Milngavie Early Years Centre

 Scrubbing the potatoes that were grown in our garden!

All the vegetables need chopped up carefully

Making soup is hard work

Eating our soup for snack – it is delicious!

Chopping up leeks and potatoes to make some soup.

Today we harvested potatoes and blueberries from our garden and orchard and brought them into nursery to have for snack.  Angela brought in leeks and vegetable stock and we all helped to wash the potatoes and chop up all the vegetables to put into the big soup pan.  We put in the stock and water and Angela put it on the stove in the kitchen till it was cooked.  We then had it for snack – it was just delicious.  We put the blueberries on the snack table, and they very quickly disappeared into hungry wee tums!!  It is so good to be able to show our children where the food they eat comes from and how it grows.

Look at the amazing blueberries we grew in the orchard! We’re having them for snack!

Claire, our Eco-warrior, has started a project on recycling with the children.  She is going to look at all the rubbish we produce at nursery and see how best we can recycle it for the good of our planet.  Today she showed the children the sign for recycling and they looked on plastic packaging to see if it was able to be recycled.  We are also going to compost our fruit and vegetable food waste in our orchard compost bins to help make lovely compost to grow things in our garden.  Her aim is to increase the children’s knowledge about things we can all do to help our planet.  Watch this space our latest recycling adventures!

In Nursery over the next few weeks, we are introducing our new children to all the fun things we can use and do at Milngavie Nursery, and how we manage all our resources in harmony.  We are learning to put on our outdoor suits and wellies,  painting and water aprons.  We are learning how we tidy up after play.  We are learning to share.  In short we are working on our Nursery Rules.  These are foundations of a happy, harmonious place to learn, where children feel safe and valued.  We are learning to be responsible.

At the same time, we like to make our children aware of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  It is important that children know that they have a right to feel safe, secure and respected.  If you haven’t read the UNCRC document, it is well worth a read.  It outlines what countries can do to ensure that all children are treated fairly and equally.  We do this by chatting at grouptime in an informal way and making it fun.  We tackle these one at a time so we don’t overload little brains!  We are going to make a display in the hall of the rights we have looked at together in Nursery, with some of the childrens’ comments from our discussions.

https://childhub.org/en/system/tdf/childfriendly/attachments/child_friendly_crc_summary_final.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=12934

We are due to take delivery of a piano on Saturday morning but we need some volunteers to help us lift it on and off the van. It would involve coming to Strathblane for 9am and then helping get the piano off the van at the nursery.  We have been told we need 4 people to help.  If you could help us we would be incredibly grateful and if you can persuade family or friends to help- even better.  Thanks to Alden who has already volunteered.  We desperately need more helpers to help us, or we may not be able to collect our piano.  If you help us we will definitely help polish your halo!

Our SFA football coaching sessions started today.  Coach Ryan had lots of fun games for us to play and we all really enjoyed the experience.  We played the Shrek game where we had to steal Shrek’s (Ryan’s) food and take it back to our swamp without waking Shrek up.  We had to do this first on tiptoe, and then Ryan got us to dribble a ball as well.  It was really great fun and we all listened very carefully to Ryan’s instructions and followed all the rules of the game.  Here are some photos of the game in progress.  We are really looking forward to seeing what Ryan has got in store for us next week.

Coach Ryan with our Wee Caped Crusader.

We had great fun!

Listening carefully to Coach Ryan’s rules for the game!

We are appealing for helpers to help us load and unload a piano for our Nursery Playground

Caroline has sourced a free piano, which we are going to have in our outdoor area.  The kind lady giving it to us has also arranged transport for it, but we are looking for people to help us take the piano onto the van in Strathblane, and off the van to put it into our playground.  We are going to do this on Saturday morning.  If you could come and help us, we would be eternally grateful.  Please let us know, either through private message on our Facebook Page or verbally in Nursery.  We will take your mobile number so we can let you know the pick up time and address, by Friday afternoon.  We are really excited about getting the piano – the children will not only be able to tickle the ivories and play us some beautiful music, but we will be able to look at how a piano is made and how it makes the sounds.

OCTOBER HOLIDAY NURSERY PROVISION

If you need a place for your child at nursery over the October week, we have forms to apply for these in the Nursery.  Please just ask.  The places will be at Clober Nursery as our nursery is having work done in the children’s toilet area over the October week.  The form has to be returned directly to our nursery by Friday 13th September.  This is important as, if your application is after this date we may not be able to accommodate your request.  If you have any questions about the provision or the form, please don’t hesitate to ask our staff.

NURSERY TEA TOWELS

If you missed out on buying a Nursery Tea Towel before the end of term, the good news is that we still have a few left.  They cost £6 each.  If you would like one, please just ask any member of nursery staff.  The profits from these are going into our nursery funds.

BRINGING SNACKS TO NURSERY

Recently some of our little people have been nipping out to the cloakroom to have some snack brought from home, from their pockets and bags.  This year we have children with severe allergies in our nursery and have to be very careful with the foods available.  Fruit is available every day for our children for snack, with a drink of milk or water.  If children bring in their own snacks, there is a danger that other children might inadvertently eat them.  Please could you make sure your child does not bring any food into nursery.  Thank you for your co-operation with this.

Over the next week, we are reviewing the details we hold about our children that attended our nursery last year.  We have to make sure that our contact details for parents and medical information are all current and relevant.  We would really appreciate it if parents would take some time to look over their child’s plan and alert us to any changes.  If you haven’t already done this, please just ask your child’s keyworker for their plan and take a few minutes to check it over for us.

We are also always keen to hear what your child is interested in at the moment, so we can follow up on this, if they want us to, in nursery. Thank you

We are getting very active and sporty over the next few weeks –  this Wednesday, we are having 2 Tennis taster sessions from  James Thow- a coach with Tots Tennis, at Milngavie Tennis Club.   He is going to run a morning session and also one for our afternoon children.  Maybe we have a future Wimbledon champion within our ranks?

Next Thursday we have our first SFA coaching session for our pre-school children and,  on Monday 9th September, our wee ante-pre-schoolers are having a taster session of Enjoy-A- Ball- a fun class designed to teach ball skills.

Mondays are our days for using the gym in the school’s  Infant Department.  Gym sessions are always good fun, with warm up games, challenges on the apparatus, team games, parachutes and lots of other fun, as well as a nice, relaxing cool down session.  Using the school gym is great – the children become familiar with the infant building and we have the chance to see how our friends who went to school last year are faring. We get lots of practice at putting on our coats and hats and changing our shoes – independence skills we are going to need!   There is lots of space to run and play and the gym is particularly useful when the weather is horrible and we have lots of energy to use up.  We have to make sure that the children have appropriate footwear for the gym – gym shoes are best.  Please make sure your wee one has their name on their shoes, coats, hats etc-  it is very easy to lose un-named items,  particularly over at the gym!!  Even initials written on the label in indelible marker help us reunite belongings with their owners.  You can even borrow one from the nursery office!!   Many thanks for your help with this.