Milngavie Early Years Centre

At Milngavie ELCC we are continuing to develop loose parts play to provide children with rich learning experiences in both our indoor and outdoor environments.  Research has shown that loose parts play contributes to children’s learning and development by sparking creativity, imagination and exploration. Loose parts are open-ended: children may use them in a number of ways. We have loved observing our children engaging with and enjoying the range of loose parts we currently have at the centre….and we would like to build on this success by sourcing more!

The sort of things we are looking for include – pots and pans, kitchen utensils (such as mashers, large spoons and sieves), baking trays (large and small), cardboard boxes, pallets, tyres (all types), shells, buttons, beads, pipes, wrapping paper, curtain rings, wooden clothes pegs, pieces of fabric (silk scarves, ribbons etc)… and many other bits and pieces – please speak to a staff member for more information.

If you are having a clear out and have anything on the above list to spare please let us know!

Thank you 🙂

Image source: Loose Parts Play Toolkit (Scottish Government, online)

At Milngavie ELCC we are keen to obtain feedback from parents and families to help us to identify where we are getting things right and what we can do to make improvements to our service. We value your ideas and views. Please can you take a few minutes to complete the short survey below? Thank you for your help.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=oyzTzM4Wj0KVQTctawUZKR0h8B6yEexHrp31jr3mYChUM0pKVEJPVldKV0xTMjRKWDFKNE1FOEJUWS4u

Reminder – We are looking forward to seeing you all tonight at Parents’ Evening. If you cannot make it please speak with your child’s Key Worker the next time you are in nursery and we will arrange a date and time to suit you. Thank you 🙂

On Halloween, we are having a Magic Show performed by Gary Dunn, for Primary 1 and Nursery children.  Gary’s show is full of fun and laughter, full of crazy tricks and with lots of magician’s helpers being chosen from the audience.

The cost of this is £3 per child, payable to the nursery office at any time.  

The show is taking place in the infant gym and children who do not normally attend on a Thursday morning are welcome to come too, as long as they bring an adult with them.  Adults do not pay for attending the show.

The Magic Show is part of our Nursery/P1 liaison calendar- which includes events throughout the year, where all our Early Level children have opportunities to share special events and learn together.

As it is Halloween, nursery children are of course allowed to dress up to come to nursery (if they want to).  Nothing too scary or gory please – our staff scare really easily!!!

We will be trying some dooking for apples and other traditional Halloween games during the nursery session and there might just be a spooky theme to our snack.

We started our week with The Bear Hunt Show performed by Aiken Drum – there was lots of singing and audience participation and both our Primary 1 classes and nursery children enjoyed it tremendously.  Thanks again to all the lovely parents who raised the money for this event with a brilliant tea party full of delicious home baking, last year.

Aiken Drum with his guitar

Our audience, loving the show.

Our first forest school group headed to Barloch Moor for a Risk Assessment session today.  They will be back there next Monday for the full session of outdoor fun.

Thursday is SFA Football coaching day for our Pre-school children.

This Friday, we are having a special Purple Day in nursery.  Primary 4 have asked us to take part in a fundraiser they are doing for The Royal Children’s Hospital.  We are to dress up, either in purple, or in anything we feel like and make a donation for the Hospital.  We are going to have purple snack, purple sand, purple water and purple play dough and we have to create a big purple work of art for Primary 4 to show that we have taken part.

Friday Evening is the PTA Halloween Disco.

Next Monday – 28th October – Julie is holding her first informal Tea And Talk session, for parents.  This first meeting is a consultation session, she is going to see what topics or issues interest parents and look at what she might be able to offer in the forthcoming sessions.  Please come along between 9.30 and 10.30, if you are able to, and have a chat and a cuppa!  If you would prefer a one to one meeting with Julie about any parenting issue, please just speak to her on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday to arrange a suitable time.

On Wednesday and Friday of next week – 30th Oct and 1st November, there will be individual and family photographs taken of our children.  Times for this still need to be confirmed and we will let you know when these will be taken.  If your child does not attend on a Wednesday or Friday, you are welcome to bring them in to be photographed.

On Tuesday 29th October Lynn will be starting her Families Connect sessions in Nursery, between 9.30 and 10.30 am. These are an opportunity to come in and have some fun with your child, working on special, fun projects.  If your child does not normally attend on a Tuesday morning, it is still possible to come along with your child for the session.

A special appeal from staff – PLEASE LABEL ALL YOUR CHILD’S CLOTHES – particularly hats and gloves.  We are getting in to “Hats and Gloves” weather, and it is so easy for things to go missing.  If you could put your wee one’s hat and gloves into their nursery bag when you bring them in, it would really lessen the risk of losing them.  Another tip – for gloves – is to attach them together on an elastic and put them through the arms of your child’s jacket.  This makes them impossible to lose.  Our lost property box is to the left of the inner door, in the nursery vestibule.  Anything we can’t find a name on ends up in there.  If you have lost anything, it is worthwhile having a wee look in there first.

Lending Library

We have some exciting new books in our Lending Library.  If you have already borrowed a book, why not bring it back and take out one of our new ones.  If you have not borrowed one before, please have a look – if you would like to try a story bag, these are round the back of the library in coloured bags.   There is a limited supply of these so if you would particularly like to borrow one and there are none, let us know and we will keep one for you, when one is returned.

Last year, Claire Forbes and lots of our lovely parents created an amazing fund raising event for our nursery – a grand tea party to which everyone was invited.  We had a lovely day of tea  and cake, with our wee people working very hard to serve all the tables delicious home baking.  A huge amount of money was raised and we planned a theatre performance of Going on a Bear Hunt.  Unfortunately the performance had to be cancelled at the last moment – our performer was in a car crash.

We are delighted to say we have re-scheduled The Bear Hunt performance.   Aiken Drum is coming on Monday 21st October and is performing the show for us in the Infant Gym.  Our last years pre-schoolers – our new Primary 1- are coming to join us.

If your child does not attend our Nursery on a Monday morning, you are welcome to bring them for the performance, but you will have to stay and see the show with us.  The parents of Primary 1 children who attended Milngavie ELC are also welcome to come.  Numbers in the hall are restricted, so we will have to know who is coming, this week.

Please email Caroline by Wednesday 16th October for more details and to book a place.

caroline.mcmenemy@eastdunbarton.gov.uk

East Dunbartonshire Council have a Parents Questionnaire about views on Outdoor Nursery Provision.  If you would like to participate, please click on the attached link.  Many thanks!

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=oyzTzM4Wj0KVQTctawUZKTGVJqS4UuJMkZNukVyHbQxUQUFVOTRJTkE0NkxLUlZVTjRUNEo3QlpRNy4u

We are looking at being fit and healthy, as part of our Health and Wellbeing for this year.  The new pitch is almost ready to use and we are looking forward to being able to use it for a Morning and Afternoon Run,  to start our sessions with exercise (for those who want to).

We do not need to look far for inspirational runners in our nursery – we have loads!

Kate Pearson – Eilidh’s mum – recently won the STARMAN Night Triathlon in the Cairngorms- an absolutely amazing achievement!! Catch up with her full story in the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald!

Lynn Wilson ran in the Loch Ness Festival of Running last week to celebrate her birthday.  No sitting on the couch with wine and chocolates for our Lynn- what a wumman!!!!

Lynne Badger – Samuel’s mum- ran the Edinburgh Half Marathon and Yvonne Cochrane – Amy’s mummy- ran the Glasgow Half Marathon.  Absolutely fantastic achievements!!  Yvonne was running for a very special reason – she was raising money for a friend who needs special cancer treatment.  Our staff are all keen to contribute, and in case anyone else would like to donate, we are putting a special donation box on the hall wall.

We are sure that these amazing women will inspire our children to get on their running shoes and find the inner joy and health benefits that running can bring.

Our Nursery Information Evening for Parents is on from 6 pm to 7.15 pm on Thursday evening.  We are looking forward to showing parents the way our curriculum is structured in Milngavie ELC,  and how we encourage children’s learning within our centre.   There will be short presentations on the curriculum and the council’s arrangements for the new 1140 extended nursery hours, which starts in August 2020.

Our Parent’s Consultation Evening which we had planned for Friday 25th October, coincides with the PTA Halloween Disco night and we felt it was a good idea to reschedule this.  This will now take place on the evening of 7th November. There will be appointment time sheets available to sign up for a time, after the October week.

If you have any worries or concerns about your wee one, and you want to speak to their keyworker before this, please just speak to Caroline, who will arrange a time- before or after your child’s session- for a meeting.  We are always happy to discuss our children’s progress and will always make time for this, at a time which suits our parents.

On Friday we had an accreditation visit from a team including Speech and Language Therapists, Educational Psychologists and a Depute Head of Centre from another EDC Nursery.

They were here to see how we had progressed with our journey towards becoming an Language and Communication Friendly Establishment.

To do this, staff received excellent training on language development in Early Years. We were given strategies to try using in our interactions with the children, in order to maximise the development of their language.  It was really interesting – we had to give children time to think and time to answer, use less questioning and lots more “wondering” i.e. I wonder what would happen if……”.  We also had to commentate on what children were doing, to model the language to them.  We are all experienced staff, but we found these strategies tricky at first.  Allowing silences in conversation did not come naturally to us!  We observed each other and commented on our colleagues’ use of the Talk Strategies.

We were asked to look at our nursery environment and declutter the walls and label all our resources with pictures and labels, so the children can find things easily.  We now use far more visual prompts in our communication, and also more gesture and facial expression. We introduced Chatterboxes, Story Bags and other resources to promote chat about nursery at home, and chat at home about nursery.  We worked very closely with our LCFE mentors – Gail Hendry our Educational Psychologist and Jade Brooker, our link Speech and Language Therapist.  They carried out our training and mentored us every step of the way.  Gail and Jade were so supportive and encouraging – we would not have made it without them!

It has been a very worthwhile experience and we really feel that our communication skills have improved tremendously as a result of LCFE participation.  All our staff worked very hard and everyone contributed to gaining our Accreditation- a fantastic team effort.

Our evidence folder is available in the office if anyone would like to see the story of our LCFE journey.  There will be a brief presentation on it, at our Parents’ Information Evening on Thursday night.

We will be receiving a written accreditation report from our assessors and will put it on the blog immediately.  Many thanks to all our parents who trialed story bags, chatterboxes and travelling pets.  Your feedback has been amazing.

Caroline found us a really funny picture which was our motto during the whole experience- we are not sure which member of staff it reminded her of, but it could have been any of us!