Milngavie Early Years Centre

We had a phone call from Donna at our local Waitrose store to let us know that Milngavie ELC has been awarded £420 from the Community Matters fund this month.  This is an amazing amount and will fund new Forest Kindergarten clothing – 2 piece waterproof suits which will be much easier for our children to manage.

Thank you to everyone who visited Waitrose and voted for us.  We are absolutely delighted with the amount and, as it was a percentage of the votes cast that counted – every single vote mattered- many thanks!

Yippee! A mild, dry day for Forest Kindergarten today – perhaps Spring might really be on its way!  Both morning and afternoon sessions took place today – the children and staff were very excited to be back in the forest and keen to explore, looking for signs of spring.  We saw snowdrops in gardens on the way to the moor and there were daffodils growing in the woods – not flowering yet, but not far away!

Ready to go, with Colin the curious caterpillar leading us, and Belle the Beautiful Butterfly bringing up the rear!

Lynn teaching the group, the “Who let the dogs out?” song that we sing if we meet a dog off the lead.

Look at our amazing den!

“Look – I found the teeniest wee worm!”

Our first wee pupil in Nursery Uniform- looking so smart!

Take the stress out of getting dressed for Nursery!

Our smart, new, unisex ELC uniform is now available.  Samples are on the wall in the nursery hall and it is available to order today online.  I have attached the link to the Border Embroideries website. For your information, if you click on schools, then find your school, you will see Milngavie Early Learning centre in the list. Uniform is, of course, optional.

The polo shirts are £6.85 and the sweatshirts £7.35.

Polo Shirt – £6.85

https://www.border-embroideries.co.uk/schools/milngavie-early-learning-centre.html

Happy Monday!  Today in Nursery we are having a busy day.  We have our SFA football coaching sessions and Judit is visiting to teach us Spanish.  Mrs Ryan from Craigdhu Primary is coming to nursery to see the children who are going to Craigdhu Primary in August.

Tuesday is Forest Kindergarten day.  If you have had a letter to say your wee star is going, please could you make sure they have warm clothes, hat,  gloves and wellies, as it is still pretty wintery.  We are looking forward to exploring, and learning lots in the woods!  Over the next 5 weeks we are hoping to see Spring arriving!!

On Wednesday and Thursday at grouptime, we are doing experiments with ice and water – looking at the effect of salt on the freezing process and also on melting existing ice.

On Friday we are having our Paths session with Twiggle the Turtle and his friends.  This week we are learning about compliments, and how they make us feel.

Last Friday’s World Book Day was great – photos to follow later today!

Our World Book Day celebration was cancelled because of the snow last week.   The children were very disappointed so  we are going to celebrate tomorrow instead.

If your child likes dressing up, we would like to invite them to dress up as characters from our favourite books,and bring in our favourite book to show our friends.

In the afternoon, children from the upper school are coming over to read our children’s favourite books with them.  Please make sure your child’s name is on their book somewhere as this makes it much easier to keep track of.

Dressing up is, of course, optional.  Some of our wee people really don’t enjoy it, and it is absolutely fine just to be yourself.

Yesterday, I was fortunate to be invited to the launch of the Forestry Commission’s Forest Family Bags at Boclair House Hotel.  We were one of the pilot nurseries for the scheme, and I gave a presentation on our Forest Kindergarten Experience at Milngavie ELC  and reported on Coen’s family’s trial of the Family Bag.

Many thanks to Suzanne for providing fabulous pictures and videos of their outing and for giving me lots of information and ideas for the presentation.

As a result of the launch yesterday, we now have 2 Forest Family bags which you are very welcome to take for a trip to the woods.  Please just ask staff for one.

Our Forest Family Bag

Launch of Forest Family Bags at Boclair House

Andy Brunton, Lauren’s dad has kindly agreed to help us with a new logo for our Early Learning Centre.  He asked us to involve the children in designing the motif, so this week we have been looking at lots of different nursery logos and thinking about what we would like ours to reflect.

It has been interesting to see which ones the children liked and hear their reasons.  We have also talked about logos we recognise in our environment- funnily enough McDonalds was well recognised by almost all of us!

We have asked Mr Graham to look at all our amazing designs and choose his favourite one – we will then give it to Andy and end up with a new logo, which we will eventually put on a sign at the front door.

Thanks to the amazing army of volunteer snow shifters who cleared the school, the car park and the nursery playground of snow and have created a fabulous snow mountain for us to climb – we are back and ready to go!

March is usually when we start to look for signs of spring, but maybe we’ll wait till next week!

If you are visiting Tesco, please remember to ask for a green coin to vote for Milngavie Primary and ELC garden.   We should hear shortly how we got on with our Waitrose appeal for Forest Kindergarten Clothing.  Many thanks to everyone who supported us.

On Wednesday Valerie is on a Management Training Course and Kate is going to the official launch of  Forest Kindergarten bags for Nurseries, to report on our pilot scheme.  Thanks to Suzanne for all her feedback while trialling the bag.

Our big gardening day has been moved to Sunday March 18th due to the weather. We are really looking forward to seeing our garden coming back to life.

Next Thursday – 1st March – is World Book Day- a day to celebrate reading and books and have lots of book based fun.

If your child likes dressing up, we would like to invite them to dress up as characters from our favourite books,and bring in our favourite book to show our friends.

In the morning, we are taking our full time pre-school children to ASDA Bearsden, on the train, for a special World Book Day story time.  In the afternoon, children from the upper school are coming over to read our children’s favourite books with them.  Please make sure your child’s name is on their book somewhere as this makes it much easier to keep track of.

Dressing up is, of course, optional.  Some of our wee people really don’t enjoy it, and it is absolutely fine just to be yourself.

We have a very talented mum, Sheena Lister, who has started a wonderful new business making extra special children clothes and baby presents.  She has her own Fabric Star facebook page, which shows the lovely things she can make.

Please have a look and like and share her page with as many people as you can.  Sheena really deserves to be very successful as her work is beautiful, and very different.