Milngavie Early Years Centre

Yesterday Mr Graham and I went to Waitrose to collect a cheque for £420.  This was thanks to all the green coin votes people put in the Waitrose Community Matters box.  Many, many thanks to everyone who voted for us.  We are going to buy new Forest Kindergarten clothing with the money.

We really appreciate the support of Waitrose- it is really great that our local supermarkets put something back into the communities they are based in.  We are going to ask the children to write a thank you letter to the Waitrose staff, telling them what we are going to do with the money.

A very warm welcome back to Nursery.  The weather is starting to warm up and who knows, we might actually be able to stop wearing our thermal underwear soon!!  Our goldfish have survived the holidays and look as if they are happy to see us back!

This term is going to be exciting – we have our nursery trip planned and lots of exciting dates in our diary.  Our pre-school children are gearing up for some visits to their Primary 1 classes and will also be taking part in an Active Learning Project with Primary 1 outside.

This week we will be talking about our holiday experiences and catching up with our friends.  We are also welcoming some new nursery recruits and their families to our Nursery Community this week.

It’s great to be back!

This afternoon we had a very special visitor to our school.  Mrs McElney brought East Dunbartonshire’s very own Earth Hour Panda over to the orchard to meet the nursery children.  He had visited every class in the school and it was really nice for us to meet him too.

Mrs McElney asked us if any of us had put our lights out during Earth Hour on Saturday night.  She told us that it was important for our planet that we use less electricity and that Earth Hour happens all over the world where people work together to put lights off and save energy.

The Earth Hour Panda has been touring round all the schools in East Dunbartonshire reminding all the staff and pupils about Earth Hour and helping save energy for our planet- we are very honoured that he stopped off to see us!

Today we opened up the polytunnel and had a wee look to see what was happening in there.  Milngavie In Bloom had planted some primulas in the autumn, and they are starting to grow and to flower.  Everything was very dry so we took the hose in and gave it all a good water.  There is a lovely bed full of strawberry plants which were very happy to be watered and the primulas perked up too with a nice long drink.

We got two of the empty beds ready for planting some lettuce seeds – we are hoping to plant them this week.  It was nice and warm in the polytunnel today – maybe Spring really has arrived!

Today we have our last session with Danny, our SFA football coach.  We have really enjoyed the series of sessions and learned lots of new ball skills. It is always sad to say goodbye to Danny – we hope he will be back with us again next year.

Judit is also in this morning, teaching us Spanish and helping us finish making all the colourful things which feature in our Spanish Rainbow Song.

Tuesday is a busy day – we are having a visit from Susan and Mr Snappy and Tuesday is also Forest Kindergarten Day.  Fingers crossed for dry weather.  It’s still cold so please dress your child in layers if they are going to the woods for the session.

On Wednesday we are learning some more Easter Songs and listening to Springtime and Easter stories.  We will be trying some hot cross buns at snack time today – yum, yum!

On Thursday – our last day of the term- we are hoping the Easter Bunny might come along and leave some eggs for us to track down, in an Easter Egg Hunt, round the orchard.

NURSERY IS CLOSED ON FRIDAY 30TH AND REMAINS CLOSED FOR THE EASTER HOLIDAYS UNTIL MONDAY 16TH APRIL.

Our nursery staff would like to wish everyone a very Happy Eastertime  and Spring Break!

There has been lots of interest in dinosaurs this month, due to Lynn’s Dinosaur island in the Creative Zone.  Today Angela took over this area and created an amazing invitation to play- a dinosaur swamp with lots of different textures – cornflour and water, mud, sticks, sticky green foam and a green pool to swim in.

The children have absolutely loved it and every dinosaur in the building has been for a swim in the pond!  Thanks Angela, for a really sensory dinosaur experience.  Coen says it’s “DINORIFIC!!!”

Good morning – we’re back to snowy weather again, though not nearly as bad as earlier in the month.  Yesterday’s gardening day unfortunately had to be cancelled as the garden had disappeared again under snow, so no big clean up yet!

Another wee reminder to vote in Tesco, every time you are in – the winner of the green coin vote gets £4,000, which would really help us restore our garden to a safer and even more beautiful state.

This week in nursery we are looking at what happens at Easter – normally we look at Spring too, but this might have to be postponed for yet another week.  We are going to talk about Easter traditions and what Christian people believe about, and celebrate at, Easter.

On Monday we are having our last SFA coaching session of the year and saying goodbye to Coach Danny, who has been brilliant!  Judit is also coming in to nursery to teach us some Spanish.

Tuesday is Forest Kindergarten Day.  If your wee one is off to the woods, please could you make sure they have plenty of layers on and a hat and gloves.

On Friday we have another fun music session with Susan and Snappy Sounds.

Junk Appeal – We are running short of boxes, cartons, tubs, bottle tops, corks, etc and would be very grateful for any donations!

Tesco have chosen our project to improve and repair the hard landscaping in our school garden as one of their three chosen projects to support this month.  We have the chance to win a grant of £4,000, £2,000 or £1,000 towards the cost of our project and the amount awarded depends on the number of votes we get in the green coin box in the Milngavie Store.

Please ask everyone you know, who shops in Tesco,  to ask for a green token at the check out and vote for Milngavie Primary and ELC Garden Project.  The box is situated near the customer services desk and the entrance to the café.

Many thanks and fingers crossed!

This Sunday, our amazing Garden/Orchard Committee are having a garden work day to tidy up the garden and orchard for spring time.  The garden is looking particularly sad, but there are real signs of Spring arriving.  Our work days are real family days with lots of jobs for people of all ages- if you are free, please come along between 2 and 4.30pm and help make a real difference to our outside learning environment.

This year our Nursery Trip is booked for Calderglen Park, East Kilbride on   Friday 18th May! All children are invited – even if they don’t normally attend on a Friday.  If you have not been to Calderglen before, there is a wee zoo with quite a selection of animals, birds and reptiles to see, and a great playpark.  We take our own packed lunches and usually get together to eat them at the playpark.

We have booked 2 buses so there is enough capacity for everyone to come along, and we ask that ante-pre-school children (those coming back to nursery again in August) have a parent or carer with them- they are too wee to be sent on their own.

We will be putting out a letter to ask you to let us know whether you can come or not, and whether you would be willing to accompany another pre-school child along with your own.

We need to know numbers for the buses and to calculate how much the trip will cost- once we have the numbers we will let you know- it should be below £10 for both carer and child to travel on the bus and visit the zoo.

The trip is usually great fun and we are really keeping our fingers and toes crossed for a sunny day and buses that go!