Milngavie Early Years Centre

We had some brilliant suggestions for our goldfish names and it was incredibly hard to choose.  We tried to amalgamate some of them to make two very memorable and grand, fishy names.

These are:

GOLDIE-GILLY McSURFER

and

BUBBLES DAN McSPLASHERFIN

 

Our fish seem really pleased with their new names.  Many, many thanks for all your great suggestions.

 

Dates for the diary

School Induction afternoons

Our Primary 1 induction days are Tuesday 4th June and Tuesday 11th June – 1.15-2.30pm.  On the 4th, parents are invited to a talk by Infant School staff in the Infant Gym Hall, while the children visit their classroom and new teacher.  On 11th June, the children have a second visit to their classroom and parents are invited to have a cup of tea or coffee in the School Bistro, courtesy of the PTA.  You should receive a letter with details of both days and a lunch event over the next few days.  Please let us know if you do not receive one.

Our Nursery Graduation is on Thursday 13th June at 11am.  This is for both morning and afternoon children. It will be held in the upper school hall this year, so there will be more room for mummies, daddies, siblings, grannies, grandpas, aunties etc.  It lasts approximately 40- 45 minutes and is a lovely wee celebration of happy times we have shared at Milngavie ELC.

Our Parents’ Evening will be held on 22nd May, between 5pm and 8.00 pm.  An appointment sheet will be put in the Nursery hall to sign up for a time where you are welcome to come and have a chat with your child’s keyworker.  This will be available from Tuesday.  If you are not able to make the Parents’ Evening and would like another appointment, please speak to Caroline who will arrange an alternative date and time for you.

Nursery Sports is scheduled for  June – date still to be confirmed- so there is plenty of time to train for the Parent’s race!!    Our wee ones will be put through their sporting paces and spectators are very welcome.  We are not sure of the venue for this yet – we may have a new school pitch, but are not sure when work will start on this.  Watch this space.

The launch of our fabulous playboat – the Good Ship Fin- will take place in the garden on Wednesday 5th June at 11.10am.  Our special guest, in charge of the launch, is our lovely Georgia, whose name – Fin – was the one chosen out of the hat.  We are having a wee launch party with refreshments to celebrate Fin’s launch.  If you would like to join us for the celebrations, we are starting the party at 11.10am.  Fingers and toes crossed for a lovely sunny day!

Thanks to everyone who came to the polytunnel to plant a special sunflower.  We are hoping to watch our little seeds sprout and grow into big, impressive flowers and learn about the way  plants develop.  We still have pots, compost and seeds – so if you still would like to do this, please just ask any member of staff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many thanks to everyone who came along yesterday to help at our Gardening Day.  We got lots done thanks to the hard work of all our volunteers.  The orchard and garden are looking great and Shaun and Stuart did a wonderful job of closing the gap in the fence where the deer have been getting in.  The children painted the boardwalk with special non slip paint and did a really great job.  Lots of weeding and planting and pruning and sowing of seeds went on, and we are hoping for a lovely summer display of wild flowers in the blueberry patch again this year.  We have been given some flowers to plant in our nursery garden and our children will be doing this later in the week.

This week is promising to be busy.  Tomorrow – Tuesday – we will announce the fabulous new names for our nursery fish!!  We think you might be surprised – no other fish in the world has ever had either of these names!!!

On Wednesday we have the first active session of our Joint Active Learning project for our pre-school children, in the garden and orchard.  If your wee one is taking part, please send them dressed for the weather – this might be winter woolies and waterproofs, or with any luck, sunscreen and a sunhat.  Our morning children will be going with Ms Coleman and Ms Kelly’s Primary 1’s and our all day and afternoon children are going with Mrs Chambers’ P1 Class and all the children who currently attend other nurseries and are coming to Primary 1.

We are also visiting the gym on Wednesday.

On Thursday we are planning to plant sunflowers.  If you would like to do the planting with your wee one, please come back 15 minutes before the end of your child’s session and we will provide the seeds, trowels, gloves and a place to plant- as well as a label and bamboo stake to mark where you have planted.  We are going to (hopefully) watch them grow very tall over the spring and summer.

On Friday we have another great music workshop with Mr Snappy and Susan, who bring their instruments and music to nursery for lots of musical fun and games.

Our last Forest Kindergarten session of the year takes place on Friday, for our 2 groups of forest explorers!  Again – winter woolies and waterproofs or sunscreen and hats – whichever is most appropriate – please!!!

Nursery is closed for the May Bank Holiday on Monday 6th May. (Next Monday!)

 

 

 

 

If you and your family are not busy this afternoon and feel like a bit of fresh air and exercise, I could highly recommend our Family Gardening work day- taking place in the garden and orchard from 1.30 – 3.30 today with a BBQ afterwards.  All volunteers are invited to bring their families along to the BBQ.  BBQ usually starts around 3.30-4ish!  It is good fun and a chance to meet other families from both the nursery and the school.  Katie Risk, the chair person of the PTA is the brilliant BBQ chef and the food is always amazing.

 

There are always lots of jobs for volunteers of all ages and it looks like being a dry day!!!!  Yippee!!

 

 

Our next family gardening day is on Sunday from 1.30pm.  The garden is looking great and we are hoping to get lots of planting and wood painting done on Sunday.  As always, everyone is welcome and there will be wee jobs for people of all ages.  Please dress your wee ones in very old clothes as it is always a bit messy,  and we are going to put anti-slip paint on the boardwalk.

Families of helpers are welcome to join us for the BBQ – which usually happens around 4pm.  If you are new to the nursery, it is a nice way to meet other parents from the school and nursery and feel part of our amazing school community.  We rely on our gardening parents, and staff members, to help us maintain and improve our school’s wonderful outdoor learning spaces and really appreciate the time and effort they put in.

If you can come along and join us on Sunday, we would be delighted to see you.  There is always homebaking and Katie and Peter Risk’s Barbeques are legendary!!!!!!!

We have spruced up the lending library in our entrance hall. We have some new books! Our improvements have been a hit so far with 6 children choosing to take a book home on the first day. Children are encouraged to pick a book to read at home with their family.  Please note down the title of the book you are borrowing in the notepad provided and don’t forget to leave a comment to let us know if you enjoyed the story! Photograph taken by Isla D.

Parents and carers are invited to join their child at nursery and work together in our garden to plant a sunflower.

If you would like to be involved please speak to a member of staff on arrival at the nursery. Planting together will take approximately 10 minutes. You are welcome to do this at the beginning or end of your child’s session.

You can visit again over the coming weeks to help your child measure their sunflower as it grows!

I wonder what height our tallest sunflower will be? Note your guess in the comments below (children will measure the sunflowers at the end of term – winning guess will receive a special prize).

If your wee one is part of either of our 2 forest kindergarten groups please can they come warmly dressed tomorrow.  Layers are best, especially on feet!  We are taking to the woods for our second last session – spring has well and truly sprung since we were last there, so there will be lots to see and explore.

Yesterday we had our introduction to our upcoming Active Learning Project with Primary 1.  Pre-schoolers and Primary 1 classes got together and watched a wee presentation, which shows what we are going to be doing on Wednesdays in May.  Click on the blogs glowscotland link to see what we watched.

 

Explorers Slide Show (3)

We’ve had a beautiful Easter Weekend break and are feeling happy to be back in nursery, with lots of news of Easter bunnies, egg hunts and easter picnics!!

We have changed our registration routine, introducing new signing in sheets for parents to record who is coming to pick up their child- we are asking you to sign in and sign out to make sure we know exactly who is in the building and who has gone home.  The sheets are on the book shelf in the hall in the colours of the groups.   Many thanks for your co-operation with this.

We have recently welcomed new children to nursery and feel this is a good time to talk about how we keep safe in our nursery.  This week we will discuss all the areas of the nursery with the children and talk about how we can learn and have fun safely.  This is part of Health and Wellbeing in our Early Level Curriculum.

On Wednesday our pre-school children will be visiting Primary 1 for the introduction to our Joint Active Learning Project.  We are going to be explorers and tomorrow we will find out where we will be exploring and what sort of things we will be learning together.

On Friday our 2 Forest School groups are off to Barloch Moor for some Forest Kindergarten fun.  We are really hoping this wonderful weather will continue till Friday!

Please could we have some suggestions for names for our poor, wee, un-named fish.  We are hoping to pick the names this Friday but haven’t had any suggestions yet.  If you could ask your child for a couple of names and then leave them as a comment on our Facebook, Blog or Twitter we would be eternally grateful!!!!!!

 

 

 

Early on Easter Monday, a group of our lads conquered the peaks of Queens View and the Whangie and loved the experience!  This is a brilliant achievement for such little people – if we think of their heights in proportion to the mountain they climbed it’s equivalent to an adult climbing a Munro! These pictures show how much they enjoyed it!  Very well done Daniel, Kieran, Jack,Samuel,Callum and Joshua –  we are all really proud of you!!! Awesome!