Milngavie Early Years Centre

We love playing with loose parts in our nursery garden. Today our children used all sorts of bits and pieces and lots of imagination and creative thinking to build this amazing structure.

The children also made a stage and used fabrics to decorate it to make it special and fancy! We have always wanted a stage area where we can perform our favourite songs for our friends! We think it looks great! Do you like it?

“I am going to sing the wake-up song, I like that one”.

Next, we checked the foundations of our new sandpit. Work is still underway. Everything is looking great thanks to Emile’s Dad, Eric.

“I think this bit is steady. It is nearly ready for the sand!”.

Dress-Up Christmas is coming!

Remember it is our Dress-up for Christmas day tomorrow.  We will be collecting donations for the Christmas Fayre Hampers (raffle prizes). The Christmas Fayre is taking place this Friday from 6pm – 8pm at the school.

Other important December dates for nursery:

13th December      –    Christmas Parties (am and pm sessions). Santa will visit the nursery during the Christmas parties. Parents are welcome to come along for Santa’s visit (11:10 for morning party and 15:10 for afternoon party). * Please note – unfortunately due to the limited space available in the playroom we cannot extend this invitation to older siblings. 

16th December      –   Christmas Concert (morning – time tbc)

We were very lucky on Monday to have a special Stay-and-Play guest in the nursery. Alden, Jacob’s Daddy, visited and taught us all about balloon modelling. Alden spent nearly the whole morning entertaining our children and demonstrating balloon modelling techniques. The children were fascinated and there were many ‘WOW’ moments as we watched the balloons twisting and turning into dinosaurs, birds, giraffes, monkeys, dogs and much more! Thank you so much to Alden and Jacob for sharing this talent with us in nursery. We loved it! The children have been talking about the balloons all week. The session has sparked some exciting imaginative play and we have been busy drawing lovely pictures of our new pets!

“Look Alden, I am good at it!”

“ANOTHER dinosaur?!”

“Look at the pink dog! I am going to take him home to play in my house.”

“I carry the sword in this. I am like a pirate. I am going to wear it home.”

“I made a dinosaur. Look at his long neck. He walks over here…..ROAR!”

“The balloons sometimes go POP, but that is okay. We get a new one instead.”

“This is a cheeky monkey climbing a tree. He is going to climb on my head.”

At Milngavie ELCC we aim to raise awareness amongst our nursery community of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We have a new wall display in our reception area to share with children, parents and families how nursery experiences support children to learn about and access their rights.  There is also a space within the wall display for parents to write their ideas about how we can add breadth and depth to our learning on this topic. If you have any suggestions please write them on the wall or speak with Caroline or Lynn.

Click on the link below to see a child friendly version of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/content/dam/global/reports/uncrc-child-friendly-version1.pdf

Over the next few months we will be focusing on:

Article 8 – the right to an identity

Article 12 – the right to an opinion and for it to be listened to and taken seriously

Article 15 – the right to be with friends

Article 31 – the right to play and relax by doing things like sports, music and drama

Article 37 – the right not to be punished in a cruel or hurtful way

Keep an eye out for further blog posts highlighting how we support children to access and experience these rights.

Our Forest Kindergarten group are really enjoying exploring Barloch Moor – it is an amazing environment for children to learn through play in a woodland setting. Children take part in a range of outdoor activities such as den building, foraging and gathering, learning about the seasons, the weather and examining nature. Forest Kindergarten experiences are great for developing problem solving, team work and communication skills as well as self-esteem and confidence.

On our most recent visit we learned about measuring – ‘Can we find three sticks the same length?’

During our last visit to the site we discovered lots of frosty spider webs and we were fascinated by these. This week we developed this interest further to expand our learning on the topic! We used sticks and string to make a giant spider’s web (some children sketched a plan) and brought it back to nursery to show our friends. Making the web was great fun and we learned about concepts such as ‘over’, ‘under’, ‘through’ and ‘between’ as we were weaving.

The web is fantastic! Well done everyone.

Forest Kindergarten experiences also give children opportunities to explore risk and learn about and understand their own capabilities. The children particularly enjoyed climbing, crawling and sliding! Have a look through our photo gallery!

Parents of children in the Forest Kindergarten group are welcome to ‘Stay-and-Play in the Forest’ – please speak to Angela or Maureen for more information.

To launch our Christmas celebrations we are having a Dress-up for Christmas day on Wednesday 4th December. We will be collecting donations for the Christmas Fayre hampers (raffle prizes) that day. The Christmas Fayre is taking place on 6th December from 6pm – 8pm at the school.

Parents as Partners in Learning – Recently our children have been learning about the calendar and developing a greater understanding of the days of the week, the date and how these days and weeks build up to make months – now December – and eventually a full year! It is great to make connections between things we are learning in nursery and real life experiences. We would like to encourage you to look for days and dates when you are out and about for example on posters, leaflets and letters and to talk to your child about these to reinforce key learning. If you have a calendar at home it would be a great idea to let your child look at and play with it too. Thank you.

We will continue to learn about keeping safe this week.  The children are learning about what to do in the event of a fire alarm. Our recent fire drill was very efficient. Well done everyone!

You can support this learning by talking to your child about the importance of 1) keeping calm and quiet when the alarm sounds 2) listening to nursery staff and following instructions 3) walking quickly and calmly with their partner (staying in line) to the muster point at the new pitch in the orchard 4) waiting quietly 5) walking in line back to nursery.

You can also highlight that the alarm is very loud to make sure everyone hears it and although it can sound scary there is no need to be frightened.

Thank you 🙂

Milngavie ELCC will close for the Christmas holiday on Friday 20^th December and re-open on Monday 6^th January. Holiday provision is available for Monday 23^rd and Tuesday 24th December and on Friday 3^rd January in other centres across East Dunbartonshire (nearest is Clober ELCC). Some of our staff will be working at Clober on these dates.

If you are interested in purchasing a nursery place for your child on any of these dates please pick up a Holiday Provision Form from the Milngavie ELCC office. We ask that all booking forms are returned by close of business on Monday 2^nd December. Thank you.

Parents as Partners in Learning – Five to Thrive: the neuroscience behind healthy brain development!

At Milngavie ELCC we work in close partnership with East Dunbartonshire Council’s Education Service to provide staff with a range of quality professional learning opportunities. Early Years Practitioner Julie Bannerman recently attended a training seminar about the Five to Thrive approach.

“When we are born nearly all the cells of the brain are in place, however they are not working yet. The brain grows when connections are made between the cells – this happens in response to what is happening to us and our experiences of the world”.

Five to Thrive is an approach designed to enhance parents’, early years staff and other caregivers’ awareness of the central ingredients of healthy brain development in the early years of life. At the heart of the approach are 5 key activities – Respond, Cuddle, Relax, Play and Talk – described as the ‘building blocks for a healthy brain’.

At Julie’s next ‘Tea and Talk’ session she will share some of her learning from the course. If you would like to attend please speak to Julie or another member of nursery staff or simply come along to the session at 9:30 – 10:30 on Monday 25^th November.

Julie also offers one-to-one parenting meetings to chat about any parenting issue. Julie uses Triple P tip sheets to give parents the best advice about promoting positive behaviour and other parenting topics such a toilet training, bedtime routine and following instructions. If you are interested in chatting with Julie please speak to her on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday to arrange a suitable date and time. There is also information available on our Parent Notice Board located in the nursery reception area.

Over the next few months we will focus on our writing area and children’s creative writing in nursery. We are going to look at how our children currently use our writing resources and consult with them to make improvements.

We encourage our children to mark-make. Mark-making activities enable children to express their thoughts, feelings and ideas using various tools such as fingers, pens, paintbrushes, crayons – we also explore ways to mark-make with textures and other materials such as mud, sand and dough. Mark-making supports children’s fine motor skills development, encourages creativity and imagination and is a great stepping stone to writing.

Click on the link for more information and to watch a short interesting video clip –Professor Cathy Nutbrown, Head of the School of Education at the University of Sheffield describes the link between schemas, children understanding movement, their mark-making activities and learning to write. It is very interesting and worth a look! Please leave any comments below.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/schemas