will have some delicious Chinese food this weekend.  Many Chinese people use chopsticks instead of a knife and fork to eat their food. If your mum or dad has chopsticks in the house you could try eating your dinner with them.  If you haven’t used them before it can be quite tricky at first, but its great fun to try!  Here is a clip of a baby eating with chopsticks in China!

https://video.link/w/MtZQb

Wishing you and all your family too, a very happy, healthy and lucky New Year of the Ox

Click this link to hear a happy wee song about Chinese New Year!

https://video.link/w/pjZQb

Elaine Campbell and her lovely daughter, Lily, have been having lots of fun trying different ways to balance at home.  You’ll need a bit of space to do this.  Maybe your mum or dad can try it too!  Here is Elaine’s post:

Photo 1:  One leg out to the side

Photo 2: One leg out behindPhoto 3:  Making a table 

Hi Girls and Boys,

This week it is Valentines Day, and when we are in nursery we sometimes do some Valentines Day crafts to give to our grown ups or friends. 

This week Emilie, Rosa and I decided to make some different crafts that I will share with you here. Firstly we all made some Valentines crowns, and this was a nice easy one. All you need for this is some card and colouring pencils, but you can add on some more details if you have them at home. We made the crowns from cardboard cut into strips and taped together – and just coloured or decorated these with hearts and gems, We decided to add some pipe cleaner twists, and Rosa added some more cardboard hearts as ears on to hers for extra details.

This fingerprint card was done with some paint, card and a separate love heart template that I cut out and I taped gently to the card. I used my thumb dipped in paint to paint around it the template, and add some spots. When I had painted around it I took the template off and that left a lovely heart shape where you can write any message you would like (or your grown up can help for little ones!). I am sure your grown ups would love to get one of these for Valentines Day. Emilie bent some pipe cleaners into love heart shapes and sellotaped them onto her card, which she had already done some pink painted spots on. 

Rosa decided that she wanted to make a little fox ornament out of a toilet roll tube, paint and card. She painted the tube pink, and drew a face in the shape of a heart onto some white card, before cutting it out and sticking it onto the cardboard tube when it was dry. She did the same with the tail, and added some foil ears and tummy. You could just colour this in if you don’t have any foil, or decorate with anything you have at home. I am sure you will do a fantastic job! 

I hope you enjoy having a go at some Valentine’s Day crafts.

A wee video message of appreciation for our wonderful parents from our staff!

https://video.link/w/VASQb

Shona has sent us a really interesting experiment to do with some household ingredients.  It looks amazing!  Do not attempt to drink it though or your tongue will turn blue and you’ll froth at the mouth,  and likely be sick too!    I love the way the colours move to the sides of the dish – its like magic, but actually its science!!!!

Here is Shona’s post:

Hi boys & girls, missing you all! Here is a little fun and easy science experiment for this afternoon- Magical milk. 

What you will need…

Flat dish (I used a cake tin)

Milk 

Food colouring 

Fairy liquid 

First pour some milk into the flat dish, pour a drop of each colour into the milk we used 3 colours. Then squirt some fairy liquid into the middle & watch the colours drift away to the edge of the bowl breaking the surface tension. Make sure you don’t look away as it happens very quickly! 

We tried this again with 2 different colours (red & green) & at the end we added in 2 more colours (blue & orange) but put these at the Edge of the bowl this time rather than the middle. We squirted more fairy liquid in but this time swirled the dish around and watched the colours all come together and mix, it looked like the earth!  Maybe you could create your own earth or why not try different colours to make another planet such as Jupiter, or Mars etc! 

𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭

When liquid dish soap is added to milk with drops of food colouring on the surface, the soap reduces the surface tension of the milk and reacts with the fat. This interaction causes the fat particles in the milk to move and create swirls of colour.

Watch Shona’s experiment in action:  Click the link Below

https://video.link/w/4lJOb

Julie has sent a great idea for some active fun with a difference.  You look up the letters in your name and then do the activities the poster suggests!!!  I am quite glad that I have a short name!  My granddaughter Penelope is going to be exhausted!

Sorry for the quality  of the photo –

hope its legible on your device!