Milngavie Early Years Centre

Yesterday Emily, Lucy, Poppy and Aine helped Kate clean out the fish tank.  They are such good helpers and they made the tank and all the pebbles very sparkly indeed.  The fish look really happy now, and it is good that we can see them, and they can now see us!!!

Caroline was asking what our fish are called.  We have had our fish for 2 years now and they still do not have names.  Caroline thought it would be a great idea if you could ask your child what they would like to call our fish and let us know via a comment on the blog, facebook or twitter.  We’ll draw the names out of a hat next Friday.  Many thanks!!!

Our happy, sparkly fishtank!!!!

We have been very busy this week planting seeds and tidying up the nursery and garden for spring.  Caroline brought us some lovely pots for cheering up our playground fence, and Kate and the children planted them with wee violas.  We also took the opportunity to plant lots of lovely flower seeds in the polytunnel, which will look amazing in our garden and orchard when they grow.  We planted verbena, nicotiana, lobelia, morning glories and salvia so we are hoping the bees are going to enjoy all our colourful flowers!

Parents from the morning session received letters from us saying their children were invited to attend the afternoon session of our Active Learning Project with Primary 1, starting on May 1st.  This was a mistake – our apologies.  Our morning session children will be out with Primary 1 in the morning, with one of the P1 classes, and our afternoon and some of our all day children will be with the other P1 class in the afternoon.

If your pre-school child does not normally attend on a Wednesday, they will be invited to the afternoon session.  If the morning would be more suitable, let us know and we will do our best to accomodate you.   We would love all our pre-schoolers to share this experience.

Sorry about this- our office staff were under the impression that the letters being sent to our friends from other nurseries coming to school, were to be sent to everyone!!!  😉

Headlice love little children.  Please could we ask all parents to be vigilant about checking for signs of these wee creatures.  If untreated they can be very uncomfortable for the child who has them, and also spread to family members or within the nursery environment.

If you are not sure exactly what you are looking for there are some excellent videos on Youtube which show how to check for signs  of nits (headlice eggs), or the actual headlice themselves and treat them effectively.

Many thanks for doing this.

A very warm welcome back to nursery for those returning from holidays and for our new children and families, starting nursery this week.

We are also welcoming new members of staff – our new Depute Head of Centre, Caroline McMenemy and Fiona Drysdale who will be working  with us on Monday and Tuesday as an Early Years Worker.  We also welcome back Claire Dishon, who is now with us again, as one of our full time Early Years Workers.

Caroline McMenemy- our Depute Head of Centre

Fiona Drysdale – our new Early Years worker

Claire Dishon – our new full time Early Years Worker

For the first time, we have been open during the Easter Break as our nursery is now open 52 weeks a year.  The children who were in over the last 2 weeks have had a great time investigating the arrival of Spring in the garden and orchard, with lots of outdoor play in the sunny, (albeit rather cold) weather.  We will be open over the summer holidays too, so if you are thinking your child might like to attend then, please speak to Caroline.

Holiday provision is purchased separately and allocated in accordance with the East Dunbartonshire Council Admission policy.  It is available to all parents within East Dunbartonshire, subject to availability.

This week in nursery we are going to be learning about Easter customs and using our feet to make some very different Easter Cards!!  On Thursday we are having an Easter Egg Hunt in the orchard.  Nursery will be closed on Friday and Monday for the Easter Break.

Eileen has been busy over the last couple of weeks, asking the children about how we might improve the entrance to the nursery.  The children were very definite – “We need lots of pretty flowers!”  Caroline brought in some lovely plants and Eileen and the children carefully planted them out and put them at the door.  We also had our new sign put up at the door.  We would love your thoughts on our improvements, and also any suggestions about other things we might do to beautify our outdoor area.

Eileen and the children talking about what they could do.

Planting the pots with lovely flowers

Looking at the area to see what we need to do

Our lost property box in the nursery porch

A mountain of un-named lovely clothes waiting to be claimed

Un-named wellies waiting to be claimed.

We have been doing a bit of spring cleaning and have unearthed heaps of wellies and clothes which are not named.  We would love to reunite these with their owners, so when you come back to nursery, please can you have a look to see if any of our lost property belongs to you.  We would love it, if you would put a name or initials on everything brought to nursery.  We can lend you a permanent marker to do this!  It really helps us find owners of items that turn up.  Many thanks!

Many thanks to Clare Forbes for suggesting and organising our fund raising Cafe.  On Friday we had a lovely day – helped by Catriona Jarvie, Laura Henderson and Suzy Murray –  the children served mums and dads, aunties and uncles, grannies, grandpas and friends with delicious home baking and cups of tea and coffee.

Many thanks to all the fabulous bakers who contributed an absolute feast of home baked delights!!  They were absolutely delicious and the range of what people contributed was just right!  All our “customers” loved their cakes – and so did our children!!

Clare had worked really hard to organise the day.  She even found time last week to spend a day in Nursery making a lovely sign for our cafe with the children.  We had great fun using our cutting skills to create our colourful bunting and deciding where the beautiful teapots, made by Aine and  Lana, were to go!

On the day, our lovely patrons left us donations which totalled an incredible £275!!!  This is a huge amount – well beyond anything we were expecting.  Clare suggested that we put it towards holding a Nursery Fun Day in the summer term, with an entertainer or bouncy castle.  This sounds like an absolutely brilliant idea and we will set a date for this soon.

Our children loved the cafe – they had great fun trollying the cakes around and serving their very special customers.  It was lovely to see them feeling important and interacting with their families and friends.

Many thanks again to Clare, her team of helpers, the amazing bakers, our lovely customers and the fabulous waiting staff- for making this a truly memorable nursery experience.

Friday is the last day at Milngavie ELCC for two of our staff members who are heading to other nurseries.

Valerie, who has worked at Milngavie since 2005, as Senior Early Years Worker and then Team Leader is going to Castlehill Nursery.  Valerie has been a highly valued member of our team, and a good friend to all of us- she will be sadly missed.  Her great sense of humour, her extensive knowledge of early years and her genuine relationships with our children and parents are our loss and Castlehill’s gain! They are lucky to be getting such a wonderful lady!  We have shared lots of happy and sad times together, over the years and had many a good laugh!  Her gin pouring skills are legendary,  and we all refer to a Fisken measure, meaning something definitely more than a double!!! We really hope that Valerie will enjoy her new post- we are all going to miss her very much!

Elisabeth, our Early Years Support Worker is also off to pastures new! She has a full time job as an Early Years Worker at Clober ELCC. Elisabeth has been part of our staff team for 4 years and has brought her wonderful artistic touch to sensory play within our nursery. She is a real entrepreneur and she ran a jam making project with the children, making jam in nursery with brambles and apples collected by the children, then selling it at the Xmas Fayre to boost nursery funds. She also makes fabulous cakes and runs her own Etsy jewellery shop, as well as being a mum of 4!  We would all like to wish her all the very best in her new post – she too, will be an asset to her new nursery and she will also be missed. Good luck Elisabeth!

I sense an emotionally charged day on Friday!!!!

Our garden has had a major amount of work done this weekend, by lovely volunteers who turned up yesterday and worked through rain showers, high winds and fortunately for us, periods of lovely sunshine.  Everyone worked really  hard, including Emile and Fraser – our wee nursery superstars!  The rotted wood on the boardwalk was taken out and replaced and Eric had to lie on his back underneath it to attach new supports!! What a man!  We made a really good clearance of rubbish from the garden and our volunteers worked really hard to move 4 tons of gravel into our raised beds!  There was also work done in the orchard to surround our blueberry patch with a wooden surround.  Many, many thanks to everyone who came along and helped – it is an enormous project and we really appreciate the commitment of all our volunteers.  Our outdoor area is an incredible asset to our school, and it is only with the help of all the volunteers that we can maintain such a huge area.

This week is a busy one- we are preparing for our big tea party on Friday.  If you would like to come along there are still spaces, both morning and afternoon.

On Wednesday we are having Tennis Taster sessions from James Thow – 11-11.30 in the morning and 1.50 -2.20 in the afternoon.  Our BA students are back with us for another serial day.

On Thursday Heather and Evelyn from Milngavie in Bloom, are visiting us in the afternoon to give us advice on planting in our polytunnel.  Eric has been busy putting in seeds for the children to plant out after the Easter Break, and we have been given lots of half hardy annual, flower seeds which need started off in a green house, so we will be finding out what to do with these!

We will be making our preparations for our tea room on Thursday and doing a bit of decorating and flower arranging!

On Friday our special Tea Room will be open for business.  We are not asking for payment for teas and coffees, but if you would like to give a donation – all money will go towards nursery funds and buying outdoor equipment to use in the garden and orchard.  Many, many thanks to Clare and everyone who has volunteered to bake or help on the day.  We are really looking forward to it.

Friday is the last day of the school term, and the beginning of holidays for some of our children.  This year, for the first time, our nursery will be open, and some of our children will be attending right through.   Some of our staff  will be working  too- Julie, Eileen, Claire, Maureen, Pam, Angela and our new Depute Head of Centre – Caroline McMenemy will all be on duty at some point.

A wee reminder that the roads round the school and the nursery are closed to vehicles tomorrow between 8:30am and 4pm.  The weather forecast for tomorrow looks dry! Happy walking! 😀👣