Milngavie Early Years Centre

Last year we held a competition to design a logo for our nursery as it was changing it’s name to Milngavie Early Learning Centre.  All the children drew their ideas and one of our lovely parents – Andy Brunton- spent lots of his own time helping make these into graphic images for us.  In the end, the logo chosen was actually designed by 2 of our pupils – Keziah Low, who drew the lovely tree and Lauren Brunton who designed the rainbow and the flowers.  We love the result and have now managed to have it put onto our new uniform.

There is no pressure to buy the uniform – it is entirely optional.  We like it because it is a practical colour for playing outside, or in any messy environment.  It takes the stress out of getting dressed for nursery and it looks really cosy and smart!  The ladies are going to buy some too!

The items available are a polo shirt which costs £5, a sweatshirt at £6, a lightweight jacket at £14 and a heavyweight reversible jacket at £17.  Fleeces may also be also be available.  The sizes are 3-4, and 5-6.

Unfortunately the photo of the logo does not do it justice.  The colours are much nicer in real life!!!!! You can see samples of the uniform in the nursery hall, on the wall opposite the office.

There are several ways to order uniform.  You can order online at www.kitmykid.co.uk.

You can telephone the supplier and place an order over the phone on 0141-777-8528, or you can visit the supplier’s shop- Baru – at 5 Cowgate,  Kirkintilloch, Glasgow,  G66 1HW.  The supplier will deliver your order free to the school, or to your home for £3.95.

We are really hoping that parents and children will like the uniform as much as we do!!

Nursery and Primary 1 Halloween Magic Show

Wednesday 31^st October

As a special Halloween treat, we have booked Gary Dunn, a children’s magician, to entertain us with a special, spooky ,magic show.  Gary’s performance is very funny and interactive and he involves his audience in his tricks and jokes.  The show takes place in the gym hall in the lower school.

The morning performance starts at 10.15am and the afternoon performance, at 1.15pm.

The cost of a ticket is £3.00.  Please could you pay this to your child’s keyworker or class teacher if you would like your child to attend.  If your child does not attend nursery on a Wednesday, they can still come to the show, if you stay and watch it with them.  To add a really Halloweeny feel to the occasion, nursery children are welcome to come along dressed up.  This is, of course, completely optional and we nearly always have a couple of wee people that prefer to dress up as themselves!

Thank you

We are all back with batteries recharged and ready for the exciting run up to Christmas!  This is always a special time of year in Nursery with lots to learn about colder weather, longer nights and fun festivals to light up the darkness.

Our staff team have been very busy – on our in service day we looked at our Outdoor Policy, Five to Thrive and watched Suzanne Zeedyk’s youtube talk on the need to address Adverse Childhood Experiences when tackling Scotland’s Attainment Gap.  Kate also attended a really interesting LGBT awareness event and the rest of the staff went to a meeting to find out more about East Dunbartonshire’s plans for rolling out the new nursery provision required by the extension of hours from 600 to 1140, in 2020.  This increase in hours will have a very significant impact on all Early Learning and Childcare centres in Scotland.  We will hear more about the plans for Milngavie ELCC, and our staff, in the next two weeks.

This morning we had training on the Development of Language in young children, with Jade Brooker, our link Speech and Language Therapist and Gail Hendry, our Educational Psychologist.  This was part of our journey to make Milngavie ELCC a “Language and Communication Friendly Environment”.  We got lots of good advice and strategies to use to increase children’s confidence in the use of their language in the nursery setting.  We would like to share the things we are learning with parents and to ask for your opinions on the changes we are making within nursery, to encourage our children’s language.

Wednesday is gym day and two groups will be visiting the gym for some energetic fun and games.

On Friday we have a music workshop with Susan,  and Mr Snappy- the friendly crocodile with the interesting backpack. It is always fun finding out what he has brought to show us this week!!!

On Friday two groups of pre-school children will be heading to Barloch Moor for the first of six Forest Kindergarten  sessions.  All our pre-schoolers will be invited, over the course of the year, to participate in this very exciting and worthwhile part of our curriculum.  If your child is in this first group, you will get a letter over the next couple of days in their group tray.

Our group activity this week is to explore the orchard and list things we need to be careful of.  By thinking about our safety and creating our own rules about how to stay safe, the rules become much more meaningful and memorable.  We can have fun doing this (believe it or not!) and might just put the odd crazy rule in to make life more interesting.  We’ll let you know what the children come up with!

Emily’s navy blue jacket is missing.  There is a similar blue jacket in nursery, but it is not Emily’s as it doesn’t have EE in blue ink on its label.  If your child has a navy blue jacket with a fur trimmed hood, please could you check the labels inside – it may be Emily’s.  If you find it please return it to nursery tomorrow (staff will be here on a training course) and we can return it to Emily and give you yours back.  Many thanks!

We are hoping to start a regular monthly Parents’ Forum group, where parents are invited to give their opinions on how we manage aspects of our nursery.  We are very keen to ask parents their views on the changes we are making for our Language and Communication Friendly Nursery accreditation.  Our first meeting will be on Monday 5th November at 10am in the Nursery Office.  If you are free, we would be delighted to make you a cup of coffee or tea and hear what you think.  Parents views are always important to us and organising a time to talk can be tricky.  If there is something you would like to tell us and can’t make the meeting there are suggestion/comment slips you can fill in and put in our suggestion box, or speak to Kate.  If you feel that you would be more able to attend if meetings were held in the evening, this is something we can talk about.  In previous years we have alternated morning and afternoon meetings but I am quite willing to include evenings if parents felt this would be better.  There is absolutely no pressure to attend all the meetings, we would just love to hear what you think and share your ideas on how we can ensure our nursery is the best possible experience for our children.

As part of our project to become an accredited Language and Communication Friendly Environment  we have put some new resources for the children in the hall.  To let children know what is on offer in the nursery each day, we have put up an activities board on the laundry door.  We also have a board where children can put their name up as they come in each day and also record how they are feeling.

We celebrated a special birthday in Nursery today.  Our wonderful Senior EYW , Lynn Wilson, was 21 again today!  We all sang happy birthday and had a piece of her yummy cake.  Happy Birthday Lynn – Many Happy Returns!

Our Word of the Week is part of an East Dunbartonshire-wide Initiative called Word Aware, designed to increase our children’s vocabulary.  Every week we choose two interesting words from a nursery story book that we read with the children.  We talk about the words and explore their meanings together.  By displaying them, we hope that parents and carers will also perhaps take the opportunity to talk about these words at home too!

Its a miserable, wet Monday but Maureen, who is on outdoor play this week, is our Outdoor Champion and last week, attended a course on Outdoor Play is taking groups of children out to explore the wonders of wet!  One of our lovely students, Katie – has responded to the children’ s interest in hedgehogs – by creating a hedgehog feeding station for the children to put beside the hedgehog house, in the hope of attracting some of our spikey wee friends.  The children will check it every day to see if the catfood,  (which hedgehogs seemingly love,) has been eaten.  Maureen really enjoyed her course and has come back with an Outdoor Play Audit Tool for us to use to see how well we use our fantastic outdoor learning environment.  We are being encouraged  see wet weather as a fabulous, sensory learning experience- a good plan when you live in the very wet West of Scotland.

You should have been given a brown paper envelope containing a form for your child to design their own Christmas Artwork which can be printed onto Christmas Cards, Gift tags or mugs.  This can either be done online, using the address and details in the envelope.  Alternatively, your child can design their artwork and you can return it to Nursery in the big brown envelope ASAP!  It has to be back with us by 26th October as this is the very latest that we can return it to the company for printing.  The nursery will receive a donation for every order the company receives.  The feedback in previous years has been very positive, but please, feel no pressure to take part in this – it is very much an optional activity.

This week we are looking at a book called Stanley’s Stick by John Hegley.  Our words of the week from this book are WONKY and TIDE.  We have a new lightbox display in the hall to remind us of our words of the week.

Thursday night is our Parent’s evening  – if you would like an appointment, please sign up in the nursery hall.  As this is our first parents night of the year, the emphasis is on how our  children have settled in.  We would love to hear about your opinion of your child’s learning journal and the things we have been learning so far this year.

Nursery is closed on Friday for an In-Service Day – Staff have a packed schedule of training for the day.    We are then on holiday for our October Week break, returning again on Monday 22nd October.  We are really hoping for some beautiful, crisp,  Autumn weather and would like to wish everyone a very happy holiday week.

If you have not yet signed up for parents night and want to come along, the appointment sheets are on the back of the inner door, in the nursery hall.  If you can’t come on the 11th, but would like a chat with your child’s keyworker, please just ask and we can arrange this for you.

If you ever have any concerns about your child, or feel there is something affecting them either at home or in nursery, it is always good to talk to nursery about it.  We want our children to have the best experience here, and are here to support parents.   Our Staff team at Milngavie have centuries (🤣) of experience between them and are always happy to listen.  We are all mums and have experienced the highs and lows of parenting firsthand!  We are also trained in the current “best practice” and can offer Triple P Parenting strategies and tip sheets, as well as the new 5 to Thrive guidance.  Our door is always open and the kettle is always on!