Milngavie Early Years Centre

Susan visited nursery with Mr Snappy and all her musical instruments.  She told us about a musical word which means playing really loud- Forte!  Mr Snappy had a really loud instrument in his backpack – a thunder maker!  It was brilliant.  Fraser thought the thunder maker sounded a bit like a rocket taking off!  We played agogos and maracas and we listened to the Imperial March from Star Wars, written by John Williams- which was really loud in bits.  We all listened really well, and enjoyed making music together!

It’s Monday again, and the start of another fun week in nursery !  The weather forecast looks a bit better, thank goodness and we are hopefully going to have some lovely days exploring the orchard and looking at all the things that grow, and live there, this week.

Last week we were hoping to start grouptime, but as several of our wee new recruits need a bit more time to settle we postponed it till everyone is comfortable enough to join in.  We are going to think about what we would like to have as our nursery rules- when we have finalised these, we will put them up in the nursery hall for everyone to see.

On Wednesday we are going to go down to the school gym to have our first gym session of the year.  Please could we ask if you could check that your wee one’s shoes and clothes have their name on – we change our shoes and take our jackets off at the gym and there is more chance of losing items if they are not named.  If you need a permanent marker – please just ask any member of staff and we’ll get you one!

On Sunday we are having our first garden working day and family BBQ.  We are working between 1.30 and 4.30pm and then having a big BBQ which all the helpers’ families are welcome to attend.  If you are planning on coming along, please can you let Kate know, just so we can buy enough food!!!  Looking forward to a nice sunny day!

A massive “Merci Beaucoup!” to Emile’s lovely daddy, Eric- who spent a lot of his Saturday cutting all the grass in the orchard so we can play in there this week.  It also makes our gardening day next Sunday much easier too!!  Eric also cut the grass in the school’s secret garden.  As well as all this, Eric brought us supersized courgettes and pumpkins from his allotment to use in nursery.  We are going to practice our cutting skills on the pumpkins and make some ‘coming up to autumn’, lanterns.

We made soup on Friday with the courgettes and tried it at snack time! Yum!

The Garden and Orchard Team are looking for volunteers to come along and help us maintain our amazing outdoor learning environments.  This year we are re-vamping some of the wooden stairs, posts etc in the garden which have rotted over time, with a £2,000 grant from Tesco Bags of Help scheme.  We have lots of ground to maintain and we rely on a wonderful volunteer team of parents who meet up 6 – 8 times in the year to keep the garden in shape and carry out improvements.

We would love more people to join our team.  It really is good fun, there is always cake involved and often a BBQ and beer.  If you want to join us you can just turn up, but you can also contact Anne Madsen – our lovely team leader on 07837 605818 or email anne.af.james@talk21.com.  Families are welcome and there are always jobs for all ages- you would be responsible for supervising your own children though- there is no creche.

We work between 1.30pm and 4.30pm.  The dates for this year are:

2nd September – First garden day of the year and BBQ -We are going to finish off the new steps in the garden, prune the trees and tame a wild corner of the orchard!

30th September – Finish off the repairs

28th October

18th November

There is a family BBQ after the garden day on 2nd September.  If one family member comes to help us at the work day, the whole family can join them for the BBQ!

We are starting our first full week back and have welcomed most of our new children and families.  Everyone has settled really well and we are really impressed with the independence of all our new wee personalities.  We are going to start our regular grouptime this week to give the children a chance to really get to know their keyworker.  We are going to think about what we want our nursery rules to be – we need to keep everyone safe and happy and keep our nursery environment a pleasant place to be.  If we make the rules up together, it makes them much easier to remember- for staff too!!!!!

On Friday, we had a visit from our Music Specialist – Susan Tighe – with her wonderful Snappy Sounds musical workshop.  She brings a variety of instruments and lots of cuddly friends with her,and she completely involves the children in active, fun songs while teaching all the basics of music, including musical terms and instruments in the orchestra.  She also introduces exciting pieces of music to interact with and gives the children a really wonderful musical experience.  Our wonderful PTA fund our music sessions and we are really grateful for this highly valuable addition to our curriculum.

If you are interested in  joining our PTA check out their facebook page.  They do an absolutely fantastic job, organising fabulous events, fundraising and supporting our school and nursery throughout the year.

Junk Appeal

Please could we have some of your recycling, for our Junk Modelling box.  We love plastic boxes, cardboard boxes, kitchen roll tubes, yogurt pots, shoe boxes etc etc etc.  Be warned though – you may get some of it back again as part of a fabulous creation!

This morning, I was honoured to be invited to a party in the home corner. A group of children had spent 25 minutes planning their party and organising all the food. The chat was wonderful as they all worked away together.  The boys were told to make the cakes and when I asked one of them how many candles he was putting on it, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I really don’t know- I haven’t been told yet!”  The girls were the seasoned party planners and firmly in control- he was quickly told to put nine candles on, which he did, very carefully and counting as he did so!

The table was groaning with food and as I sat down, I was handed a box of crackers and told that I could eat ALL of them, if I liked! We were to watch a DVD first and I watched as the remote control was used to “switch it on,”.  The role play was wonderful – it showed that these children had lots of experience of parties- they were very incredibly articulate and one wee person addressed everyone as, “Darling!” They were excited and happy and really enjoyed a play experience that was completely of their own creation.

The home corner is a very important learning environment. It allows children to make sense of things they see and hear at home. The opportunity to practise and extend language, learning from each other and sharing imaginary games, is particularly rich in this area.

It was lovely to be invited in to this special game and be a, very well looked after, guest! If our youngest citizens are an example, Milngavie definitely knows how to party!!!! 

Today, a wee group of afternoon children went into the Orchard to harvest the blueberries. We had great fun spotting ripe fruit, and it has to be said that not all the lovely berries we picked made it back to the nursery snack table. Even so, we picked a big box which we proudly took back to the nursery for everyone to try.  They really were delicious!

Here are a few photos of our first day -you can tell by all the smiley faces that we had a really nice day.  Our new recruits were confident and relaxed, and it was lovely to meet so many new families and welcome them to our nursery community.  Our returning children amazed us with the amount of growing they have done over the holidays and the new things they have learned.  Some of our wee people even learned to ride their 2 wheeler bikes! Brilliant!

Welcome back!  It’s the start of a new year and we are looking forward to seeing all our wee ones and their families this week.  Our last years pre-schoolers are having their big first day in Primary 1 today and we wish every single one of them a very happy day, at the start of their new big adventure.

We are looking forward to welcoming our wee ones back and meeting our new children and their families over the course of the next week or two.  It is a really exciting time, and believe it or not – despite the years that we have been doing this – staff are a wee bit nervous too.

We have all had a lovely summer and are happier and heavier due to the lovely presents we received at the end of term.  Many thanks they were very, very much appreciated!

Staff have spent the last two days on in-service training and getting our nursery ready for a new year.  We had amazing training from Professor Dutton.

Professor Dutton gave a very interesting talk about Cerebral Visual Impairment and talked about the way the brain makes us see our world.  Dr Watkins talked about how we can tackle anxiety in children and provide the best learning environment for children.  Both emphasised the beneficial effects of an uncluttered and calm environment on children’s brains so we have really taken this on board and have made some changes to the nursery.  The walls are to be neutral, with far less distracting displays. This is a bit of a departure for us, as we used to love bright colours but we are looking forward to seeing the effects on the children.

This week we have no formal planning for learning this week – we are settling in and helping everyone feel comfortable.

Fingers crossed for some better weather so we can go and explore outside!

Good morning – can’t believe this day is here already!  It’s been a full week since our lovely graduation .  We enjoyed it so much – we were really proud of all of our children – they did tremendously and the singing was fab.  Thanks to everyone who came along – you were a wonderful audience.  If your wee one didn’t get their school tie on the day, please mention it to staff today and we will sort this!

If your child is going to school this year and you would to keep their nursery  learning journal, you can download it by converting it to a PDF file.   This can be stored on your computer or alternatively you can print out a paper copy to keep.  It will include all the observations and photographs from the start of the year.  To do this,Convert your Child’s Profile to PDF.  First, access your child’s learning journal online and click on the button that says ‘Convert Profile to PDF’ , located under their photo, and follow the instructions. This will generate a document with all of the observations and photos from their profile.  Your child’s Learning Journal will only be available online for another few weeks- they will be deleted when they go to school.  Children who are returning to nursery for their pre-school year will continue with the same Learning Journal as last year.

All of us at Milngavie Early Learning Centre would like to thank parents, grannies, grandpas etc for all your tremendous support throughout this year.  We would like to wish each and every one of you a very happy holiday- though we realise that some people are looking after our lovely children full time so it’s maybe not as much as a holiday as it is for some of us!

Don’t forget to come back and visit us and let us see our wee friends in their school uniform.  We are going to miss you!!

If you are coming back next term, please take all your belongings home as we are going to clean the cloakroom and reorganise pegs etc.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!