Milngavie Early Years Centre

Good morning to every single member of our nursery community.  Week 2- that means we are 2 weeks nearer to the end of this!!  It’s not yet become a normality – it still feels very strange.

All our staff are missing your children (and you too!) so much!  We know what a tough job it is to keep children feeling happy, secure and busy when you have them at home 24/7.  It tests family relationships to the max and keeping everyone happy can be  very stressful.  We would like to give you a big virtual hug and tell you that YOU are doing an amazing job!  There is no blueprint for this, no manual of instructions – though there is a wealth of internet advice, which can either make you feel supported, or completely inadequate, depending on how you are feeling.  Do what you feel is the right thing!  Parents are always the experts on their children and you usually, instinctively know what is right for your wee ones.  If you can feel confident and can keep calm at this time, your children will be able to, as well.

Fun is really, really important!  The more fun you have, the faster time passes.  Be assured that the more play you can encourage your child to have just now, the more they will learn.  You do not need to be constantly playing with them – they need independent play where they can think their own thoughts and direct their energies themselves, as well as play with siblings and adults,where negotiation and compromise are hopefully learned!!  Try to think of different things to play with – not just toys!  We are very keen on loose parts play in nursery.  This involves playing with stuff that looks like junk to other people, things like clothes pegs, bits of material, sticks, buttons, old boxes etc.  It can look quite messy, but the benefits are well worth a temporary guddle!  Imagination is stimulated, so is problem solving.  The child has to work out the properties of things to use them and this stimulates the brain in the way that familiar toys and construction sets just don’t do.  It is sometimes fun to put loose parts out with lego or duplo or blocks as this really extends the play.  Sheets can make a great den, plastic food boxes are fun too for filling, emptying and transporting things, as are pots and pans. Anything that is not obviously dangerous to your child or to other wee ones in the household can be used for play. Learning to tidy this away again is all part of loose parts play – a real life skill!  Try it today – you will be amazed by what comes out of it!

Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to our learning journals over the past week. It has been lovely to see all the different things our wee people, and their very supportive mums and dads, have been doing!  Our staff have been looking at their group’s learning journals too-adding photos and stories from material they have found on their ipads.  Why not take a few minutes in the next week to show your child their learning journal and go through and look at what they have on it.  It is a great reminder of the life of our nursery- friends, activities, staff and environment and might help keep us all in touch. It is really easy to upload a photo and comment of what you are doing at home – it then becomes a diary of what you have been doing too- great for looking back on in future years.  If you have any trouble posting to your learning journal, please just get in touch and help will be at hand!!!

This week our staff are going to read stories and post the videos for your wee one to watch.  We are hoping that this will help your child remember us – particularly for the wee new ones who have not been with us for very long.  We really hope you enjoy the stories!

To contact us at any time just email:   office@milngavie.e-dunbarton.sch.uk

Stay safe and have a great day

Lots of love from all our nursery staff!

Eileen has recorded one of her favourite stories- Going on a Bear Hunt- on our Facebook page. She had seen a really nice idea of asking people to put bears in their windows so wee ones out for walks might be able to have their own bear hunt.  Here are the links:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52108765

I’m away to dust off my old teddies and get them in the window!!!   Why not do the same, take a photo and upload to your Wee one’s learning journal? 😀👍🐻🐻🐻🐻

We are really hoping that we can all keep fit and healthy and that if we keep to the government guidelines for isolation, that this awful virus will be conquered, in the not too distant future.     In the meantime, our children are missing being at nursery.  Parents are being asked to home school their children.   We know that you may have school age children at home too.  Many of our staff are parents themselves, and we all know just how demanding 24/7 care of little ones can be.  Like our school, our nursery is going to use our learning journals to  ideas for activities to try out at home.  You are able to put updates on the learning journals so if you would like to include your child in recording their home learning on their journal, it is easy to do.  You can upload it by clicking on the Home Learning button.  We can also use it as a way of keeping in contact with nursery – if you have anything you need advice on, or would like to ask us, just leave a message on your child’s learning journal and we can get back to you.

We are keen to stress that the activities and ideas we suggest are totally optional. Not all parents will be in a position to update Learning Journals and we respect that not everyone will want to. If you have school age children too, you may be very busy. We just want to provide an idea of the types of learning we would have been following in nursery, especially for our pre-school children, and hope that you (and any older children too) might find the activities fun.

In the meantime, please feel free to keep in touch.  We are missing your children terribly and knowing what they are doing would be lovely – as well as helpful for planning their learning on their return.  We really hope that we are all back together soon.   If we follow government advice and do not take risks, hopefully this will not be too long!

There has been a lot of discussion in the media about the effects social isolation will have on us.  We were given this page, written by Educational Psychologists, which we feel is very valuable advice for parents.

A nice idea featured on facebook this week was one of making rainbows to put on your windows for children to spot.  They are also to remind us of happy times ahead and are a colourful reminder to be joyful.  Many of our wee ones love drawing rainbows – put a few up and keep the world colourful!!

We have a strong sense of community at Milngavie Early Years Centre.  We are closed, but staff are on a rota to support families by providing childcare for our key workers, at Clober Nursery until we open up again. If we can do anything to support you, within the rules for isolation etc please get in touch.  If you need advice or just would like a chat, let us know.  We are not in the building, but we are here for you.

Many thanks to the Orell Family for offering to have Bubbles Dan McSplasherfish- our nursery pet, while we are closed.    We know he’s going to have a lovely break and will probably find the peace and quiet quite novel.

Our Gardening Day, scheduled for the 29th March, has had to be postponed.  Before the restrictions on going out, we had been making plans for trying to maintain the orchard and garden, but these have had to be postponed until we are allowed out again.  Thank you to our Super-dad -Eric Avenier,  for cutting  all the grass in the orchard last weekend.  It looks amazing was a huge job.

There will be a message on the learning journals tomorrow giving ideas of things you might like to do with your wee ones, while at home.  Please feel free to contribute your own ideas too – either on the Milngavie Nursery Parents Facebook Page or on your child’s Learning Journal Home Learning section.

Please look after one another and stay safe.

With very fond regards from your Nursery staff team.

We have postponed our trip to the Gallery of Modern Art on Wednesday.  We will reschedule this group trip next term.

We had an amazing day last Thursday and thoroughly enjoyed World Book Day.  Many thanks to everyone who dressed up and helped make the day extra special.  We had lots of fabulous stories throughout the day and had Book Worms (cheese straws) and Goldilocks’ bears for snack.

This week in nursery we are learning about plants.  We have been planting sunflowers and we have lots of vegetable and wild flower seeds to sow this week.  Eric has very kindly fixed the broken fence in the garden and we can get back out there, so fingers crossed for some decent weather.  Our new outdoor Suit and Boot room is now fully operational and had its first proper trial on Friday.  It is excellent and frees up lots of indoor space – it also keeps most of the mud outside the nursery,  which is also great news.

We are also continuing with measure – now investigating this through the story of the 3 bears.  This gives an opportunity for revisiting the vocabulary of measure and do lots of activities involving porridge.  Out wee playhouse in the playground has become the 3 bears cottage, with lots of items of 3 different sizes to explore.

On Tuesday and Friday of this week we are taking a group of children to visit the residents of The Oakburn Gardens Care Home.  We visited last December to sing our Christmas songs and both the children, and the elderly residents loved it.  The ladies at the care home have invited us to come back and so we will be continuing to visit to sing songs and play games regularly, throughout the year.  It is really good for our children to get to know the community in which they live and help support our senior citizens.

Over the weekend we have had unwelcome visitors in our school garden.  They have littered the area with glass bottles and litter and pulled down the water-butt, damaging a fence.  The garden seems to be a magnet for vandals – we often have to clean up after they have used our little playhouse to smoke drugs and drink in.  The mess they leave is disgusting and our staff often have to rope off the garden and clean up broken glass, litter etc.  We report this to the police on a regular basis.  There is little that the police can do – our garden is not overlooked and it is very difficult to catch the perpetrators.  We would love to hear any “legal” ideas that anyone might have as to how we can make the area more secure or deter the vandals from visiting.

Our lovely outdoor areas are maintained by a fantastic band of volunteers who meet up monthly to do all the jobs that it takes to make our outdoor space a real adventure for all our children.  It is a school community event.   There are always loads of jobs to do, for all members of the family,  and we would really appreciate your help.  This year we don’t have toilet facilities, so we have reduced the sessions to a couple of hours.

The dates for these days are :

Sunday 29th March 2pm – 4pm

Sunday 26th April  2pm -4pm

Sunday 31st May 2pm – 4pm

Sunday 21st June 2pm – 4pm

If you would like to see what a gardening day can look like, have a look at the Milngavie Orchard Project page on Facebook.  It tells the story of how our community created an amazing orchard round the football pitch and has great pictures of all the wonderful people who have come to help us.

If you have not attended a gardening day before, please come along and join us – it is great fun and really benefits our children and our school.

Good morning everyone – at the beginning of a new month,  we are all set for a busy wee week in nursery.

This week we are going to have a focus on good hand hygiene, and the importance of using hankies if we have a cough or a sneeze.

We have a new book of the month – David Walliams – The Slightly Annoying Elephant.  This book is very funny and it allows us to focus on the vocabulary of size – something we have been doing over the last month in the construction area.  It also allows us to discuss the concept of “annoying” and think about things that “annoy” us.  Word of the Week is “Ginormous”.

On Tuesday we are having a visit from our new student – A third year B.Ed from Strathclyde, Dreita Ibraimi.  She is going to be spending a 3 week placement with us in April.

On Thursday we have our SFA coaching  with super-coach Emma!  Our pre-schoolers love these sessions and really enjoy practising their skills.

On Friday, Mr Snappy and Susan are visiting us with more exciting musical experiences.

A wee plea to all parents – please, please do not let your wee one bring sweets, snack food, make up or toys to nursery.  We have several children who have very severe allergies this year and we have to be very careful about what they are exposed to.  If your child is bringing their breakfast to finish at nursery this is fine – we will find a suitable wee space for them to sit and eat it comfortably.  We really want to stress that bringing chocolate or sweets in pockets of jackets does pose a real threat.  We would be really grateful if you could help make sure this does not happen.

The make up issue is more that it is unhygienic to share lip gloss etc and some of our wee people are very generous!

Toys from home risk being lost.  This is very upsetting for the child but also time consuming for staff who have to track them down.  We have no issue with the toy that a child might need as a comfort to help them settle into nursery, but habitually bringing toys into nursery is not helpful.  There are plenty of exciting resources here to keep every child busy.  If you feel your child needs to bring their own toy – please make sure that it is given to their keyworker for safekeeping so it does not get lost or taken home by another wee person.

In short – please frisk your wee person before they come in to nursery. These things are often brought in pockets without parents knowledge,  and can pose a threat to others.  This will keep our nursery safe for ALL our children.  Many thanks for listening!

Have a Happy Monday!!

If you require holiday provision for the Easter Holidays for your wee one, the application forms are available to pick up from the nursery hall.  We are unfortunately not able to offer provision at Milngavie this Easter, as we are having building work done within our building and in our orchard, but there are places available elsewhere.

Holiday provision is not funded.  All allocated hours are charged at £4.50 per hour.  Holiday cover is invoiced separately and in arrears by the council. 4 weeks notice needs to be given for alterations and cancellations.

Today we are posting our parcel to our French friends at Ecole Maternelle Sainte Therese in Val d’Oust in Brittany.  We are sending them some photos of our Scottish week – our Burns Supper snack, tartan, thistles, haggis etc and some nice shortbread.  Bon appetit nos amis!!!

This week we are going to be making pancakes on Pancake Tuesday.  Ishaq’s mum Fatma has given us an amazing recipe for fluffy blueberry pancakes, and we are also going to be trying to make pancakes with toppings too.

On Wednesday, another group of pre-schoolers are taking a trip on the train, in to Glasgow, to visit the Gallery of Modern Art for an arty workshop – exploring different media and investigating the gallery with the museum staff.  Afterwards they will be going to visit the statue of Robert Burns in George Square before coming home on the train again.  Fingers and toes crossed for a calm, dry day!!!

On a less happy topic, can we respectfully remind you to “Take a Peek Every Week”, at your little person’s scalp.  Some parents have told us that they have had to treat their children in the last couple of weeks.   Head lice just love to lay their eggs on the tender wee scalps of young children.  They can spread quickly in a nursery environment where children often put their heads together to play.  There are many ways to get rid of them and the chemist can give advice and provide a comb and liquid to apply to hair.  YouTube has lots of videos on what to look for and how to treat nits and lice.  If you are not sure what you are looking for, this is the first port of call.  Headlice do require constant vigilance.  If you find any, it is very important to keep looking, even after treatment.  If one egg is missed, it can hatch out and re-infect the scalp again fairly quickly.  At times when we know there are headlice around, it is really best to check every time you brush your child’s hair.  Tying up long hair can help, however the length of hair doesn’t deter head lice.  Boys can catch them as easily as girls.  Even thinking about headlice makes you feel instantly scratchy!!  Lets keep an eye out for the wee horrors and make them feel very unwelcome indeed!!!

Next Thursday – 5th March – is World Book Day.  We will be celebrating it in nursery with lots of wonderful stories throughout the day.  Dressing up as a character from a book is completely optional- many people just like to dress up as themselves.  If your child would like to bring in their favourite book to read with their friends, this would be wonderful.  Please just make sure their name is clearly written on it so we can return it at the end of the day.  We’ll be having some book related snacks and singing some book related songs!  We love World Book Day!!!