Milngavie Early Years Centre

We’re going on a bear hunt….

On Wednesday 5th June early years author, storyteller and musician Aiken Drum is visiting to perform ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’.

All nursery children and parents are invited (and teddy bears).

The show is taking place at the Infant Gym Hall. Morning session children and parents are asked to arrive at the nursery no later than 9:10. We will all walk over to the school together. The show starts at 9:30.

Afternoon session children and parents are welcome to join us that morning too (parents must stay for the show). Please let us know if you would like to come along and then meet us at the Infant Gym Hall at 9:20.

Boat launch

After the show everyone is invited to the launch of our boat at 11:10 in our garden.

Teddy Bears Picnic

At around 11:40 we will move into the orchard for a Teddy Bears Picnic. Bring along a picnic lunch and your special teddy bear guest and join in the fun. There will be some sweet treats and activities for everyone. All welcome.

*lunch will be provided for children who usually have lunch at nursery.

Milngavie ELCC will be closed over the school summer holidays. Places will be available at Clober ELCC for Milngavie children.

Milngavie ELCC staff will be relocated to Clober ELCC over summer to ensure continuity of care for children.

If you would like to purchase summer holiday provision please complete the Summer Holiday Provision 2019 application form (available from nursery) and return by Friday 7th June.

Parents will be notified of holiday allocations by Friday 21 June.

Please bring in a baby photo of your (pre-school) child (their name clearly marked on the back) or email a photo to the school office at

office@milngavie.e-dunbarton.sch.uk

Please provide your photo by Wednesday 5th June.

Our Sports Day is taking place on Friday 21st June. Spectators welcome!

Morning session 10:30 – 11:30

Afternoon session 13:50 – 14:50

*Children who do not usually attend on Fridays can join us during these times (accompanied by an adult). Please let us know if they are coming along.

We would be very grateful if all children who are off to school in August, could bring in a baby photo.  We will keep them really safe and return them the same day.  We can’t tell you why we need these but you’ll be seeing them all very soon!!

Many thanks

Good morning- it’s grey but it’s dry and we are out in our lovely tidy garden.  At the weekend a lovely group of parents and children came in and dug over all our vegetable beds, ready for planting beans and peas.  It’s looking great and the nursery’s garlic patch is growing really well.

This is a really short week – the nursery will be closed on Thursday and Friday of this week and Monday 27th too.  Thursday is an in-service and staff are having training on Makaton and working on self-evaluation of our practice.

Our Joint Active Learning Project with Primary 1 takes place again on Wednesday.  This is our last session of our learning activities.  Our last get together is next Wednesday where we have a big party to celebrate the end of our project with some party food and some fun and games.

Wednesday is also our Parent’s Evening – a chance to have a chat with your child’s keyworker.  If at all possible, it would be helpful if you could come along to Parents’ Evening without your child.  We do not have any creche facilities, or spare staff to supervise children while you talk.

Thanks to everyone who brought in a bottle for the bottle stall for the Spring Fayre.  There is still time to bring one, if you forgot, as the Fayre is not till the 31st May.

COMING UP:

Wednesday 5th June is our big Teddy Bear Fun Day – we are having a lovely bear-themed fun day with a boat launch in the middle.  With the money our lovely parents raised from the Spring Tea Party,  we have booked Aitken Drum, who is bringing his one man show – We’re Going on a Bear Hunt- to perform for us.  He will be here at 9.30 and everyone is welcome to attend.  If your child doesn’t normally come on a Wednesday morning, they are welcome, if you can come along too!  At 11 o’clock we will be going over to our garden where we are going to celebrate the launch of the good ship Fin.  Georgia, who suggested the name, will be launching Fin and we will be singing some boat related songs in her honour.  You are then welcome to bring your lunch and stay and have a Teddy Bear’s picnic  in our garden or orchard.  We are really, really hoping for a lovely day.  We’ll be having some lovely ice cream and teddy snack too and fizzy water to celebrate the launch of our boat.

Tuesday 4th and 11th June are our school induction days for our pre-schoolers going to Milngavie.

Our graduation for pre-schoolers is on Thursday 13th June at 11am in the Upper School Hall.  Everyone is welcome!

Friday is Bring A Bottle to Nursery Day!  This is not an attempt by staff to raise a mega carry-out for the weekend- we are collecting for the bottle stall for The PTA Spring Fayre.  Bottles of sauce, juice, alcohol, perfume, shampoo, etc would all be very, very welcome!!

Our PTA fund our nursery very generously with the money they raise.  They pay for our music specialist and over the years have gifted us amazing resources that have been outwith our budget.  We really appreciate their hard work and it would be lovely if we, as a nursery, could make a really big effort to bring in our bottles this year to make the bottle stall extra special.  Now is the time to offload that bottle of Lambrusco someone brought you last year, or the dodgy liqueur your mum brought you back from her holidays!!! 🙂

Headlice absolutely love little children’s tender wee scalps.  They are adept are moving from head to head in a nursery environment, where children play closely together.  They prefer lovely clean hair.  If your child catches them, it is absolutely no reflection on their cleanliness and there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.   Please  have a wee check – head lice lay eggs at the roots of the hair, behind the ears or at the nape of the neck.

If you are not sure what you are looking for, have a look at youtube where there are lots of videos you can watch.   i.e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opmVHqaMlZw

It is easy to get rid of them, but we need to be very vigilant.  Long hair tied up helps and there are hair sprays which you can use which supposedly repel them.  If you find any, please keep checking every day for at least 2 weeks after treatment, to make sure their is no further infection.  Let’s make our nursery a beastie-free zone!!!

The weather has got warmer over the weekend – we have been doing lots of planting so we are hoping the lovely sunshine will encourage our wee seedlings to grow.  With the sun, comes the need for sunscreen.  Please could you make sure your child comes to nursery with sunscreen on, or that you apply it when you drop them off.   We do keep spare sunscreen in nursery but will need your permission to use it,  as some children can be allergic to certain sunscreens.  A sunhat, with a name on it,would also be useful to keep in your child’s bag for sunny days.  Let’s hope we get lots of use out of them!

Our nursery lending library has been re-stocked with lots of new and interesting books.  Please feel free to borrow them.  Just pop your child’s name and the book they have borrowed into the folder, to help us keep track of what has been borrowed.  

Our boat launch is planned for Wednesday 5th June, at 11.10am.  We were thinking that we might be fun to make it a really special event , by holding a teddy bear’s picnic afterwards, where you are welcome to come along with your picnic lunch and have it in the garden.  We’ve got special teddy bear events planned and some fun and games to take part in.  If your child does not normally attend on a Wednesday, or if they attend in the afternoon, you are still welcome to join us for the party.

We have been looking at fund raising activities for nursery funds and have found a really nice tea towel idea.  Every child in the nursery draws themselves and their drawings are transferred onto good quality, linen tea towels for us to sell to parents, grandparents etc.  The cost of these would be £6 each.  Before we go ahead with this, we would really welcome your opinions about whether you would buy one or not.  This would give us an idea of how many we should order.  We’ll put out a Yes/No form in the nursery hall and would be really grateful if you would tick it for us.  We will only go ahead with this if we get enough orders.  Many thanks!

Here is the sample towel – our pictures would be bigger as there are less children in the nursery than in the school on the sample.

This week in nursery we are very busy looking at lifecycles.  We have been watching our frog spawn develop and our tadpoles have back legs!  We also found 3 little froglets – maybe last years tadpoles grown up – under a log in the garden.  There has also been great interest in caterpillars – Flynn found a big green caterpillar in the garden and we followed this up by reading Eric Carle’s book – The Hungry Caterpillar.  The children have really enjoyed making a big caterpillar for the wall and discussing all the different foods he devoured in the course of the story.  They even made a cocoon out of papier mache, which is taking a very long time to dry!!!!  We have been making symmetrical butterflies and looking for real butterflies in the garden and orchard.  We have ordered some tiny caterpillars which we can watch growing into Painted Lady Butterflies in nursery, and then release into our butterfly garden in the orchard.

We made a very hungry caterpillar for our snack area

If you have not already signed up for an appointment for parents’ night, and you would like to see your child’s keyworker- there are still plenty of appointments left. The sign up sheets are beside our signing in sheets in the nursery hall.  If you cannot make Parents’ Evening and would like a chat with your keyworker, please ask Caroline who will be able to arrange a time before, or after, your child’s nursery session.