Milngavie Early Years Centre

This Sunday we are having a Work Day in the Garden between 1.30 and 4.30pm.  We have had a delivery of stones to fill up the space behind  the new railway sleeper,supporting walls.  There are lots of  jobs to do  and we would be very grateful for volunteers.  If you have a wheel barrow or buckets you could bring, that would be fantastic!

If you haven’t been to a Work Day before, it is good fun and a great way to meet other families.  There are jobs to suit every level of ability and Coffee, Tea and Homebaking. Children are very welcome and can help too!  If you haven’t got anything planned, why not come along and join us?  Many hands make light work 😉

We are having a tennis taster session in the school gym with a tennis coach, James Thow, on Wednesday 27th March.

The morning children will go from 10.30 – 11.10am and the afternoon children from 1.40-2.20pm.  Maybe we have a budding wee Andy Murray or Elena Baltacha in our nursery?? We are looking forward to finding out!

Today Mr Graham drew the lucky ticket for our Name the Boat Competition- the winner was Georgia Brown with her name – Finn.  Well done Georgia -we will be having a launch after the Easter Holidays and asking you to be our very special guest.

On opening the box we found lots and lots of brilliant suggestions.  We loved “Crab-Sea-Ness-Bit”, “Give us a Wave!”, “Knot for Sale”, “Fish and Ships”, “Flounder” , “Vitamin Sea”,  “Codswallop” and  “Happy Cruiser”.  We had some lovely, thoughtful entries – “Imagination” and “Friend-ship”.  We also had lots of names the children had come up with themselves “John”, “Steven”, “Annabel”, “The MCC Bobbin Winder”, “The Black, Black Bloomer”, “Bertie the Boat”, “Zak Attack”, “Taffy” “Lelli Kelli Rose Cherry”, “Sand”, “Lady Valerie” and “Captain Captain” Many thanks for all the entries – we raised a brilliant £86!!!

We look forward to a fun launch for the Good Ship Finn next term.  Thank you for your support!!

We now have a completed wall of railway sleepers in the garden, thanks to Eric Avenier, one of our lovely dads.  Eric worked really hard to complete the retaining wall of sleepers and the end result is amazing.  He also replaced the wood on one of our steps which had rotted and broken, making it safe for us to keep playing in our lovely outdoor space.  Eric has spent hours and hours of his own precious time working on our outdoor area for us this year.  He has felled trees, cleared a wilderness of brambles, built the wall and fixed our steps.

We really appreciate all his hard work.  So will our gardening group, as all this reduces the amount of landscaping we still need to change and allows us to make more progress, more quickly.

A massive Merci Beaucoup to Eric!!!!!!

We are postponing the Forest Kindergarten sessions on Friday 29th April.  We have our pop up cafe in Nursery that day and school is closing at 2.30pm.  (We are still open till 6pm)

We apologise for the interruptions to our sessions  this term  We know how much the children enjoy them, so we are adding on 2 more sessions at the beginning of next term on Friday 26th April and Friday 3rd May.  Fingers crossed for some lovely spring weather without the gale force winds.

An exciting start to our week – Maureen is now a granny!  Ruairidh Robert Kennedy arrived in the early hours of Saturday.  His mum, Louise and wee Ruairidh are doing well, and will be home with daddy – Andrew – in a couple of days!  Congratulations to all their families – he’s a gorgeous wee baby!

Monday brings the SFA coaches to the gym for the pre-schoolers coaching session.

On Tuesday we will be taking groups of children down to Tesco’s car park to visit the Story Bus, for some special storytime fun.

On Wednesday the Yellow and Green groups are going to the gym in the morning, and all our wee sessional afternoon children will be going in the afternoon.

On Friday we are doing some more anger management with Twiggle and his pals- exploring our feelings and how to cope with them.  Our Forest Kindergarten groups will be visiting the woods – wind speed permitting.

Next Friday is our Nursery Tea Party – there are still plenty of spaces for people to sign up and come for a cup of tea and lovely cake, served by some very special wee waiters and waitresses.  If you would like to be a parent helper on the day or contribute some lovely cakes, they would be very gratefully received – please contact Clare at Clare.Forbes@hotmail.com.

Many thanks for your Red Nose Day donations – we raised £25.17 and had great fun!

Photos are still refusing to upload to the blog and I’m sad because we’ve got some lovely ones of our wee red nosed superstars.  I’ve contacted our IT department so I’m hoping this will be resolved soon.

The snow has thawed but suddenly it’s really icy – please take great care!  The pavements and car park round the school are treacherous!

Monday is football day in Nursery for our pre-school children, with the visiting SFA coach.  Wednesday is our gym day for the Red and Orange groups.

On Wednesday we are having our  BA teaching students who start a three week placement with us in April, in for the day.

Friday is Red Nose Day and it is “Wear something red to nursery day!”  There were interesting comments in the news at the weekend about the plastic red noses which are on sale for the day.  They cost £1.25 – only 65p of this goes to Comic Relief.  They also contribute to the mountain of plastic rubbish we have to get rid of.  Maybe this is the year to paint your nose red with lipstick and give the money to the charity instead!!!  One school in England has decided to do this and gained David Attenborough’s seal of approval.  The company which sell them have also been particularly cynical this year, encouraging children to “collect them all”.   We are looking forward to having lots of fun this Friday, with or without noses, making Red Nose Day cakes and enjoying some crazy activities.  Don’t worry if your child doesn’t own anything red – dressing up is never compulsory!

We also have Mr Snappy and Friends coming to nursery with Susan on Friday for a fun filled music session, and our wee Forest Kindergarteners will be taking their red noses to Barloch moor for forest fun!

There is a sheet in the hall which you can sign up for a booking for our Pop Up Cafe on Friday 25th March – it is just beside the Nursery Uniform display.  Please sign up – it’s going to be fab!!

It’s the last week of the Name the Boat Competition – there are entry forms in the hall on the radiator and a wee box for the suggestions and the money!  All proceeds go to funding the refurbishment of our magnificent green boat!  Many thanks!

Many thanks to Laura – Charlie’s mum – for the lovely sofa!  It is a huge hit with the children and reading stories has become a firm favourite since we got it.

We are getting into the spirit of Comic Relief by having a day where we wear red and do some crazy and funny things.  This is fairly standard for Milngavie Early Learning Centre, but we will be upping the craziness just for the day.  We will be reading crazy stories, singing funny songs, trying some very silly activities, making crazy Red Nose Cakes and laughing lots!

We will put a collection box in the hall for anyone wishing to make a donation to Comic Relief.  Forest kindergarten will still be happening, weather permitting, for the pre-school children who went last week.  They can try out making each other laugh in the woods instead!!

On Friday 29^th March we are holding a very special tea party – an opportunity for our wee ones to invite their mums, dads, grannies, aunties etc to come along to our pop up cafe, where they can serve them with lovely home baking.  

We have done this previously and the children really enjoyed being the waiters and waitresses for their families and friends.  We have also raised money for nursery projects and resources with the donations we received.

Clare Forbes has very kindly offered to be Cafe Manager and organiser this year- a job not for the faint hearted! 

We will be doing some heavily supervised baking with the children in nursery, and will also be asking for donations of home baking for our cafe.  If you could bake for us, we would be very grateful, and ask if you could email Clare at,  Clare.Forbes@hotmail.com. to let her know what you are bringing, so we can plan what we need to make.  We also ask if you could put your baking on a plate with your name on the bottom, so we can return it to you after the party. 

We will be involving the children in planning and organising the event and they will be working in the cafe and on the door, on the day.  The tea party will be a fund raising event with the children deciding what the money raised should be spent on in the nursery. 

Please come along and bring friends – it is lovely to see all our wee ones being the important helpers and serving their families with lovely cakes!  Sign up in the Nursery Hall for a time to come along!!  We are hoping to be really busy!